The 360 years really feel like a lifetime in the past. This week, Xbox shocked the business by saying it had closed three studios, and repurposed a fourth into one other service sport help group. This follows the 1900 individuals laid off throughout Xbox at first of this yr, and people Xbox workers quietly caught up within the 10,000 layoffs Microsoft made the yr earlier than. It has been a disastrous piece of PR self-sabotage, significantly with the reputations of those studios in thoughts.
Arkane Austin struggled with the uncharacteristic co-op, on-line shooter parts of Redfall, however earlier than that made the wonderful 2017 reboot of Prey and the primary, unbelievable Dishonored that led to the immersive sim’s trendy mini-revival. Tango Gameworks, Microsoft’s solely Japan-based studio that was led, till earlier this yr, by horror legend Shinji Mikami, made The Evil Inside video games and the critically acclaimed, BAFTA-winning breakout Hello-Fi Rush. Roundhouse Studios was based by the makers of the unique Prey, however is now presumably destined to make totally different colored leather-based boots for The Elder Scrolls On-line. Alpha Canine made cell video games, an space the place Microsoft has been particularly trying to increase. Extra broadly, for 2 console generations now, Xbox has floundered underneath a transparent and apparent lack of creative, attention-grabbing unique video games. It simply purchased these studios in 2021.
If it weren’t for the individuals concerned, in 2024, these closures would virtually really feel routine. That is removed from the top of Xbox, in fact – in Los Angeles subsequent month, it will maintain yet one more make-or-break press convention, that maps out yet one more plan for rescuing a misplaced technology. However be it by means of exasperation or exhaustion – or the broader business’s sheer, pent-up rage – this looks like one thing of a nadir. Xbox has spun its wheels for greater than a decade, lurching from U-turn to U-turn, strategic reboot to strategic reboot, acquisition to acquisition, closure to closure. The great instances have all the time felt simply over the horizon. Undertaking Scorpio will set the tone; Sport Go is the long run; the Sequence X may have the video games; Starfield will jump-start Sport Go now it is stalled. The rising sentiment as we speak is that they will most likely by no means come.
The fast response is, justifiably, anger. Closing studios all the time feels villainous, however closing award-winning ones, ones with eminent expertise, creativity and experience, feels genuinely absurd – simply because it did with Take-Two and the great individuals of Roll7 and Kerbal Area Program developer Squad, solely final week. However with Microsoft and Xbox, the issue feels a part of one thing greater. Hint a line by means of the trendy historical past of Xbox – from the top of the 360 period, by means of the misplaced years of the Xbox One, to the current day – and a scarlet thread turns into clear. It is a platform holder that has misplaced its goal and path, that basically – and maybe inevitably, given the sheer vastness of its mother or father firm – misunderstands why it exists.
Consider any leisure firm. What was that firm based? Effectively, in very obscure phrases: to supply that leisure. Individuals arrange sport growth studios to allow them to make video games. They arrange manufacturing corporations to allow them to make movies. They discovered soccer golf equipment so their group can play and watch soccer, file labels to allow them to hear music, eating places to allow them to prepare dinner nice meals and provide individuals the expertise of going out to eat it.
Platform-holders, i.e. console producers and online game producers, descendants of toymakers, card printers and arcade cupboard builders, originated for simply the identical cause: to supply individuals with video games, with the enjoyment and stimulation they supply and the {hardware} on which to play them. Satoru Iwata put it a lot better. “Nintendo’s mission is to attempt to make individuals joyful, to attempt to make individuals smile,” he stated, after the disclosing of the Wii again in 2006.
What’s the level of Xbox? Return by means of the final 10 years or so, to the top of the 360’s golden age and the origins of the Xbox One, and it begins to turn out to be clear. The purpose of Xbox is to attain, apparently, progress on an enormous scale. It’s to earn more money than it did the yr earlier than.
This may look like historical historical past now, however bear with me – the errors Xbox made in 2013 are, as we’ll see, worryingly related to the struggles it faces proper now. We have to begin with the notorious “TV, TV, TV” presentation on stage at E3 2013, the place Don Mattrick, Xbox’s boss on the time, unveiled plans for the Xbox One. It might be an all-in-one house leisure gadget, which was truly fairly a pleasant, attention-grabbing, forward-thinking thought (apart from the obligatory bundling-in of the costly and wildly unpopular Kinect), however the perceived emphasis on non-gaming purposes, subsequent to PlayStation’s laser focusing on of conventional, blockbuster video video games and extra graphically highly effective console, appeared Xbox hadn’t prioritised its core viewers.
It is also the primary signal of Microsoft’s backwards considering with the Xbox, the place it sought to develop past its core viewers not by including to them, by fulfilling its core goal of making new video games that extra individuals wish to play and new methods to play them, however by providing one thing totally unrelated and merging the 2 collectively.
However the challenge with its priorities ran deeper than the {hardware}. Take the closure of legendary Fable developer Lionhead, in 2016, and the cancellation of Fable Legends that was resulting from launch that yr. As coated in Eurogamer’s intensive inside story, it was Microsoft’s thought in round 2012, six years after it had purchased the once-independent studio, to shift from the single-player RPGs it was recognized for to a free-to-play, dwell service multiplayer sport in Fable Legends.
Fable was worthwhile – “extremely worthwhile”, Lionhead’s Simon Carter instructed Eurogamer – however in a now too-familiar story, it and its style was seen by Microsoft as simply not worthwhile sufficient. “That class isn’t the largest class on the planet,” stated Robbie Bach, who was the President of Leisure & Units Division at Microsoft earlier than Don Mattrick assumed the position. “It isn’t soccer. It isn’t American Soccer. It isn’t a first-person shooter sized class. So at a industrial degree, I’d say it was profitable, however not wildly so.”
Wildly profitable was what Microsoft was after. A pitch for Fable 4 was rejected. “It was like, you have reached your cap of gamers for RPG on Xbox and it’s worthwhile to discover a method to double that, and you are not going to do it with RPG,” Fable’s artwork director John McCormack instructed Eurogamer on the time. “I believed, sure we are able to. I stated, look, simply give us 4 years, correct finance, give us the possibility Mass Impact has, Skyrim has, the video games on the time. They’re getting 4 years and a whole lot of price range. Give us that, and we’ll offer you one thing that’ll get you your gamers. Nah, you have had three photographs and you have solely tripled the cash. It isn’t ok. Fuck off. That is what I used to be irritated about.” (Price noting: Skyrim went on to promote 63m copies, as of June 2023, The Witcher 3 over 50m.)
Pressured into making a sport in a style it knew nothing about, Lionhead bled employees, together with McCormack, Peter Molyneux, and everything of its senior management group. It struggled with growth, particularly the unfamiliar ideas like monetisation or multiplayer steadiness. On the identical time, it was being utilized by Microsoft as poster baby for its varied initiatives of the day, from being a Home windows 10 sport (“We did not learn about Home windows 10 after we began growing Fable Legends,” one supply instructed Eurogamer in 2016) to displaying the brand new graphical potential of DirectX 12. All whereas the free-to-play mannequin of the time relied on growth itself being comparatively low cost.
A yr after the debacle with Lionhead, hotly-anticipated unique Scalebound was cancelled in related circumstances. A 3rd-person motion RPG, which Bayonetta developer Platinum’s all about – just one that was for some cause lumbered with a requirement for on-line co-op – the group once more struggled with unfamiliar multiplayer parts. As director Hideki Kamiya put it, the studio “lacked the mandatory know-how to construct a sport based mostly on on-line options,” which finally contributed to its cancellation – once more, the identical yr as its scheduled launch.
The lust for scale continued. That very same yr got here Sport Go, earlier than its full launch in 2018. It got here bundled with an aggressive consumer acquisition plan – at one level you possibly can get three months of it for £1 – and a acknowledged aim to “attain the greater than three billion avid gamers worldwide,” as Ben Decker, head of gaming companies advertising and marketing at Xbox, instructed Eurogamer in 2021. Microsoft, finally a software program enterprise, and one constructed increasingly on cloud computing, partnered with SK Telecom in Korea to soft-launch its sport streaming plans in xCloud. “Each display screen is an Xbox,” Xbox president Sarah Bond reportedly instructed employees simply a few months in the past, demoing the shock Sport Go hit Palworld on tablets, TVs and mobiles.
And but once more, that quest for enormous, roof-shattering progress appears doomed. Since 2017, Sport Go has added a gentle variety of round 5 million subscribers a yr, now sitting at round 34 million as of earlier in 2024. It’s totally respectable progress, particularly since costs have risen and £1 affords have light away – it is also a good distance off these 3 billion avid gamers worldwide.
In interviews, Phil Spencer has put this right down to the onerous restrict that exists with console house owners – “sooner or later,” he instructed the Wall Avenue Journal “you have reached all people on console that wishes to subscribe.” What would possibly assist with that’s if Xbox offered extra consoles to start with. Matching the ratio of failure to the earlier technology, the Xbox Sequence X and S have once more offered about half the numbers of the PS5. What would possibly each promote extra consoles and add to subscriptions is, you guessed it, producing video video games that give individuals pleasure.
Xbox has failed at this for therefore lengthy now that it is turn out to be a bore to even point out it – Xbox has no video games, you say? What else is new? How are issues again there in 2017?! – however these issues are all linked. It might’t ship a giant, profitable online game as a result of it doesn’t prioritise making one.
Come again to the aim of a platform-holder: making video games and the means to play them, offering happiness, sparking pleasure, nevertheless else you would possibly wish to put it. Okay – how is that executed? As a platform-holder particularly it is totally different to different publishers. It is about providing builders, the individuals truly taking the artistic dangers, the soundness they cannot discover elsewhere. It is hiring, retaining, and offering the liberty to gifted builders after which giving them the room to attempt issues and, on occasion, permitting these issues to fail.
Against this, the tradition that is developed at Xbox is seemingly one-and-done. One strike and also you’re out. Redfall did not work? Overlook the expertise concerned in Dishonored and Prey, overlook, crucially, the invaluable classes that group may have discovered from its struggles with Redfall. You are gone. Hello-Fi Rush, precisely the sort of sport the platform wants, did not drive sufficient subscribers? See ya. (Regardless of its nature as “a escape hit for us and our gamers in all key measurements and expectations”, as Aaron Greenberg, VP of Xbox advertising and marketing put it on the time.) When Lionhead was closed in 2016, some builders had been there because the studio was based in 1997.
What message does it ship to a developer if you already know you are one dangerous sport, one troubled venture, away out of your studio being immediately closed – what does that do to your want to innovate and experiment? It obliterates it. It drags each developer on that platform in the direction of conservatism, risk-aversion and protected bets. In direction of derivativeness – X sport with Y parts is huge proper now – and finally artistic dying.
We have already seen this dying in motion: it is Lionhead on a free-to-play multiplayer sport; Platinum on on-line co-op. It is 343 Industries, custodians of Xbox’s flagship collection Halo, being slashed in Microsoft cuts whereas Halo Infinite sits quietly deserted, a limping, free-to-play battle move engine. Obsidian on a giant, apparent, Skyrim-like fantasy RPG, simply the 13 years after that style took off. (And do not forget Playground, one other UK establishment with a particular area of interest – racing video games – on the single-player RPG collection Lionhead needed to make in 2016). The large video games this yr are Palworld, positive, but additionally Helldivers 2 and Manor Lords and Balatro. They’re surprises, usually left-field ones, and typically additionally costly. In the meantime Xbox is chasing the highs of a style that carried a earlier technology.
Helldivers 2, for what it is price, took eight years to get made. Does any studio final that lengthy with out transport at Xbox as we speak? Does any Xbox sport get that likelihood? Fable Legends actually did not. Rewind to Lionhead in 2016, and the one transient justification given on the time. “These adjustments are taking impact as Microsoft Studios continues to focus its funding and growth on the video games and franchises that followers discover most enjoyable and wish to play,” Hanno Lemke, basic supervisor of Microsoft Studios Europe on the time, stated in a quick assertion.
“We acquired Lionhead in 2006, Shut it down in 2016,” says Sarah Bond, in a since widely-shared clip from episode six of Xbox-produced documentary Energy On: The Story of Xbox, launched in 2022. “A few years later, we mirrored again on that have. What did we be taught, how can we not repeat our identical errors?”
“You purchase a studio for what they’re nice at now,” continues Phil Spencer, “and your job is to assist them speed up how they do what they do. Not them speed up what you do.”
Again to as we speak, and examine Matt Booty’s assertion, writing to the builders laid off by these newest closures, with Lemke’s in 2016. He describes the choice as being “grounded in prioritising high-impact titles and additional investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster video games and beloved worlds. To double down on these franchises and make investments to construct new ones requires us to look throughout the enterprise to establish the alternatives which are finest positioned for fulfillment.” Eight years aside, the 2 statements really feel remarkably related.
As ever, with the excessively secretive world of online game growth, we do not fairly have the complete image. In a single day, a Bloomberg report claimed these closures and consolidations have been a part of a “widespread cost-cutting initiative that also is not completed.” Booty reportedly instructed Xbox workers that the corporate’s studios had been “unfold too skinny – like ‘peanut butter on bread'”. Jill Braff, head of Zenimax Studios, reportedly added, “It is onerous to help 9 studios all internationally with a lean central group with an ever-growing plate of issues to do… I feel we’re about to topple over.”
The absurdity of that one, after Microsoft spent $7.5bn to purchase all these studios, speaks for itself. It might even be absolutely the reality, that these studios closed just because Microsoft and Zenimax felt they needed to lower one thing, and so these wild, untamable beasts should go.
Maybe most absurd of all, nevertheless, was the reported “most important issue” Booty and Braff instructed employees why Tango and Arkane Austin closed specifically. Each have been pitching new initiatives, and wanted to employees up and take the time to make them. Tango Gameworks was within the technique of pitching a Hello-Fi Rush sequel, Arkane Austin needed to return to its immersive sim routes, maybe with a brand new Dishonored. Xbox closed these studios, apparently, for having the audacity to attempt to make video video games.
Let’s return to Lionhead, one final time. There was by no means a full cause given for that studio’s closure. Its workers had totally different theories: cost-cutting is the recurring one. “We knew Microsoft hadn’t had an amazing yr with video games,” one supply stated, in what may’ve been any yr from the previous 10, and it had turn out to be clear Fable Legends, very like Redfall’s tried updates, most likely would not get shut sufficient to recouping prices. However there’s one other nugget of knowledge from that interval price drawing consideration to: Lionhead, simply Arkane Austin, like Tango Gameworks, was absolutely anticipating to maneuver straight onto making the following huge factor within the collection it made a reputation from, in Fable 4.
The purpose right here, finally, is that this cycle has been repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and it doesn’t present any signal of coming to an finish. Xbox buys expertise, mismanages it seeking not possible scale, and cuts it unfastened – be that the 20-year specialists of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new technology behind Hello-Fi Rush. Xbox’s management clearly is aware of it is an issue. I imagine Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond have been completely honest after they stated they checked out Lionhead and promised themselves to not make the identical errors once more. However to try this, they must step behind this primary, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the true trigger – not the choices themselves, however the ideas that inform them. The ideas that say experience, creativity and expertise are much less precious than the price to allow them to flourish.
Dig out the scarlet thread once more, and the factor that binds all these moments collectively could not be extra clear. The philosophy of an amazing online game platform holder is that it makes cash with the intention to make extra consoles and extra video games. The philosophy of Microsoft – and by dint of that, Xbox – is evidently that it solely makes consoles and video games with the intention to earn a living. Like so many companies owned by gigantic, publicly-traded mega-companies, Xbox is now caught in a cycle of considering back-to-front. It, and I believe a lot of the online game world, now not is aware of why it exists.
