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.
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.
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.
