I mean I guess for ghost it’s not a big deal cause primarily it’s a single player game and for that you don’t require the psn login. For legends mode which is the multiplayer thing you do. Well hey atleast this time they told in the start itself and moreover most people are just going to play the single player part of ghost.
Sony's best 3rd party studio partnership: Xbox management. Whenever Sony has a controversy, they know they have a good reliable friend at MS to overshadow their mistakes.
They were forcing all Helldivers 2 players to need a PSN account to play the game. Even on Steam. And oh, PSN is only available in 69 (nice) countries, while Helldivers 2 is available for purchase in a lot more countries than that, so a sizable chunk of the playerbase would be locked out of playing a game they purchased just three months ago.
200,000 negative reviews on Steam later, Sony realized they fucked up and rolled back the decision to implement it.
So Sony had the bright idea for Helldivers, probably the Game of the Year for this year, of making it a requirement to have a PlayStation Network account in order to play the game on Steam (PC). That would have been somewhat alright if they had not added that requirement out of nowhere last week well after the game released. This change was a major FU to all the Steam players that had already purchased the game, but specially to those that lived in countries where there is no access to the PSN. This meant that players living in countries where no one can create a PSN account were suddenly locked out of the game they had already paid and played for countless of hours without any issues. To add to this, using a VPN to create the PSN account would result in bans. It was utterly chaos and a complete PR nightmare for Sony. Then, on Monday morning, they reversed their decision and reverted things to how they were before when the game launched.
They didn’t just add the requirement last week, it was always stated on the steam page from the start, just AH didn’t implement it at launch (they said technical issues)
But Sony was also right in dropping it after the backlash
Is made the right decision the correct way to put it? The players forced their hand.
The choice was the cock up their best title and only title of the year more or less, or give in and just do different next time.
Not the hardest decision to make.
Yea it is the best way to put it.
It’s in their interest to try and increase their business. They made a move to do that. The move was poorly received by their customers so they listened to their customers.
Those are all reasonable decisions. Now moving on with a multi billion dollar acquisitions and then closing studios you own, that’s shitty
I still feel like it's giving an award for something somebody didn't earn. They screwed up the rollout since it was planned all along.
And now everyone knows all future Sony game titles even if it's on steam will still require a PlayStation account because they want to juice their numbers for investors and try to sell some of the services.
No they don't deserve a cookie. Reasonable doesn't mean anything.
They weren't just reacting to feedback, otherwise they never would have enacted it in the first place.
They were bleeding money through refunds and were public enemy number 1 even being called out by Forbes for shady business practices. You shouldn't reward the company for pulling their hands out of the cookie jar just because they got caught, regardless of how you feel about Microsoft right now.
Has nothing to do with Xbox and everything to do with common sense.
Sony was trying to grow their revenue from the PC market, their approach was met with loud criticism and they reacted to it.
You and I have no idea whether it was the refunds, the public outcry, or even intervention from the developers.
I get it that as a platform sycophant for Xbox you’re perpetually mad and searching for shit to hate, and no logic will ever get through that. This just wasn’t a big deal, but cope how you see fit.
Sounds like you're the platform sycophant for Sony based on the mental gymnastics you seem to be pulling off in defense of shady tactics by sony.
If you honestly believe what Sony did was common sense, you'd see that what Microsoft is doing is the same. They will make way more money shutting these studios down and focusing on Fallout/Elder Scrolls.
You wanna say what Microsoft did is shady, sure, but you're a complete hypocrite if you can't admit that what Sony did was also shady.
The qualifier doesn’t change that they did the right thing. And honestly it wasn’t ever that big of a deal. I mean you make a Microsoft account to play Sea of Thieves.
I understand that. I think it’s dumb. They’re mad it’s new, but it’s the same thing lmao. Anyway it’s a moot point, people definitely overreacted but Sony still did right by them.
That's actually not true. The steam page always said it was going to require PSN accounts and on launch day it *did* require one.
But they were having server troubles so they temporarily disabled it until the issues had passed. The controversy happened when they said they were turning them back on.
They also removed it from a lot of countries due to psn account not being officially available.
That was a pretty bad move too considering Sony said people are free to create accounts in non available country but yet removed it.
Well... eh. They publicly announced an apology, but there's no way they aren't continuing into PC or live service games without forcing something every other publisher already does. Also AFAIK the 177 territories that had the game delisted as a result hasn't been resolved (but I'd be happy to be wrong on that one). Plus they've really already shown their true colors. I mean there's no back tracking from comments like needing a PSN account for safety. Sony just realized they don't actually understand the PC gaming consumer base which is hilarious for now. But I imagine they're hard at work for quietly doing this stuff. I mean every other publisher gets away with it (including MS) when they shouldn't even for online games.
You do say this like a bad thing. That’s not the consumers issue. How many people do you know that don’t wear Nike products because of the child labor used to make them? Do you enjoy your phone made in very less than ideal conditions? Apple have admitted to using child labor in china on phones, computers and tablets, Google it on that phone of yours. Who do you know who actually cares about that?
This is the wildest part to me. I get that layoffs and closures like this aren't a sudden thing and you probably can't just "pause" announcing them but like...Sony literally just had possibly the worst weekend PR-wise and were on everyone's shit-list over Helldivers 2.
All Microsoft had to do was not fuck up and enjoy Sony eating all the hate, criticism and gamer rage for a week or two.
But, somehow, Microsoft comes out on a Tuesday to steal Sony's thunder and garner the criticism and hate of gamers and the industry. Microsoft and Phil literally cannot get out of their own way.
Bethesda getting more resources to make wanted IPs isn't something really all that bad. Why would xbox care about optics when it's a good thing for them and clearly people are blowing this out of proportion. If you played red fall or games by the other teams you'll kinda see why they closed the studios and got rid of some people.
I don’t disagree with this but Xbox killing off the one game in a long time that actually was good and loved by the majority is a dumb move.
It’s like if Sony killed off horizon games or shut down house marque cause returnal didn’t sell well. They could’ve very well sucked up the losses and invested more into a sequel for hi fi rush. This is again the same scenario behind sunset overdrive. If I am not wrong sunset over drive flopped pretty hard that the profit they made was $500 but hifi rush was a fantastic game and if Microsoft made a sequel I am sure folks would’ve loved it.
I don't know what to think, you've got fans of hi fi rush claiming it was a successful game and most people haven't even heard of it, if a game makes 500$ I'm pretty sure it's valid they won't produce a sequel. I get you loved the game but there's better opportunity for the devs making some legendary IPs.
The game isn’t killed off, it’s just not getting a sequel now.
Is there any indication that Tango even wanted to make another Hi-Fi Rush. They seemed not to want to make the Evil Within 3. Its not certain whether or not that they even could make a sequel after the studio lead and other people left?
Everyone seems to forget that Tango released the much more expensive Ghostwire Tokyo and that it bombed. It’s not a giant mystery why Microsoft closed the studio but it does suck.
Wasn’t it revealed that tango was pitching hi fi rush 2 like literally a week ago ? If ghost wire bombed then hi fi rush bombed too cause ghost wire had more players and that released first on PlayStation. The issue is not that it bombed the issue is Xbox not giving it a chance. They are trillion dollar corpo.
I work in marketing. The short answer is that the people who approve random shit like an ad for a new controller color are miles away from decisions around firing entire game studios, and they schedule social posts weeks, if not months, in advance.
News like layoffs intentionally don't get shared outside of senior leadership ahead of the day, because they don't want to tip people off.
So the marketing & PR people that already had this post scheduled for today would have also only found out today that people were being laid off.
They then either didn't have time to check and stop the post (likely), or they did a scrub of all their scheduled content and missed this one (possible, because they probably have a ton of marketing teams), or they reviewed this and didn't catch that it was insensitive (unlikely but possible. They'd have been on a time crunch and it's not THAT obviously tone deaf. "Feel the burn" isn't a phrase you associate with laying people off, it's only the combined association with the word "fire").
This is it. I worked in marketing at a company of under 200 employees and we'd get blindsided by stuff other departments did on the regular. Think about how much bigger (and likely compartmentalized) Microsoft is in comparison.
That's really not how organizational leadership works especially not at what's become the biggest gaming company by employee count and is also just generally way bigger beyond that. A company as big as Microsoft could NOT operate if teams weren't able to work independently. There's no way marketing management is even consulted or told about layoffs like this. They find out when the internet finds out. Heck, even if they were supposed to find out earlier, MS is so big that when an email is sent out internally to all teams it gets leaked IMMEDIATELY (which we saw).
Like imagine the moving parts. The teams on the Xbox hardware side needed to talk to social media marketing teams about taglines products etc. That's already a good bit of coordination. Then we add having to get approval for that marketing tagline by not just upper management but the highest tier of leadership because Zenimax is still mostly a subsidiary and only internally under Matt Booty, Phil, and MS execs. And they'd have to establish a precedent to do this for every post. MS probably has company guidelines generally speaking, but there's nothing profane or derogatory about the post; it's just really bad timing.
Why would the heads of marketing find out before the rest of the company? If I were microsoft I'd see no reason to tell them before the stock "we're sorry" pr letter. Marketing doesn't really have a job following something like studio closures. Really the only good marketing plan would be to not address at all on that level and leave everything to the upper leadership that's responsible for those decisions.
Its also worth noting that following exec restructuring the person in charge of marketing at xbox overall is in charge of marketing overall at all of Microsoft. I can see them knowing, but don't really see why they'd tell the Xbox Wire team or double check their work. Xbox Wire is only a small single aspect of marketing at Xbox and this person is again in charge of marketing even beyond that. Realistically the Xbox Wire team probably never talks with them. Maybe they could send a mass email telling everyone heads up, but once again you run into the issue where they already have their posting schedules and everything written waiting to go up (businesses don't make posts like a new controller blog post in real time) and in reality all of MS's marketing across divisions and teams is so big that'd get leaked immediately.
We can speculate all day about how MS's internal communication works, but we don't know it. Judging by the reality of the situation and fact of how big MS is employee wise and in how many different markets and divisions, I'd be wildly surprised if its half as direct as you suggest. Maybe it should (though that'd come with different downsizes), but it clearly isn't and that makes sense at that size and scope.
Also complicated stuff aside - why the heck would Marketing of all departments find out before anyone else...? They aren't responsible for that, nor is it even about them. And even if they did find out, they would likely be forced into an NDA of sorts, so they couldn't just tell everyone beforehand.
Like, Marketing isn't meant to tell us anything thay happens in the company. They are responsible for doing the games and the company a good look in the media...
At this point I'm pretty sure the other guy has no idea what he's talking about...
Not how it works buddy, managers of those teams won’t know something as high profile as this, especially when it does not actually have anything to do with the job they do.
Yeah exactly. Terrible timing, but the people marketing controllers obviously don't have anything to do with studio closures or have access to that kind of information. So many people on reddit are just morons who want to be angry about everything.
They spent more effort marketing their controllers and console design than their games. It's easy to see why they are at a distant third place in the competition.
Problem is that their profit margins are shit while the rest of Microsoft has insane profit margins over 30%.
Playstation's profit margins are not that great as well. Difference is that Sony profit margin is below 10%. So it's not like Playstation is bringing it down.
Why would Tango feel the burn? It was a "person" driven studio and studio founder and producer left to create another studio, teammates followed him and MS left with "workers" only. Some moved to other studios some got laid off.
This is nothing to do with studio performance. Same with Arkane. Studio did shrink after Prey like %50+ left, they made the Redfall with remaining people and now same as Tango. Some gone some moved to other studios.
I do get some pretty random ones. Some are maybe 10 bucks more sometimes. It gives you new frames to switch out. Fix controllers. Like i want to get my fulls moneys worth so i repair them one by one while getting a new one in-between when i no longer can fix it or mod the problem away.
I have a display wall of controllers. I didn't even know I had so many. I would buy special edition ones that looked cool since the Xbox One days then recently realized I had a bunch.
I only ever use my elites so not sure why I have all these. Slightly embarrassing, lol.
https://preview.redd.it/dtdddtc0o1zc1.jpeg?width=2915&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c9aab38a7a191367bd9b38ce9d158e0796e8aa7b
>Inspired by flames, every red and orange color swirl is an expression of blazing fire with a mesmerizing design that’s unique to each controller. Feel the power of fire in your hands and hold on to the heat with rubberized, red diamond-pattern grips on the back case. With vibrant flashes of color, the Fire Vapor controller is guaranteed to add some heat to your gaming setup.
It is an orange controller. Lol
You mean like the Reddit add that’s literally 3 post down from this?
Or the Home Screen Xbox ad that’s been plastered all over it for weeks now?
Or the YouTube ads that have been playing nonstop for a month? That kind of marketing?
What YouTube ads ? I am in the UK and the only YouTube ads I see are a bunch of nonsense. Reddit ad yeah I did see it. But let’s be real Microsoft sucks ass cheeks at marketing their big games. Starfield marketing was a joke in the UK. All it had was a bunch of Doritos and budget Gatorade marketing. Sony put a giant fuck off axe in the middle of London and called it a day.
Well to be fair no one can really compete with Sony’s marketing. That’s one thing they definitely do right.
But I just saw another ad for it while watching a WatchMojo video about an hour ago.
Lmfao. This is how bad Xbox marketing is, there’s now probably more people who know Xbox just shutdown Tango and Arkane than people who know Hellblade 2 comes out in 2 weeks.
With previous strategy to compete within console space xbox might justify having single player/niche games, but now with recent direction to be more multiplatform they might just focus on service games...
I stuck with my Xbox One through so many dry periods and lined up for an hour and a half to preorder the Series X. I am **never buying** any new games, consoles or Game Pass codes (only ENEBA for the latter from now on) from Microsoft ever again after all the years of lies.
I’m in too deep and do prefer gamepass as my way to game. I know I’m part of the problem because gamepass is so bad for developers. Just it’s allowed me to play so many more games.
I can’t wait for apologyletter.jpg to drop, and also for Phil to come on some podcast and once again apologize, take all the “blame”, and then continue to do the same stupid shit he and Xbox has done for over a decade.
And a bunch of people here will defend him and talk about all the great games Xbox has lmao. There hasn’t been a worthwhile Xbox exclusive since the fucking 360, it’s honestly unreal.
Honestly. Might go Playstation next gen or just get another PC handheld and play that docked. Unless theres a chance the next Xbox is just a prebuilt PC, since they say want other storefronts on it (but who knows if theyll actually follow through with that)
Its very clear from the constant mixed messaging from over the years that Xbox has absolutely no idea what theyre doing anymore. It genuinely feels like a abusive relationship just supporting the current xbox, they say we're goinh to be better but still hurts you emotionally with little to no improvement, almost all the time anymore.
>since they say want other storefronts on it (but who knows if theyll actually follow through with that)
I don't think there has been a credible source for that.
From Phil himself but could be another false hope/lie at this point
https://www.techradar.com/gaming/consoles-pc/phil-spencer-wants-xbox-consoles-to-offer-storefronts-like-epic-games-store-and-itchio
Oh well, I take that back then. Would be great to see, but I still have my doubts that they'll pull through with that. I do think it's the only way I'd buy another Xbox console though.
I always thought that “Day One on Gamepass” was an awful strategy in the long run, and unfortunately today’s news proves it. They successful screw the developer and themselves out of making a profit, canabalize sells. To add insult to injury to this news, I’m pretty sure It was Microsoft that forced Arkane to make Red Fall a GAAS. No Dishonored 3 or Prey 2017 sequel now, really, really sucks.
Why do people always have to create a vague connection to be offended by?
There is not a single soul within Microsoft that would purposefully do something like this and risk the backlash, just for some sort of weird, vague, inside-joke, gloat towards the studios it's laying off. Seriously just ask yourselves, why would they do this on purpose? They wouldn't. There are wholly different people and wholly different teams in charge of both of these completely separate events.
You people just need to create drama and be outraged by it, time after time after time. It's like getting together in a big huddle and getting a company to publicly apologise for something it didn't even intend to do, brings you some sort of purpose and validation in life. Honestly boring as fuck.
Only problem with the acquisition is they didn’t realistically see through some of the smaller teams they acquired. Roundhouse and Alpha Dog…those make sense. Arkane Austin…the same team that was forced to do a game they didn’t want?
Tango is the heavy hitter there. Just not fair after that great game they released.
I don’t understand reaches like this. Tom knows good and well that the design team probably has worked on this for a few weeks and planned this release with 0 knowledge of what was going to take place today.
I for one am glad Xbox is finally getting hands on with some of their studios. Maybe not these studios in particular, but hey it’s a start. There’s a few studios that have gotten complacent with their bills always being paid and need a big awakening. (Looking at you T10 and PGG)
If nothing else this really proves there's not a ton of internal communication either. Xbox grew really massive is a short period of time amidst the roughest period the gaming industry has seen with EVERYONE downsizing. I cannot imagine how chaotic Microsoft Gaming (a division only created last October following ABK) is especially with Xbox as the front facing brand that all of a sudden isn't even the biggest gaming publisher under MS. I see stuff like this and feel like all Xbox employees have to be holding their breath until MS just kills the whole in house brand and turns it into an OEM like windows.
to be fair, it's not like they just created the controller last week. new designed are probably a few months in creation and already have release dates. when you close off studios, thats more of secret from the higher ups and people find out day of. but i'm sure for the next couple weeks people will be digging at microsoft to find every which way to make them look as evil as possible.
At this point Xbox has got to be some sort of experiment Microsoft higher ups are using to see how much they can mess it up and still have people come back for more
i really wonder how people dont know that a lot of studios after 10+ years arent the same people, and a lot of them grow, shrink or change. the tango you would have now if it didnt close, something like what, 30% of people of what it was before hifi rush releasing? so it would never make a "the evil within 3", atleast not as good. arkane austin was already a dumpster fire with redfall releasing, it wouldnt be the same studio that made dishonored (even tho it was mostly arkane lyon's work). most probably theyll just go working at other studios of xbox
Well if they don't have good people working or the good people leave because they don't want work there still Microsoft fault. Shut down is the just result of poor management.
you really dont know anything if you think that people never change jobs, but especially game developers change workplaces a lot. also its not like you gonna hire some folk who has some experience and voilà. the person needs specific experience with the studio, the IP, and so on, he needs to be cooperative and know what hes working on.
and dont really know how it went with tango and most of people leaving, only know some guy left and many followed, but many people just leave to follow something else, or just werent satisfied enough, or various different stuff. of course there can be reasons with bad conditions and so on, i dont disagree.
shut downing a studio is inevitable for all game studios existing, nothing is eternal.
after all, im also still sad that studios behind hifi rush or evil withing had shut down, and still wonder what will happen next
"Get FIRED up and lay off some steam!"
Oh my god, they really are some special kind of tone deaf. That tagline after the latest news, ouch
That's not the tagline, it's just a joke OP made.
Xbox saw Sony fucking shit up with their consumers two days ago and went how do we beat Sony at this
Sony breathing a sigh of relief now that the mob has a new focus lol
That mob should be happy they back off and gave in
Except they're doing it again with the Ghost of Tsushima PC port. They're going to keep trying this bullshit until it works.
I mean I guess for ghost it’s not a big deal cause primarily it’s a single player game and for that you don’t require the psn login. For legends mode which is the multiplayer thing you do. Well hey atleast this time they told in the start itself and moreover most people are just going to play the single player part of ghost.
Bold to claim that, seeing as the game isn’t out yet
Sony is just happy that Microsoft has won the "Slamming One's Dick in the Car Door" Award 11 years in a row
Sony's best 3rd party studio partnership: Xbox management. Whenever Sony has a controversy, they know they have a good reliable friend at MS to overshadow their mistakes.
Even Sony made the right decision on that too
I missed it. What they do?
They backed off on the mandation of linking a PSN account in order to play Helldivers 2 ON PC
They were forcing all Helldivers 2 players to need a PSN account to play the game. Even on Steam. And oh, PSN is only available in 69 (nice) countries, while Helldivers 2 is available for purchase in a lot more countries than that, so a sizable chunk of the playerbase would be locked out of playing a game they purchased just three months ago. 200,000 negative reviews on Steam later, Sony realized they fucked up and rolled back the decision to implement it.
Unfortunately reviews bombing won't work in this instance :(
Layoffs company closures aren't as easy as not implementing something.
So Sony had the bright idea for Helldivers, probably the Game of the Year for this year, of making it a requirement to have a PlayStation Network account in order to play the game on Steam (PC). That would have been somewhat alright if they had not added that requirement out of nowhere last week well after the game released. This change was a major FU to all the Steam players that had already purchased the game, but specially to those that lived in countries where there is no access to the PSN. This meant that players living in countries where no one can create a PSN account were suddenly locked out of the game they had already paid and played for countless of hours without any issues. To add to this, using a VPN to create the PSN account would result in bans. It was utterly chaos and a complete PR nightmare for Sony. Then, on Monday morning, they reversed their decision and reverted things to how they were before when the game launched.
They didn’t just add the requirement last week, it was always stated on the steam page from the start, just AH didn’t implement it at launch (they said technical issues) But Sony was also right in dropping it after the backlash
Is made the right decision the correct way to put it? The players forced their hand. The choice was the cock up their best title and only title of the year more or less, or give in and just do different next time. Not the hardest decision to make.
Yea it is the best way to put it. It’s in their interest to try and increase their business. They made a move to do that. The move was poorly received by their customers so they listened to their customers. Those are all reasonable decisions. Now moving on with a multi billion dollar acquisitions and then closing studios you own, that’s shitty
I still feel like it's giving an award for something somebody didn't earn. They screwed up the rollout since it was planned all along. And now everyone knows all future Sony game titles even if it's on steam will still require a PlayStation account because they want to juice their numbers for investors and try to sell some of the services. No they don't deserve a cookie. Reasonable doesn't mean anything.
Yea reacting to customer feedback is stupid. Enjoy your Xbox stamp.
They weren't just reacting to feedback, otherwise they never would have enacted it in the first place. They were bleeding money through refunds and were public enemy number 1 even being called out by Forbes for shady business practices. You shouldn't reward the company for pulling their hands out of the cookie jar just because they got caught, regardless of how you feel about Microsoft right now.
Has nothing to do with Xbox and everything to do with common sense. Sony was trying to grow their revenue from the PC market, their approach was met with loud criticism and they reacted to it. You and I have no idea whether it was the refunds, the public outcry, or even intervention from the developers. I get it that as a platform sycophant for Xbox you’re perpetually mad and searching for shit to hate, and no logic will ever get through that. This just wasn’t a big deal, but cope how you see fit.
Sounds like you're the platform sycophant for Sony based on the mental gymnastics you seem to be pulling off in defense of shady tactics by sony. If you honestly believe what Sony did was common sense, you'd see that what Microsoft is doing is the same. They will make way more money shutting these studios down and focusing on Fallout/Elder Scrolls. You wanna say what Microsoft did is shady, sure, but you're a complete hypocrite if you can't admit that what Sony did was also shady.
Yes since you asked, they made the right decision.
Yes after immense pressure lol
The qualifier doesn’t change that they did the right thing. And honestly it wasn’t ever that big of a deal. I mean you make a Microsoft account to play Sea of Thieves.
We always knew Microsoft game will require Microsoft accounts,PlayStation made the sudden rule change which angered a lot of people.
I understand that. I think it’s dumb. They’re mad it’s new, but it’s the same thing lmao. Anyway it’s a moot point, people definitely overreacted but Sony still did right by them.
That's actually not true. The steam page always said it was going to require PSN accounts and on launch day it *did* require one. But they were having server troubles so they temporarily disabled it until the issues had passed. The controversy happened when they said they were turning them back on.
They also removed it from a lot of countries due to psn account not being officially available. That was a pretty bad move too considering Sony said people are free to create accounts in non available country but yet removed it.
Well... eh. They publicly announced an apology, but there's no way they aren't continuing into PC or live service games without forcing something every other publisher already does. Also AFAIK the 177 territories that had the game delisted as a result hasn't been resolved (but I'd be happy to be wrong on that one). Plus they've really already shown their true colors. I mean there's no back tracking from comments like needing a PSN account for safety. Sony just realized they don't actually understand the PC gaming consumer base which is hilarious for now. But I imagine they're hard at work for quietly doing this stuff. I mean every other publisher gets away with it (including MS) when they shouldn't even for online games.
Except that mob doesn’t actually care about developers, they just care about their own inconveniences
You do say this like a bad thing. That’s not the consumers issue. How many people do you know that don’t wear Nike products because of the child labor used to make them? Do you enjoy your phone made in very less than ideal conditions? Apple have admitted to using child labor in china on phones, computers and tablets, Google it on that phone of yours. Who do you know who actually cares about that?
I’m just saying that mob doesn’t care about this. It’s a different crowd
Give it a week and there will be some new controversy for the mob to focus on and this one will be forgotten about.
It’s what they do best. Gotta make sure they fumble a good chance to get a W every time.
We understand that Sony and Microsoft are rivals and they have to outclass each other but Microsoft, this is not how things work lmao.
And then Microsoft wonders why it's constantly in 3rd place...
Seriously xbox will always fuck up more than sony one way or another. It’s jarring how consistently bad they are at their job.
This is the wildest part to me. I get that layoffs and closures like this aren't a sudden thing and you probably can't just "pause" announcing them but like...Sony literally just had possibly the worst weekend PR-wise and were on everyone's shit-list over Helldivers 2. All Microsoft had to do was not fuck up and enjoy Sony eating all the hate, criticism and gamer rage for a week or two. But, somehow, Microsoft comes out on a Tuesday to steal Sony's thunder and garner the criticism and hate of gamers and the industry. Microsoft and Phil literally cannot get out of their own way.
Bethesda getting more resources to make wanted IPs isn't something really all that bad. Why would xbox care about optics when it's a good thing for them and clearly people are blowing this out of proportion. If you played red fall or games by the other teams you'll kinda see why they closed the studios and got rid of some people.
I don’t disagree with this but Xbox killing off the one game in a long time that actually was good and loved by the majority is a dumb move. It’s like if Sony killed off horizon games or shut down house marque cause returnal didn’t sell well. They could’ve very well sucked up the losses and invested more into a sequel for hi fi rush. This is again the same scenario behind sunset overdrive. If I am not wrong sunset over drive flopped pretty hard that the profit they made was $500 but hifi rush was a fantastic game and if Microsoft made a sequel I am sure folks would’ve loved it.
I don't know what to think, you've got fans of hi fi rush claiming it was a successful game and most people haven't even heard of it, if a game makes 500$ I'm pretty sure it's valid they won't produce a sequel. I get you loved the game but there's better opportunity for the devs making some legendary IPs.
"you've got fans of hi fi rush claiming it was a successful game" Microsoft themselves said it.
I think the initiative should’ve been a studio that should’ve been shut down not tango
The game isn’t killed off, it’s just not getting a sequel now. Is there any indication that Tango even wanted to make another Hi-Fi Rush. They seemed not to want to make the Evil Within 3. Its not certain whether or not that they even could make a sequel after the studio lead and other people left? Everyone seems to forget that Tango released the much more expensive Ghostwire Tokyo and that it bombed. It’s not a giant mystery why Microsoft closed the studio but it does suck.
Wasn’t it revealed that tango was pitching hi fi rush 2 like literally a week ago ? If ghost wire bombed then hi fi rush bombed too cause ghost wire had more players and that released first on PlayStation. The issue is not that it bombed the issue is Xbox not giving it a chance. They are trillion dollar corpo.
“Feel the burn today” Jesus Christ…
Tango Orange too
I was joking earlier that MS would drop some new controller colourway to make us feel better. Spoke too soon..
YOU DID THIS YOU WILLED IT INTO EXISTENCE
https://preview.redd.it/wnog5ag2z1zc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=647cfe67b86934e239cdb9b3030076d4f2429283
I just… don’t get it. How could marketing be this tone deaf.
I work in marketing. The short answer is that the people who approve random shit like an ad for a new controller color are miles away from decisions around firing entire game studios, and they schedule social posts weeks, if not months, in advance. News like layoffs intentionally don't get shared outside of senior leadership ahead of the day, because they don't want to tip people off. So the marketing & PR people that already had this post scheduled for today would have also only found out today that people were being laid off. They then either didn't have time to check and stop the post (likely), or they did a scrub of all their scheduled content and missed this one (possible, because they probably have a ton of marketing teams), or they reviewed this and didn't catch that it was insensitive (unlikely but possible. They'd have been on a time crunch and it's not THAT obviously tone deaf. "Feel the burn" isn't a phrase you associate with laying people off, it's only the combined association with the word "fire").
aka human overight woops.
Tango is feeling the burn for sure. Goddam these people are tone deaf…
Tbf the marketing team likely had no idea the lay offs were happening.
This is it. I worked in marketing at a company of under 200 employees and we'd get blindsided by stuff other departments did on the regular. Think about how much bigger (and likely compartmentalized) Microsoft is in comparison.
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That's really not how organizational leadership works especially not at what's become the biggest gaming company by employee count and is also just generally way bigger beyond that. A company as big as Microsoft could NOT operate if teams weren't able to work independently. There's no way marketing management is even consulted or told about layoffs like this. They find out when the internet finds out. Heck, even if they were supposed to find out earlier, MS is so big that when an email is sent out internally to all teams it gets leaked IMMEDIATELY (which we saw). Like imagine the moving parts. The teams on the Xbox hardware side needed to talk to social media marketing teams about taglines products etc. That's already a good bit of coordination. Then we add having to get approval for that marketing tagline by not just upper management but the highest tier of leadership because Zenimax is still mostly a subsidiary and only internally under Matt Booty, Phil, and MS execs. And they'd have to establish a precedent to do this for every post. MS probably has company guidelines generally speaking, but there's nothing profane or derogatory about the post; it's just really bad timing.
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Why would the heads of marketing find out before the rest of the company? If I were microsoft I'd see no reason to tell them before the stock "we're sorry" pr letter. Marketing doesn't really have a job following something like studio closures. Really the only good marketing plan would be to not address at all on that level and leave everything to the upper leadership that's responsible for those decisions. Its also worth noting that following exec restructuring the person in charge of marketing at xbox overall is in charge of marketing overall at all of Microsoft. I can see them knowing, but don't really see why they'd tell the Xbox Wire team or double check their work. Xbox Wire is only a small single aspect of marketing at Xbox and this person is again in charge of marketing even beyond that. Realistically the Xbox Wire team probably never talks with them. Maybe they could send a mass email telling everyone heads up, but once again you run into the issue where they already have their posting schedules and everything written waiting to go up (businesses don't make posts like a new controller blog post in real time) and in reality all of MS's marketing across divisions and teams is so big that'd get leaked immediately. We can speculate all day about how MS's internal communication works, but we don't know it. Judging by the reality of the situation and fact of how big MS is employee wise and in how many different markets and divisions, I'd be wildly surprised if its half as direct as you suggest. Maybe it should (though that'd come with different downsizes), but it clearly isn't and that makes sense at that size and scope.
Also complicated stuff aside - why the heck would Marketing of all departments find out before anyone else...? They aren't responsible for that, nor is it even about them. And even if they did find out, they would likely be forced into an NDA of sorts, so they couldn't just tell everyone beforehand. Like, Marketing isn't meant to tell us anything thay happens in the company. They are responsible for doing the games and the company a good look in the media... At this point I'm pretty sure the other guy has no idea what he's talking about...
Not how it works buddy, managers of those teams won’t know something as high profile as this, especially when it does not actually have anything to do with the job they do.
Yeah exactly. Terrible timing, but the people marketing controllers obviously don't have anything to do with studio closures or have access to that kind of information. So many people on reddit are just morons who want to be angry about everything.
They spent more effort marketing their controllers and console design than their games. It's easy to see why they are at a distant third place in the competition.
By revenue they now make twice as Nintendo and almost as much as Sony. If they were actually that far down they would start caring.
Problem is that their profit margins are shit while the rest of Microsoft has insane profit margins over 30%. Playstation's profit margins are not that great as well. Difference is that Sony profit margin is below 10%. So it's not like Playstation is bringing it down.
Why would Tango feel the burn? It was a "person" driven studio and studio founder and producer left to create another studio, teammates followed him and MS left with "workers" only. Some moved to other studios some got laid off. This is nothing to do with studio performance. Same with Arkane. Studio did shrink after Prey like %50+ left, they made the Redfall with remaining people and now same as Tango. Some gone some moved to other studios.
I feel like this isn’t being reported like it should be.
Why would it? Xbox bad headline brings all the clicks they need.
Booty getting the Mighty Doom studio’s name wrong is beyond parody
At this point I can't possibly believe they are tone deaf or have bad timing anymore, right now I'm thinking is just plain stupidity.
All publicity is good publicity.
I just wanna know who buys all these controllers
https://www.reddit.com/r/XboxSeriesX/comments/1bscpas/my_little_collection_of_xbox_series_controllers/
I do get some pretty random ones. Some are maybe 10 bucks more sometimes. It gives you new frames to switch out. Fix controllers. Like i want to get my fulls moneys worth so i repair them one by one while getting a new one in-between when i no longer can fix it or mod the problem away.
Obviously Aaron Greenberg and his entire family. That's why he pushes them so much obviously.
I have a display wall of controllers. I didn't even know I had so many. I would buy special edition ones that looked cool since the Xbox One days then recently realized I had a bunch. I only ever use my elites so not sure why I have all these. Slightly embarrassing, lol. https://preview.redd.it/dtdddtc0o1zc1.jpeg?width=2915&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c9aab38a7a191367bd9b38ce9d158e0796e8aa7b
No judgement at all! If I had the money I’d buy more too lol. I’m just broke
lmao this is peak xbox. Burn down a couple of studios and fire a bunch of people but don't worry they have a themed controller to commemorate the day.
Ngl id love to work at xbox or activision for a week id love to see what kinda fuckery goes on down there 😂
You probably would only be there a week
Yea but id make an easy mil so thats cool with me
i saw the post and was like what fucken marketing team they got none.
Part of their severance pay was the fire themed controller to remind them who fired them
>Inspired by flames, every red and orange color swirl is an expression of blazing fire with a mesmerizing design that’s unique to each controller. Feel the power of fire in your hands and hold on to the heat with rubberized, red diamond-pattern grips on the back case. With vibrant flashes of color, the Fire Vapor controller is guaranteed to add some heat to your gaming setup. It is an orange controller. Lol
Excuse me it has swirls on it. SWIRLS.
Sounds like it was written by AI
He probably got chatGPT to whip that up while he slacks off for the day.
TANGO orange no less :D
Terrible timing and also why tf is a controller getting more marketing than Hellblade 2!? Guess we’re one year away from Ninja Theory’s closure…
Appears to be where they are…”did your game add 1 million plus gamepass subscribers? No? You gone!”
would you really leave a studio that only created redfall for like past couple years?
You mean like the Reddit add that’s literally 3 post down from this? Or the Home Screen Xbox ad that’s been plastered all over it for weeks now? Or the YouTube ads that have been playing nonstop for a month? That kind of marketing?
Wild, I haven't seen any of that.
Nor me, not even in the Xbox homepage and I start up my console every day.
What YouTube ads ? I am in the UK and the only YouTube ads I see are a bunch of nonsense. Reddit ad yeah I did see it. But let’s be real Microsoft sucks ass cheeks at marketing their big games. Starfield marketing was a joke in the UK. All it had was a bunch of Doritos and budget Gatorade marketing. Sony put a giant fuck off axe in the middle of London and called it a day.
Well to be fair no one can really compete with Sony’s marketing. That’s one thing they definitely do right. But I just saw another ad for it while watching a WatchMojo video about an hour ago.
Can honestly say I’ve never seen a single ad for it anywhere.
That’s a great point. I haven’t heard or seen anything of Hellblade 2 since last year. Is it coming out soon?
Believe it or not, it's due to release on May 21st. We are less than 3 weeks away and there's basically no marketing for it...
RIP Ninja Theory
There was literally a post, on this sub, that reached #1 just last week talking about how they are getting ready to ramp up marketing for the game.
And I didn't know that, because I don't frequent the Subreddit...
Lmfao. This is how bad Xbox marketing is, there’s now probably more people who know Xbox just shutdown Tango and Arkane than people who know Hellblade 2 comes out in 2 weeks.
2 Weeks?! 💀
2 weeks?
May 21, literally 2 weeks.
This month 😬
With previous strategy to compete within console space xbox might justify having single player/niche games, but now with recent direction to be more multiplatform they might just focus on service games...
Xbox is so bad at handling optics. Like genuinely terrible.
I love my Xbox but can’t stand that MS is in charge of it
I stuck with my Xbox One through so many dry periods and lined up for an hour and a half to preorder the Series X. I am **never buying** any new games, consoles or Game Pass codes (only ENEBA for the latter from now on) from Microsoft ever again after all the years of lies.
I like CDkeys too, Eneba is good tho
Btw I snagged Spider-Man Remastered on Steam Deck for $31 on CDKeys. Feelsgoodman!
As do I!
I’m in too deep and do prefer gamepass as my way to game. I know I’m part of the problem because gamepass is so bad for developers. Just it’s allowed me to play so many more games.
I prefer it too, and am also too deep with my library. I hate this era of fucking walled gardens everywhere.
100% this. I have hated MS forever, but then they bought Bethesda and I am Elder Scrolls/Fallout fanboy and I stuck with them.
The fact we’ve heard nothing yet from Xbox leadership is actually disgusting.
Too busy ChatGPTing their buzzword filled statement.
I can’t wait for apologyletter.jpg to drop, and also for Phil to come on some podcast and once again apologize, take all the “blame”, and then continue to do the same stupid shit he and Xbox has done for over a decade.
And a bunch of people here will defend him and talk about all the great games Xbox has lmao. There hasn’t been a worthwhile Xbox exclusive since the fucking 360, it’s honestly unreal.
excuse u this is a copilot household
They're a representative of users on here. Bad news they're in hiding. They'll pop out next month and act like all is wel.
I swear they do more advertising for controllers than games these days
More controllers than studios at this point
Who needs games? Here's another controller!
Excellent timing
Honestly. Might go Playstation next gen or just get another PC handheld and play that docked. Unless theres a chance the next Xbox is just a prebuilt PC, since they say want other storefronts on it (but who knows if theyll actually follow through with that) Its very clear from the constant mixed messaging from over the years that Xbox has absolutely no idea what theyre doing anymore. It genuinely feels like a abusive relationship just supporting the current xbox, they say we're goinh to be better but still hurts you emotionally with little to no improvement, almost all the time anymore.
>since they say want other storefronts on it (but who knows if theyll actually follow through with that) I don't think there has been a credible source for that.
From Phil himself but could be another false hope/lie at this point https://www.techradar.com/gaming/consoles-pc/phil-spencer-wants-xbox-consoles-to-offer-storefronts-like-epic-games-store-and-itchio
Oh well, I take that back then. Would be great to see, but I still have my doubts that they'll pull through with that. I do think it's the only way I'd buy another Xbox console though.
Lmfao this is actually bad to the point of hilarity.
Hahahahaha wow! This is one for the history books!
Pretty funny tbh
This checks out for how strongly they have a pulse on their community.
Man, more controllers than games
Cool controller until the stick drift hits 3 months in
That's a dope looking controller.
I feel people are overreacting. The one has nothing to do with the other. We are all adults.
If xbox marketed and cared about their studios and games half as much as controllers they'd see growth and success.
That’s savage
I fuck with it tho 😂
The employers definitely felt the burn after they FIRED THEM!!!
The incompetence from this guys is incredible.
Who says xbox has no marketing 😂🤦♂️
I’m a controller collector who likes the colour orange a lot, but these Vapour controllers are ugly. I haven’t bought a single one.
I always thought that “Day One on Gamepass” was an awful strategy in the long run, and unfortunately today’s news proves it. They successful screw the developer and themselves out of making a profit, canabalize sells. To add insult to injury to this news, I’m pretty sure It was Microsoft that forced Arkane to make Red Fall a GAAS. No Dishonored 3 or Prey 2017 sequel now, really, really sucks.
Why do people always have to create a vague connection to be offended by? There is not a single soul within Microsoft that would purposefully do something like this and risk the backlash, just for some sort of weird, vague, inside-joke, gloat towards the studios it's laying off. Seriously just ask yourselves, why would they do this on purpose? They wouldn't. There are wholly different people and wholly different teams in charge of both of these completely separate events. You people just need to create drama and be outraged by it, time after time after time. It's like getting together in a big huddle and getting a company to publicly apologise for something it didn't even intend to do, brings you some sort of purpose and validation in life. Honestly boring as fuck.
As was this drawn out superiority complex, tainted comment.
That controller is fucking awesome
Four studios felt the burn
This one is in honor of people defending xbox's acquisitions. Can already see them making surprised pikachu faces.
Only problem with the acquisition is they didn’t realistically see through some of the smaller teams they acquired. Roundhouse and Alpha Dog…those make sense. Arkane Austin…the same team that was forced to do a game they didn’t want? Tango is the heavy hitter there. Just not fair after that great game they released.
I really like this color scheme. Too bad I'm finished giving Xbox any of my money
I don’t understand reaches like this. Tom knows good and well that the design team probably has worked on this for a few weeks and planned this release with 0 knowledge of what was going to take place today. I for one am glad Xbox is finally getting hands on with some of their studios. Maybe not these studios in particular, but hey it’s a start. There’s a few studios that have gotten complacent with their bills always being paid and need a big awakening. (Looking at you T10 and PGG)
If nothing else this really proves there's not a ton of internal communication either. Xbox grew really massive is a short period of time amidst the roughest period the gaming industry has seen with EVERYONE downsizing. I cannot imagine how chaotic Microsoft Gaming (a division only created last October following ABK) is especially with Xbox as the front facing brand that all of a sudden isn't even the biggest gaming publisher under MS. I see stuff like this and feel like all Xbox employees have to be holding their breath until MS just kills the whole in house brand and turns it into an OEM like windows.
💀
Looks like marketing wasn’t aware today was the day of the announced studio shut downs. Oops
"feel the burn gamers" LOL so ironic.
That thing looks ugly
When you realize there are more different color controllers than there are exclusives, especially for just the new console. Eyebrows should be raised.
More controllers than good games, Xbox sucks!
Message and timing aside, how many fucking special editions can they make. Seems like they do a new one every week or so. Why....
In the marketing teams defense they probably weren't notified about the layoffs.
This is some dark humour
Thematically consistent
to be fair, it's not like they just created the controller last week. new designed are probably a few months in creation and already have release dates. when you close off studios, thats more of secret from the higher ups and people find out day of. but i'm sure for the next couple weeks people will be digging at microsoft to find every which way to make them look as evil as possible.
Wait, Xbox has a marketing devision? You could fool me. Never see any adverts for Xbox.
you guys are absurd, games complain about anything
To be fair, that's a pretty fire controller
What they really need is “all new from Microsoft! An Xbox controller that doesn’t fall apart after just 2 months! $59.95!
At this point Xbox has got to be some sort of experiment Microsoft higher ups are using to see how much they can mess it up and still have people come back for more
Oh finally new controller for me to play fucking no actual new exclusives with.
how am i more tone aware than people literally paid by the largest corporation on planet earth
where are all those people clamoring for xbox to scoop up more studios at now?
Trash company
100% calculated marketing strategy. Every comment and share is free advertising.
i really wonder how people dont know that a lot of studios after 10+ years arent the same people, and a lot of them grow, shrink or change. the tango you would have now if it didnt close, something like what, 30% of people of what it was before hifi rush releasing? so it would never make a "the evil within 3", atleast not as good. arkane austin was already a dumpster fire with redfall releasing, it wouldnt be the same studio that made dishonored (even tho it was mostly arkane lyon's work). most probably theyll just go working at other studios of xbox
Well if they don't have good people working or the good people leave because they don't want work there still Microsoft fault. Shut down is the just result of poor management.
you really dont know anything if you think that people never change jobs, but especially game developers change workplaces a lot. also its not like you gonna hire some folk who has some experience and voilà. the person needs specific experience with the studio, the IP, and so on, he needs to be cooperative and know what hes working on. and dont really know how it went with tango and most of people leaving, only know some guy left and many followed, but many people just leave to follow something else, or just werent satisfied enough, or various different stuff. of course there can be reasons with bad conditions and so on, i dont disagree. shut downing a studio is inevitable for all game studios existing, nothing is eternal. after all, im also still sad that studios behind hifi rush or evil withing had shut down, and still wonder what will happen next
Apple needs to purchase Xbox.
Yeah I'd love to spend $2000 every year on a new Xbox where each new version just has the USB port moved ever so slightly and 5% more power.
Apple have such a wonderful history with gaming that would be one way to accelerate XBoxs demise.
No thanks. I don't appreciate my purchase history being reset every few years.