Xbox Business Update Podcast | Xbox Everywhere Direction Discussion

[Cyan]

The CEO of MOON Studio advises website and network owners not to write about things they know nothing about just to generate interaction and increase traffic regarding the closure of studios within Microsoft.

️ He believes that Microsoft likely closed the studios with the aim of reshaping them, gathering successful developers to work on the same successful project but in a new place and format, focusing solely on the project itself. He sees the closure of Tango Studio as an example of this belief, where Microsoft might reassemble the core team of developers to work on something equally amazing.

️ The president said that the reporters and the sites describes the situation as: "The evil publisher destroys the studio that created a wonderful game due to clear greed."

️ However, based on his experience, he believes that if his assumption were to happen, the headlines should be: "The publisher made a smart move by placing the core developers in an effective position to deliver more games that we love."

️ He further added that from a publisher's perspective, everyone admired HIFI RUSH, and the talents who delivered the game could create a project even bigger and better than many aspects of HI FI RUSH. It's a much better game than it was before. A producer will be pursued by every publisher in the world because it brings in a lot of money for them.

️ He doesn't believe that Microsoft is stupid to the extent of cutting off clear paths to success with exceptional developers, and while this may happen, typically, and according to his experience, these decisions are made to reach a better and more advanced level.

if that was true, then MS communication is criminally horrible, announcing the closure without saying that they were reassembling the core team.

I supported MS when they purchased Activision -which kinda was in shambles- because I thought it wouldn't have any bad side effect in the industry, and imho it didn't, but I wonder how are they going to recover their image as a brand with the Xbox. This is worse than the Kinect days.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788610596713406853

 

[Johnny Awesome]

@ Shifty Geezer. I agree we don't need to get into list wars about who has the bigger axe between Sony and MS.

I'm not sure this PR hit will matter in the end if MS delivers the AAA games from their remaining 28 studios. It's always been about impressive content and MS still needs to deliver on that front, but if they do I think people's memories will fade about this.

 

[Charlietus]

You can't possibly know that. Sony has closed plenty of studios over the years.

Let's take a look at the past then.

Big big studios: closed because of reduced interest in mobile consoles from Sony.

Evolution studios: drive club was both a failure commercially and critically. It also had to be a launch game for the PS4 but didn't make it.

Guerrilla Cambridge: another victim of Sony disinterest in mobile consoles.

Zipper and incognito: Sony was in the red at the time. Got killed by the PS3.

Japan studios: this one hurts. But you can't fail to make a AAA game in 10 years plus. They would have been closed much quicker without Sony, probably. Both gravity rush games were craters commercially and weren't exactly critical darlings.

Manchester studio: never made a game in 5 years.

Pixel opus: made concrete genie, got a 75%, was a flop. This one could have stayed open since the team was really small, but the criteria for critical reception wasn't met.

So, Sony has never closed a studio after a critically successful game. So no, they wouldn't have closed tango.

 

[Cyan]

Gamers start a pacific protest and they are review bombing Hi-Fi Rush with positive reviews on Steam. Aside from the occasional insult, the favorable reviews have reached the rating standard of "Overwhelmingly Positive" with 97%, a seal of quality only available to those who exceed 95% favorable reviews.

Hi-Fi RUSH on Steam

Test your abilities in two new game modes, uncover new rewards and even a few secrets in the Arcade Challenge! Update! Feel the beat as wannabe rockstar Chai and his ragtag team fight against an evil megacorp in a world that syncs to the music.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Cyan]

Seamus Blackley, the original creator of Xbox reacts sadly to the company's situation and defends Sarah Bond... although with nuances.

He defended Xbox president Sarah Bond for her response to the closures, but then he tinged his words in the face of criticism.

"Don't mess with Sarah Bond, these events are terrifyingly hard to deal with." “This team is clearly under a lot of corporate pressure ,” he said in a tweet that he later deleted.

The next day, Blackley tinged his words , maintaining his defense of Bond and Phil Spencer, but redirecting almost all his solidarity not to the managers, but to the developers who have lost their job.


“ Yesterday I tweeted (yes) support for Sarah Bond, who was forced to respond to this and stumbled. Some people got mad at me for that, but I know what it's like to be targeted for bad news. "I don't know if she or even Phil had much of a say in the layoffs ."

“ I know the stench of wealthy men's decision making and how it destroys the lives and confidence of creative people. And that's the tragedy here ."

" The video game industry keeps forgetting, and then learning again *the hard way*, that it's the DEVELOPERS who matter. Treat them better ."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788935993065660544

Blackley also reacted, with a sad face, to the rumor that Microsoft is trying to "kill" the Xbox brand, using "Microsoft Gaming" instead, something a former Xbox developer said a week before these closures with Ryan McCaffrey of IGN .

 

[QPlayer]

Let's take a look at the past then.

Big big studios: closed because of reduced interest in mobile consoles from Sony.

Evolution studios: drive club was both a failure commercially and critically. It also had to be a launch game for the PS4 but didn't make it.

Guerrilla Cambridge: another victim of Sony disinterest in mobile consoles.

Zipper and incognito: Sony was in the red at the time. Got killed by the PS3.

Japan studios: this one hurts. But you can't fail to make a AAA game in 10 years plus. They would have been closed much quicker without Sony, probably. Both gravity rush games were craters commercially and weren't exactly critical darlings.

Manchester studio: never made a game in 5 years.

Pixel opus: made concrete genie, got a 75%, was a flop. This one could have stayed open since the team was really small, but the criteria for critical reception wasn't met.

So, Sony has never closed a studio after a critically successful game. So no, they wouldn't have closed tango.

So Sony closed more studios than MS, so there is nothing to talk about here. Driveclub... even ten years later PS gamers still mention it as a good game and their studio was closed... But this is just an example, reasons can be found or created. The facts are facts, Sony has closed at least that many studios. It doesn't matter if someone makes a critically acclaimed game if that game isn't popular in terms of sales, This is a business where everyone has to make business decisions based on performance. What is the guarantee that another console manufacturer will not make such decisions in a few months? The gaming industry is undergoing a transformation.

 

[BoardBonobo]

So Sony closed more studios than MS, so there is nothing to talk about here. Driveclub... even ten years later PS gamers still mention it as a good game and their studio was closed... But this is just an example, reasons can be found or created. The facts are facts, Sony has closed at least that many studios. It doesn't matter if someone makes a critically acclaimed game if that game isn't popular in terms of sales, This is a business where everyone has to make business decisions based on performance. What is the guarantee that another console manufacturer will not make such decisions in a few months? The gaming industry is undergoing a transformation.

I don't think it is just the closures themselves that sting here. It's the two faced nature of the XBox leadership that is bringing the pain, Phil saying he would never close a studio because of profitibility, Booty saying they desprately need games like Hi-Fi rush the day after closing the studio that made it. Bond seems to not have any sure fire answers in her last interview.

It's just bad management from start to finish, in an industry that is about creativity and adventure, the MS management structure just doesn't fit. Having blown an obscene amount of money on bet that failed, an amount that has had a very negative impact on the studios that got caught up in it, an amount that has shaken the industry to its roots by devaluing the very core properties of the industry itself and flyed it back to just being about profit and loss reports, Xbox now finds itself reaping what it's sown. The last set of financials, if you remove ABK show a negative growth. That was never going to be allowed to continue and if this process runs its course then the biggest transformation will be the disapperence of the XBox brand entirely.

And to be honest there is no reason for any other player to make the same decisions, they aren't being forced into a tit for tat match anymore. They can just do their own thing and eat some popcorn whilst watching the meltdown from a distance.

 

[rntongo]

Seamus Blackley, the original creator of Xbox reacts sadly to the company's situation and defends Sarah Bond... although with nuances.

He defended Xbox president Sarah Bond for her response to the closures, but then he tinged his words in the face of criticism.

"Don't mess with Sarah Bond, these events are terrifyingly hard to deal with." “This team is clearly under a lot of corporate pressure ,” he said in a tweet that he later deleted.

The next day, Blackley tinged his words , maintaining his defense of Bond and Phil Spencer, but redirecting almost all his solidarity not to the managers, but to the developers who have lost their job.


“ Yesterday I tweeted (yes) support for Sarah Bond, who was forced to respond to this and stumbled. Some people got mad at me for that, but I know what it's like to be targeted for bad news. "I don't know if she or even Phil had much of a say in the layoffs ."

“ I know the stench of wealthy men's decision making and how it destroys the lives and confidence of creative people. And that's the tragedy here ."

" The video game industry keeps forgetting, and then learning again *the hard way*, that it's the DEVELOPERS who matter. Treat them better ."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788935993065660544

Blackley also reacted, with a sad face, to the rumor that Microsoft is trying to "kill" the Xbox brand, using "Microsoft Gaming" instead, something a former Xbox developer said a week before these closures with Ryan McCaffrey of IGN .

Seamus Blackley is a reason there was a soul in the Xbox ecosystem. Today its such a soulless brand. Its great he's standing up for developers, the issue is with the top management particularly Phil who's not been able to deliver. Blackley knows all too well the issue of a distracting goal that was always imposed on Xbox because he felt this pressure from inception so for him this is quite personal. Trying to kill the Xbox brand and replace it with some adhoc MS gaming play anywhere is where things are going. Its all a step towards killing off Xbox and becoming a third party developer. I wish MS would be forced to sell Activision honestly.

 

[arandomguy]

This is something I've been thinking about for awhile now in terms of the contrast between the video game industry and film/tv industry as it relates to the above discussion.

In terms of game promotion and discourse the discussions are focused around the studios largely. There are a few name individuals that do get discussed/promoted (eg. a Hideo Kojima) but for the most part even directors/lead designers/producers etc. aren't really mentioned in the reporting, promotion, or even have awareness among fan discussion much less unit leads.

By contrast in film/tv the promotion and discourse is largely centered around the head creatives (especially the director) while the studio (outside of the distribution element) is put into the background.

Which really seems to make more sense. Does the actual studio itself matter? Or if it's really the leads and up that matters? Which also by extension (and might sound cold) but also at what point in the hierarchy, especially if we're talking about some these very large studios that might even be contracting out some work, does the employee become interchangeable/replaceable.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So Sony closed more studios than MS,

No-one's done a full count. Wiki lists 9 closures/conslidations for Sony and 15 for MS, not including these 4.

However, the point wasn't Sony "doesn't close studios" but "Sony wouldn't close an award winning studio a year after praising its last game." If you want to counter that, you need an example of Sony acquiring a studio, singing its praises, and closing it down all in the span of 5 years.

It doesn't matter if someone makes a critically acclaimed game if that game isn't popular in terms of sales,

Sony has prior in Team ICO and others. Most studios at Sony have been there for 20 years. 12 studios/teams at PlayStation have been around since before the millennium.

Sony has not operated this way. However, there's concern they'll start to. Their spending spree from 2019 has doubled their ranks with immature studios. tey might also find themselves unable to sustain such a large development populace.

The closest Sony has gotten to this is I think PixelOpus. They were a small team founded in 2014 within Sony. They made Entwined (60% metascore) and Concrete Genie (75% metascore). they were closed four years after Concrete Genie released. So 9 years including 4 after a couple of mediocre releases, where clearly the studio was closed because that project didn't show promise.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

By contrast in film/tv the promotion and discourse is largely centered around the head creatives (especially the director) while the studio (outside of the distribution element) is put into the background.

Due to the peculiar nature of that industry, studio can be created just for a film and then disbanded. there also aren't established teams of the same people working on different content, but people migrate from project to projects. That's half how it is at gaming, but there's an established core of the same creative minds. Each film is a different combo of Producer, Director, Writer, Main Actors, whereas at a studio these are the same names across titles making the gestalt entity that created the game.

 

[Charlietus]

So Sony closed more studios than MS, so there is nothing to talk about here. Driveclub... even ten years later PS gamers still mention it as a good game and their studio was closed... But this is just an example, reasons can be found or created. The facts are facts, Sony has closed at least that many studios. It doesn't matter if someone makes a critically acclaimed game if that game isn't popular in terms of sales, This is a business where everyone has to make business decisions based on performance. What is the guarantee that another console manufacturer will not make such decisions in a few months? The gaming industry is undergoing a transformation.

Driveclub launched with a 71% on metacritic. It was a disaster at launch with missing features, server issues and more. Just because some people are nostalgic about it doesn't mean much.

Anyway, if you don't believe me, here's the days gone director talking about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/mt6pg3

There is no need to create reasons when we have the facts in front of us :]

 

[QPlayer]

It was actually a team that made a niche game. It may have been a critical success, but it failed in terms of sales. It's a pity, because they put quality work on the table, but according to them, it wasn't popular enough. It follows from this that no one should count on games of this kind at the first-party level, but it is true that both of these big console manufacturers have a look at the games being made.

However, MS has a lot of upcoming quality AAA titles to show off at the Xbox Show, and they need to present a bright future to keep gamers happy.

 

[Cappuccino]

Why? This guy has first hand knowledge. Instead you believe rumors from disgruntled employees. Btw, the last 3 guys I fired that were terrible employees really thought they didn't deserve it either. Don't believe everything you hear just because it doesn't fit the anti-MS narrative right now.

By what metric can we say Tango deserved it?

 

[Cyan]

Seamus Blackley is a reason there was a soul in the Xbox ecosystem. Today its such a soulless brand. Its great he's standing up for developers, the issue is with the top management particularly Phil who's not been able to deliver. Blackley knows all too well the issue of a distracting goal that was always imposed on Xbox because he felt this pressure from inception so for him this is quite personal. Trying to kill the Xbox brand and replace it with some adhoc MS gaming play anywhere is where things are going. Its all a step towards killing off Xbox and becoming a third party developer. I wish MS would be forced to sell Activision honestly.

well tbh I am still excited at what MS is going to do in the future, just not regarding the Xbox 'cos the message is so confusing I dont know what to expect. It's been almost 10 years ever since I touched my last console, the XB1 fat -the Xbox was also my first in early 2005-. Blackley made the original Xbox a hybrid, not totally the kind of hybrid I like but still a solid console PC.

I think Blackley is right in defending Sarah Bond. I feel sorry for Sarah Bond because they sent her straight to the slaughterhouse, here the one who should have shown his face is the boss, Phil.

The community sent him a nuclear blast already. He knows he can't hide on the intennet.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788917783129899328

 

[iroboto]

Alanah covers what’s wrong with the industry and why this continues to happen.
I have largely bit my tongue reading the responses here, largely waiting for the hate train to calm and waited for exactly this type of video to explain how the industry works versus how you guys thinks it works. Some people going as far to say that MS will tank Sony or the games industry due to buying up and closing studios or some shit.

I have many times talked about these topics before, in various threads. Talking about how everything fights for your time. Talking about how live service and forever title games are the most profitable games to own. Etc.

Anyway, she’s covers this succinctly and this should be required watching if you want to actually understand the industry challenges at large and why both MS and Sony and others continue to change to adapt to the industry.

This was just never a thing in the past. We didn’t have forever games dominating play time like they do now. And if you’ve never shipped a game that had nearly 0 sales despite investing hundreds or thousands of hours to build it, what exactly do you know about how hard it is to have a breakout hit and survive. How many indie studios are shut down regularly after releasing just 1 title. You just don’t want to do it again.

I get there is a serious hate towards Xbox. But people are ignoring that Sony is equally suffering and are using the exact same strategies as MS, just different moves. So watch. Game pass isn’t the issue. If you want to save games, buy the ones you want to save. But what’s killing the industry are the same forever games at the top. They require potato machines to play, they cost nothing to own, and they monopolize all your time with season passes that keep you fomo’d to keep playing. That’s why everything else is dying, that’s why hardware is dying.
Until there is a forever game that actually requires next generation hardware, the need for power is dwindled.

Make a forever game with potato requirements and you have the largest chance to succeed. The general lack of discussion here around risk and reward was largely concerning to see. So much of the discussion rooted around emotion and not the root cause to make decisions that ultimately are aligned to appeasing shareholders. You might think that’s stupid, you may think they are greedy. But leadership roles are designed to be largely paid in shares so that their interest is aligned with shareholders and shareholder value is the most important metric to maximize.

If I paid you only in shares and doing the right thing means you’re shares are worth 10% less each quarter versus doing whats wrong but having that share price not move or go up, what would you do?

Firstly, you wouldn’t be In a leadership position for long because the rest of leadership is paid in shares so you’re out if you keep tanking the stock. Secondly, once you’re fired your shares are worth so much less to sell, you basically worked for free.

This idea that Xbox is the bad guy and that Sony is the good guy is just so childish. They are governed with the same rules, the only separation being that Sony has more margin to lose due to being the overwhelming leader in the industry. If the positions were reversed for sure Sony would be closing studios.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788870272805650756

x.com

x.com

Moon studios talks a lot of shit. If MS didn’t promote and drive their two titles to the top, does ge really think he would have made enough cash and have enough exposure to make a sequel and another game following that on his own?

Common. The hubris on Tom.

 

[rntongo]

well tbh I am still excited at what MS is going to do in the future, just not regarding the Xbox 'cos the message is so confusing I dont know what to expect. It's been almost 10 years ever since I touched my last console, the XB1 fat -the Xbox was also my first in early 2005-. Blackley made the original Xbox a hybrid, not totally the kind of hybrid I like but still a solid console PC.

A wise man once said the medium is the message. The confusion is deliberate to hide the true direction which is the end of Xbox. There isn't going to be an Xbox in the near future. Phil doesnt like Xbox, doesnt like consoles, doesnt care. On the other hand, I can see why for you things are still good because you primarily game on the PC, but the console market is still going to be around for at least the next decade, even with real 5G networks ubiquitous there will be reason to have your own hw at home which acts as your dedicated gaming server in the form of a console. The benefits of a fixed system will always be self evident to software engineers as well so the idea isn't going away. Its Xbox that may go away and Sony+Nintendo are going to take over that gap in the market as well as exploit this to increase their presence on PC(where MS plans on concentrating). The idea Phil is pushing is to play anywhere through the web using remote servers belonging to MS. You subscribe to MS gaming and you can play in your browser.

I think Blackley is right in defending Sarah Bond. I feel sorry for Sarah Bond because they sent her straight to the slaughterhouse, here the one who should have shown his face is the boss, Phil.

The community sent him a nuclear blast already. He knows he can't hide on the intennet.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788917783129899328

Yes thankfully the community has her back because Phil should have been the one to answer those questions. Blackley has always been a class act to be honest. It explains why the Xbox and Xbox 360 were very compelling products.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@iroboto Don't know if I think Alanah's video is very good. The "quality" of the game does matter, depending on what she means. If she means zero bugs, high production value then she's right. If she means a game being fun or not, then she's dead wrong. In general games that succeed are fun to play. That's why we have forever games. No one is being coerced into playing them. The forever games are fun to play. Counter-Strike is a forever game, maybe the most forever game, yet it didn't stop Rainbow 6 Siege and Valorant from coming along and also seemingly becoming forever games. The unfortunate reality is that most games that come along are not fun, and they'll fail.

Redfall sucked, and it basically tanked the studio. That makes sense. The one that doesn't make sense is Tango, because their game was well reviewed, fun and unique, and successful by all of the metrics Microsoft set out. Now, she could be right in that single playthrough games are lower reward for the same risk, because there's no continual revenue generation. What I don't understand is how producing a less diverse portfolio of games is a better risk reward proposition. Most companies diversify so they can ride out rough patches. Relying on a few tentpole products to float a company fails if that tentpole collapses. Microsoft should know this, because they relied on Halo until it became a worn out garbage product that they can't rely on anymore. That's why they went out to buy all of these studios in the first place. The whole point was to make more games, have game releases every quarter for steady revenue so they don't have gaps in their lineup and quarters with collapsing revenue. Now if they're going back to cutting it down to a small group of reliable earners, if one of those earners fail they'll suddenly have quarterly revenue problems. It doesn't make sense to me.

There are probably too many games, so inevitably there will be failures. I think it's very hard to guarantee that games will be fun, which is why it's better to hedge bets by making many games instead of a few. What these big publishers still don't seem to understand is what gamers actually play. They'll make a $150 million dollar game with seemlingly no recognition that the game is dead on the vine. They seem to be operating under the sunk cost fallacy. They really need to figure out how to test game concepts. There are tons of game studios that don't even prototype their games. They just come up with concepts and go into full production without even a basic working model that people can play around with and tweak the game loops.

People really don't care about graphics and cutscenes that much anymore. Just attempt to make something fun, and if you have a studio that has the rare magic to make a fun game, don't close them down.

 

[rntongo]

Alanah covers what’s wrong with the industry and why this continues to happen.
I have largely bit my tongue reading the responses here, largely waiting for the hate train to calm and waited for exactly this type of video to explain how the industry works versus how you guys thinks it works. Some people going as far to say that MS will tank Sony or the games industry due to buying up and closing studios or some shit.

I have many times talked about these topics before, in various threads. Talking about how everything fights for your time. Talking about how live service and forever title games are the most profitable games to own. Etc.

Anyway, she’s covers this succinctly and this should be required watching if you want to actually understand the industry challenges at large and why both MS and Sony and others continue to change to adapt to the industry.

This was just never a thing in the past. We didn’t have forever games dominating play time like they do now. And if you’ve never shipped a game that had nearly 0 sales despite investing hundreds or thousands of hours to build it, what exactly do you know about how hard it is to have a breakout hit and survive. How many indie studios are shut down regularly after releasing just 1 title. You just don’t want to do it again.

I get there is a serious hate towards Xbox. But people are ignoring that Sony is equally suffering and are using the exact same strategies as MS, just different moves. So watch. Game pass isn’t the issue. If you want to save games, buy the ones you want to save. But what’s killing the industry are the same forever games at the top. They require potato machines to play, they cost nothing to own, and they monopolize all your time with season passes that keep you fomo’d to keep playing. That’s why everything else is dying, that’s why hardware is dying.
Until there is a forever game that actually requires next generation hardware, the need for power is dwindled.

Make a forever game with potato requirements and you have the largest chance to succeed. The general lack of discussion here around risk and reward was largely concerning to see. So much of the discussion rooted around emotion and not that people need to make decisions that ultimately are aligned to appeasing shareholders. You might think that’s stupid. Clearly, but leadership roles are designed to be largely paid in shares so that their interest is aligned with shareholders and shareholder value is the most important metric to maximize.

If I paid you only in shares and doing the right thing means you’re shares are worth 10% less each quarter versus doing whats wrong but having that share price not move or go up, what would you do?

Firstly, you wouldn’t be In a leadership position for long because the rest of leadership is paid in shares so you’re out if you keep tanking the stock. Secondly, once you’re fired your shares are worth so much less to sell, you basically worked for free.

This idea that Xbox is the bad guy and that Sony is the good guy is just so childish. They are governed with the same rules, the only separation being that Sony has more margin to lose due to being the overwhelming leader in the industry. If the positions were reversed for sure Sony would be closing studios.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788870272805650756

x.com

x.com

Moon studios talks a lot of shit. If MS didn’t promote and drive their two titles to the top, does ge really think he would have made enough cash and have enough exposure to make a sequel and another game following that on his own?

Common. The hubris on Tom.

I watched the video and thanks for sharing it but respectfully I find it so spurious. Yes she may have worked in the game industry but her understanding of the financials behind these companies and what defines a commercially successful product to a shareholder are quite spurious at best. Equity Analysts always consider the quality of a product made by a company they may be covering and use different methods to ascertain this(scuttlebutt, data from the supply chain, sales, consumer reviews, etc). The work of this analysis is what primarily drives shareholder decisions. She equates quality to AAA one and done, yet quality could apply to live service titles as well or any product made by said company. As well there are industry wide headwinds in tech, in gaming in general, but these do not pose a threat to the intrinsic value of Sony or Nintendo for Qualitative and Quantitative reasons nor do they represent long term threats to Sony and Nintendo and to some extent Xbox as well.

The negative press and lackluster financial performance of Xbox is due to their continued failure to deliver, mixed messaging, unclear growth paths, etc, all internal problems possibly exacerbated by temporary industry head winds but not the cause. All this is considered by Equity Researchers who cover gaming divisions of these companies, and quality matters especially when it comes to software. Using industry wide headwinds as some sort of axiom is devoid of good analysis. For example Capcom is raking in money by making high quality great console games across the board for example; Monster Hunter, SF6, Remasters of Resident evil, Dragons Dogma, etc. 11 years of consecutive annual growth in revenue despite temporary industry headwinds all while profiting from AAA titles as well as great GaaS titles like Monster Hunter and single player narratives like Dragon's Dogma. So the forever games succeeding at the top have a quality of their own, as well as the successful AAA titles such as Elden Ring.

There's no question about whether Sony or Nintendo will exist in the next 10 years, they will and they'll still be selling fixed hw and adapting to the industry. But Xbox may not even survive the next 5 if things continue as they are at the moment, due to their own internal weaknesses within the division. If for example they use the Activision acquisition anti competitively, they could be forced to sell it by regulators and lose that financial lifeline. Time will tell but looking at a drop in console sales in a quarter and concluding its the end of the whole console industry isnt accurate imho. Its just temporary headwinds and a need to improve the quality of titles, SDLC and possibly increase the reach of titles as well as diverse the portfolio of types of titles. But quality still matters, great games still matter, AAA one and done still matters, GaaS still matters, small indie titles still matter etc.

 

[iroboto]

Don't know if I think Alanah's video is very good. The "quality" of the game does matter, depending on what she means. If she means zero bugs, high production value then she's right. If she means a game being fun or not, then she's dead wrong

I think she's referring to actually fun games that just never get a sequel or flat out doesn't hit goals and then are dead. There's a large list of AAA titles, that fit that description. The entire RTS genre straight up bellied up, and those were all great games. XCOM titles are great. Titanfall 1 and 2 are great, but they died. Battlefield is dead. Alan Wake II is amazing, as was Alan Wake 1, and they are both complete flops. Deathloop is great, dead. Disco Elysium, dead. So much of Obsidian's games, like Pillars 2, dead. There's a huge list of incredible games that honestly don't make it. There's probably a gigantic list of first party titles that failed to meet its sales targets as well.

There are probably too many games, so inevitably there will be failures. I think it's very hard to guarantee that games will be fun, which is why it's better to hedge bets by making many games instead of a few. What these big publishers still don't seem to understand is what gamers actually play. They'll make a $150 million dollar game with seemlingly no recognition that the game is dead on the vine. They seem to be operating under the sunk cost fallacy. They really need to figure out how to test game concepts. There are tons of game studios that don't even prototype their games. They just come up with concepts and go into full production without even a basic working model that people can play around with and tweak the game loops.

Yup, that's why kickstarter games became so prolifically popular for games at one point in time, they drafted a concept, get funded and limit the scope to the budget. But typically those never get large enough to become AAA titles.
So that's why it's not a model that works for platform holders and AAA studios. I mean, I guess they could try it out, but I dunno.