Xbox can’t Manage Developers

For those of us older than the life of a tadpole, we all remember E3 when it was a thing. I still call it E3 even though Geoff’s commercialized the whole venture into online streaming platforms full of massive boring games that are about as exciting as Splitgate 2’s announcement, broken up by far more interesting smaller shows that don’t get half the attention. Nonetheless, a little under a decade ago, Xbox/Microsoft was doing these massive showcases that were becoming interesting simply because Xbox was offering a bit of variety, and the showcases weren’t bogged down in console sales projections. Nor in 30-minute highlight reels of individual boring games.

However, the gaming platform/budget PC with a controller also did a lot of work buying up nearly every studio it could get its hands on. In 2018 alone, Xbox announced the acquisition of Undead Labs, Playground Games, Obsidian Entertainment, Ninja Theory, inXile Entertainment, and Compulsion Games. Even doubling down and acquiring Double Fine in 2019, they also did a small deal in 2020 of $7.5 billion for ZeniMax, which gave the company Bethesda, ID, Arkane, MachineGames, and Tango Gameworks. Then that really small deal in 2022 of $68.7 billion for Activision-Blizzard|King. You know, nothing that would change the landscape of gaming forever.

Well, announced last week as Microsoft Gaming did a “business restructuring,” mass lay-offs and studio closures hit Rare, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, Turn 10 Studios, and even The Initiative, which was founded in 2018. The latter was also the studio that was working on that Perfect Dark reboot that has since been put in the bin, despite the fact we saw it last year. Rare’s Everwild is also canned, while ZeniMax’s Destiny-style MMO shooter that Matt Booty had to pull Phil Spencer away from is binned off too. What I’m getting to is that Microsoft/Xbox doesn’t know how to run a development studio.

Those of you younger than the Xbox 360 won’t remember this one, but Xbox has been doing this for as long as you’ve been alive. Take (for example) the Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Gary Carr, and Tim Rance-led developer, Lionhead Studios. This studio not only released the god game Black & White and eventually a small series called Fable, but also the beloved movie-business simulator, The Movies. I won’t say everything was a success with them. I did just say the name Peter Molyneux, a man who is not too dissimilar to a politician who will say anything, and the developers had to catch up, making his nonsense a reality.

The last game from Lionhead Studios was Fable: The Journey, which was ruined by Xbox’s favorite thing at the time, the Kinect. Speaking of the Kinect, Project Milo – that creepy little bastard was announced at E3 2009 and subsequently binned off by next September. Then, in 2016, when the studio was closed, so too came the cancellation of co-op action RPG Fable Legends after a short beta and free-to-play card game Fable Fortune was sold off to a studio that released it in 2018, stopping development in 2019.

Ensemble Studios was closed in January 2009, and would release Halo Wars late that February. Halo Wars is a play on that Age of Empires thing the studio was known for. Team Dakota announced Project Spark in 2013 at E3, and it would subsequently be canceled in 2016. Xbox is simply terrible at nurturing and using great studios, great talent, and great ideas to make interesting things for its platform. There are Xbox-published and made games that I do enjoy, State of Decay 2 and South of Midnight from Undead Labs and Compulsion Games, respectively, come to mind straight away. Playground Games made Forza Horizon 4 too, the one with Scotland in it.

We can’t talk about Xbox acquisitions without mentioning Mojang, which seems to be running along on its own. Of course, I adore Double Fine since its early days, Obsidian tells decent stories, but I’ll bemoan the gameplay. Of course, I can’t forget inXile Entertainment for Wasteland and the upcoming Clockwork Revolution. There is a lot that the publishing label of Xbox Game Studios, as well as Activision and all those under Bethesda Softworks, offer great talent and decent ideas.

Nonetheless, Xbox or Microsoft, whichever you want to blame, is utterly terrible at keeping studios afloat, keeping them working towards release, and making Xbox a strong competitor in the fabled “console wars.” I would hate to prescribe a definitive reason why, but if you want an easy out, then it is the identity of Xbox. Or lack thereof as of late.

When you think of certain consoles, you have an idea of who is buying it or who it is for. Nintendo is aimed towards kids and adults who want something a bit “casual;” PlayStation is a bit broader but ultimately aimed towards a slightly more mature audience looking to play everything from singleplayer RPGs to GTA and basic FPS’. Meanwhile, Xbox is a messy, smelly teenager going to college and will shout racial slurs into a microphone that the users are basically chewing as they play online shooters. That isn’t every user, but it is the broadest identity of each major console. With Game Pass and with all these acquisitions, Xbox is trying to shift that narrative.

Xbox Play Anywhere was pushed a lot this year with the Xbox Ally from ROG. Xbox Cloud Gaming, or XCloud, is pushed a lot, and the additions of things like Yakuza and Final Fantasy in recent years too, as well as Obsidian and Bethesda’s work on RPGs. There is a part of Xbox that is trying to move away from Halo and Gears of War as the core of the Xbox identity, but has it worked? With Play Anywhere, the RPG-shift hasn’t taken hold simply because you can and probably prefer to play Wasteland on PC, possibly even with an Xbox controller.

The simple reality is that, being as broad as Xbox is, with a new focus on RPGs, indies, and playing anywhere via cloud gaming or Game Pass, it makes Xbox less of a focused console. It is less of a focused platform simply because no one knows who either the Xbox Series X or S is for. Studios can’t just fart out games on a whim, as we’re told by the likes of Shawn Layden, its more expensive and takes longer than ever to produce games like… Forza Motorsport 7, Grounded, Bleeding Edge, and Killer Instinct.

How long until Bethesda sees mass layoffs before Elder Scrolls 6? Remember when that was announced to be in development since 2016? Then we got a logo reveal in 2018. At this rate, we’ll get the heat death of the universe before we get Fallout 5. Fable from Playground Games is set to be coming in 2026, so 2027-28 before Elder Scrolls 6, maybe even longer. Speaking of Playground and Turn 10, it is reported by Eurogamer that Forza Motorsport is dead, but Horizon will continue.

These mass lay-offs, game cancellations, and studio closures aren’t something new in the gaming industry, but they also aren’t new to Xbox either. To play devil’s avocado, I’m sure you didn’t realize PlayStation’s Singstar studio, London Studio, closed down with as much ceremony as a fart in a lift last year. However, being part of a layoff of 900 vs a second round of around 9,000 layoffs is a bit different (neither are good). Let’s not forget that in 2023, Microsoft announced 10,000 layoffs as well. Now, two years later, we’re getting another 9,000.

I’ll repeat myself, I don’t think Microsoft/Xbox is good at running development studios, and that’s a problem as a publisher and platform holder. As always happens with these mass layoffs, there will be smaller studios formed and maybe another Clair Obscur in several years, but that’s not every developer. That’s not sustainable for the industry as a whole when it comes to these big platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, and (to a lesser extent) Nintendo. At least not the first-party titles that are supposed to sell the consoles.

There are going to be lay-offs in this industry, there are going to be studio closures, and there are going to be points where games that people are excited about get canceled out of the blue. I still hear the faint whisper of Rockstar North’s Agent on the wind sometimes. However, it seems like Xbox, above all right now, is leading the way in gutting out talent, clearing out studios, and getting rid of games that have already been announced, shown off, and have gotten people excited.

The question I have, not just for the PR folks that might see this, but also you as a consumer is this. What does Xbox have left in order to sell you an Xbox Series X|S? As a PC player, what’s left to make you buy one? As a PlayStation player, what entices you? As a Nintendo player, other than Nintendo’s own nonsense, what encourages you towards Xbox? I’m excited to see more from the Xbox Ally (the gayest sounding console), but that’s only to compare it to other handhelds right now. Hey, look, I didn’t even mention Scalebound once in this article! oh.