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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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How many releases is a very different number than how much profit. Only a few of Microsoft's releases likely account for a sizable percentage of the entire industry's profits in a given year. The fact is that investors saw dollar signs, and the industry expanded to a level that the market doesn't actually sustain. How many metroidvanias do you want to play in a given year? And given that Animal Well and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown came out this year, how likely are you to play Tales of Kenzera: Zau after you've bought and played those? Mass layoffs are not a good thing, but it's a mathematical consequence of how much companies are permitted to expand relative to what people actually buy.
So because a studio's first game didn't outperform the latest in a 30-ish year old franchise that came out to rave reviews, everyone should be fired? Keeping in mind that Kenzera Zau had an EXCELLENT showing in press events (sad game about losing a father from a popular actor) and basically every major outlet said "This is fine but nothing special. But I would love to see what they make next".
That is exactly how so many of the major publishers got into this mess. It used to be that we could get something very much "this exists" like Sly Cooper and Infamous that eventually leads to a critical and sales darling like Ghost of Tsushima. Now? Infamous didn't outsell GTA5? Hope you mother fuckers like soup lines.
Or Naughty Dog. I mean, Crash 1 is kind of a bad game with a LOT of jank. It wasn't until Crash 2 (and especially 3) where they were actually fun to play. And that studio eventually became the folk who made Uncharted and The Last Of Us.
Yes, there are studios that have consistently underperformed for publishers that are struggling and, while it sucks... we get it. But most of what we have seen are major publishers/platform holders just wanting to juice up some Q3 numbers by doing mass firings or the giant mess that was Embracer where they just overspent and never let any studios finish making anything. And then you have bullshit like Phil Spencer having the gall to talk about how Microsoft needs to make more games like Hi-Fi Rush the week they fucking shut down the studio that made it.
But hey, you took ECON 101 so you obviously know better.
If people don't buy your game, you don't have money to pay people. Ideally, Surgent Studios would have developed their game inexpensively enough and with enough of a war chest that they wouldn't have to lay people off after their first product didn't sell enough copies, but that's clearly not how they were funded. It sounds like the studio still exists, so maybe a smaller version of that team gets to take a crack at that second game, but you can't pay people with money you don't have, and we as the consumers have been well served by so many other games that it's not much of a mystery why people didn't turn up for this one.
The point of a publisher is to have a whole company. It doesn't matter if Game A sold because Game B sold. EA used to live on this where games like Mirror's Edge could be "experimental" because The Sims and Madden made CoD money every year.
The problem is what we saw with stuff like (Let's say it is "THQ". My brain can't remember the specific publisher I was thinking of and the name has probably been reused a dozen times by Embracer et al). Where they are over-leveraging themselves by wanting to make multiple AA or even AAA games and going under because critically acclaimed games just didn't sell well enough.
But, again, that is not what has been happening for the past year or two (aside from Embracer which is a different kind of evil). It is not "Oh, you made bad games and we need to fire you to save the company". It isn't even "Profits are down all over". It is "Well, we are actually doing great. But you finished your game and don't have one immediately in the pipeline and the shareholders want to see bigger profits for Q3 so... get fucked?"
Which is why I once again cite fucking Phil Spencer talking about what a great game Hi-Fi Rush is the week Microsoft fucking canned Tango. That was not even "Look, everyone loved The Evil Within but didn't buy it so...". That was "Everyone loved Hi-Fi and it sold okay even with the Gamepass hit and our other games sold well but..."
But apparently you are in full bootstraps mode where you think like a CEO who wants to buy an extra porsche so...
I don't know how you got from A to B on the Porsche. Embracer was funded largely by debt that they were expecting to get bailed out of by an investment that didn't happen; the classic leveraged investment gone wrong. Microsoft absolutely could stomach whatever losses they face, especially since that was the whole idea a few years back when they started Game Pass, so them deciding to not follow through on that and tighten their belts now is a situation unique to them. At large, across the industry, are tons of companies making big bets like Suicide Squad or Concord or Warhaven that follow a live service template that's been tapped out of customers and don't work out, and even smaller companies following the traditional publisher model like Mimimi are so exhausted hunting for funding for their next game, just barely making it by on copies sold, that they decide instead to close up shop. That'll happen when customer dollars are spread out around more games.