Xbox Series S/X: Thread 04

[fishbowlhead]

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft...32e075161b1f43
No specifics or studio closures but some Xbox and Bethesda staff will be let go as part of the layoffs

Called it, absolutely hilarious.

[Ouenben]

As for Bethesda, I'll predict 50% of their studios will do nothing and vanish. MS, unlike EA, doesn't directly kill studios, it just puts them in the freezer and drags them out when it wants a game from them 10 years later.

Tell that to Lionhead, Ensemble and Press Play

[Neon Ignition]

Microsoft set to cull 10,000 jobs | Eurogamer.net
343 and Coalition also seeing cuts

I am 100% speculating here based on nothing but:

Cuts are happening increasingly in many areas, always something that seemed likely to come given the rate some areas hired during the pandemic and the increased costs now have probably led to that. The gaming industry is also known for dropping staff when a project completes as well so:

Bethesda, I'm guessing it will be a mixture of some dev staff due to projects like Starfield wrapping up and then staff on the publishing side because the Xbox division already has that covered

343 Industries, seems like the easiest one. You can't develop a game intended to last donkeys years as a GAAS and expect to retain the same levels of staff when the resources needed are fractional to maintain that game - unless you have another project in the pipeline, but as 343 is solely Halo orientated I'm assuming Halo Infinite's design has screwed them over and made them an easy cost to cut

Coalition is a more curious one as you'd presume they'd be in full flow on Gears 6 atm though I suppose that too could be late enough to leave room for cuts

Again, acquiring so many studios will also mean many duplications of skill sets too they will want to cut. For Bethesda though, maybe a reminder that they're never an equal partner with Xbox.

[nonny]

MS arent in a great place right now. The console launch has been the most flaccid launch of any console. Its flagship Halo Infinite drop the ball. 2022 saw no releases from the first party and the FTC are breathing down their neck, probably costing them a fortune in legal fees. Something had to give.

As for Bethesda, I'll predict 50% of their studios will do nothing and vanish. MS, unlike EA, doesn't directly kill studios, it just puts them in the freezer and drags them out when it wants a game from them 10 years later.

The most flaccid launch of ANY console? You're having a laugh on that one surely... I mean just look at the Xbox One if you want to go close to home...

I agree with Neon to be honest. Apart from 343 which has had issues in upper management from the very beginning of Halo Infinites development a lot of the Xbox focused lay-offs appear to be mostly consolidation of duplicated roles between the two entities (XGS and Bethesda) or some projects coming to a close.

Where 343 is concerned it seems Joseph Staten is stepping down, which is a big loss in some respects but I do feel like he has achieved precisely what he was required to do... which is steady the ship, mop up the mess and reset the plan. Some may think Halo Infinite is beyond repair (you may be right), but looking at where is it right now and what is planned in 2023 I still think it has a good chance of redemption.

As for comparing the 68.7bn for Activision versus the cost of the staff layoffs. Yeah it is a bad lens but it's also comparing a 10+ year strategic plan against short term current trends... that may sound like business crap to most but MS with companies as large as this if you don't move on stuff like this then you simply become irrelevant.

Still... I feel for the 10,000+ families affected as it's a really crap time to be unemployed. Hopefully they find somewhere else in the industry soon.

[Lebowski]

Microsoft set to cull 10,000 jobs | Eurogamer.net
343 and Coalition also seeing cuts

I am 100% speculating here based on nothing but:

Cuts are happening increasingly in many areas, always something that seemed likely to come given the rate some areas hired during the pandemic and the increased costs now have probably led to that. The gaming industry is also known for dropping staff when a project completes as well so:

Bethesda, I'm guessing it will be a mixture of some dev staff due to projects like Starfield wrapping up and then staff on the publishing side because the Xbox division already has that covered

343 Industries, seems like the easiest one. You can't develop a game intended to last donkeys years as a GAAS and expect to retain the same levels of staff when the resources needed are fractional to maintain that game - unless you have another project in the pipeline, but as 343 is solely Halo orientated I'm assuming Halo Infinite's design has screwed them over and made them an easy cost to cut

Coalition is a more curious one as you'd presume they'd be in full flow on Gears 6 atm though I suppose that too could be late enough to leave room for cuts

Again, acquiring so many studios will also mean many duplications of skill sets too they will want to cut. For Bethesda though, maybe a reminder that they're never an equal partner with Xbox.

The thing to take note of here is Microsoft aren't loosing money this is a cost cutting exercise to increase its profits at the cost of its workforce, those left will no doubt be expected to pick up the workload of the staff let go as no doubt the work will still be there, it an exersize in numbers and a lot of the time it isnt about staff who are underperforming.

You need duplicate skill sets across your studios, coders designers, testers as they are studios making different games. As for 343 you just need to look at Bungie they currently have 826 staff and are the only really success story in turning a shooter into a game as a service. they regularly get stick about reusing assets and being slow to get new content out, yet they have double the staff of 343. To be able to run a more successful game as a service with half the staff is a folly, cutting them even further is only going to accelerate this decline in Future Halo games.

If you want to take things further Mihoyo's has got 5000 staff and the majority of its dev's are working on Genshin Impact, this is one of the biggest games on the planet at the moment with ridiculous sums of money coming in for it, 2.1 billion a month just on mobile. id love to say its a breath of the wild rip off and on its surface it looks very similar, but its combat its world building and its fully voiced cast show that this isnt just a Chinese copy of zelda. At present it has a staggering amount of content, you get new regions added to its map every few months with new bosses new characters and massive sprawling stories. It still amazes me how much they achieve with each new update, as a live service game id say this sets the content bar super high. and the level of content they are able to put out is staggering.

[nonny]

The thing to take note of here is Microsoft aren't loosing money this is a cost cutting exercise to increase its profits at the cost of its workforce, those left will no doubt be expected to pick up the workload of the staff let go as no doubt the work will still be there, it an exersize in numbers and a lot of the time it isnt about staff who are underperforming.

You need duplicate skill sets across your studios, coders designers, testers as they are studios making different games. As for 343 you just need to look at Bungie they currently have 826 staff and are the only really success story in turning a shooter into a game as a service. they regularly get stick about reusing assets and being slow to get new content out, yet they have double the staff of 343. To be able to run a more successful game as a service with half the staff is a folly, cutting them even further is only going to accelerate this decline in Future Halo games.

If you want to take things further Mihoyo's has got 5000 staff and the majority of its dev's are working on Genshin Impact, this is one of the biggest games on the planet at the moment with ridiculous sums of money coming in for it, 2.1 billion just on mobile. id love to say its a breath of the wild rip off and on its surface it looks very similar, but its combat its world building and its fully voiced cast show that this isnt just a Chinese copy of zelda. At present it has a staggering amount of content, you get new regions added to its map every few months with new bosses new characters and massive sprawling stories. It still amazes me how much they achieve with each new update, as a live service game id say this sets the content bar super high. and the level of content they are able to put out is staggering.

Looking at the numbers 343 have shed 60 or so staff. I don't know what their total number was previous to this but it was definitely up in the 500-600 range a year ago.

As for Bungie being the only success story for shooter GaaS are you forgetting Apex Legends and a small game called Fortnite? I'm not going to disagree that GaaS need a lot of staff to continually pump out content, and 343 certainly are on that steep learning curve... but Bungie aren't the only one with the blueprint for success here.

I would also say Halo is more aligned to those BR shooters as currently there has been no campaign expansion content, where-as Destiny 2 as a model tends to launch large story based drops as opposed to monthly or quarterly seasons.

[Neon Ignition]

As the cuts are supposed to lean toward the SP side of the studio it feels like a given that Infinite was a financial bomb for the company and campaign plans will suffer the price.

It honestly feels like 343 should abandon the BR mode which is pretty much destined to die on its backside and spend the next year focused on aggressively bolstering Infinite online - then abandon the 10 year plan and just start work on a back to basics Halo 7

Despite the success the show has had, the impending arrival of Call of Duty really paints Halo's relevance into a corner especially when it's suffered such a ropey run for a while now. Time to take stock and stop trying to force it to be a type of project it's not.

[Lebowski]

Looking at the numbers 343 have shed 60 or so staff. I don't know what their total number was previous to this but it was definitely up in the 500-600 range a year ago.

As for Bungie being the only success story for shooter GaaS are you forgetting Apex Legends and a small game called Fortnite? I'm not going to disagree that GaaS need a lot of staff to continually pump out content, and 343 certainly are on that steep learning curve... but Bungie aren't the only one with the blueprint for success here.

I would also say Halo is more aligned to those BR shooters as currently there has been no campaign expansion content, where-as Destiny 2 as a model tends to launch large story based drops as opposed to monthly or quarterly seasons.

Fortnite and apex are very different beasts the majority of Destiny's content is focused on collaborative play and story based content not just focused around one map with skin and battle pass sales. It requires a massive amount of dev time to keep the playerbase happy, its why i referenced Genshin Impact as that's another game that is more story based and collaborative than pvp focused.

[Cassius_Smoke]

The most flaccid launch of ANY console? You're having a laugh on that one surely... I mean just look at the Xbox One if you want to go close to home...

Yeah i think it is.
The XBONE (and PS4 launch) weren't great. But XBONE hamstrung itself with all the DRM / T.V Bullshiz on the run up, but they did a U-turn and put out a handful of launch titles. It wasn't the best, but no worse than its competition.

Series on the other hand had a completely clean run up. Its unveiling had an odd timing, but its tech was/is spot on. Its game studios had been quiet, leading to speculation that a slew of games were coming for the new console. And then it launched...with nothing. Not a sausage. That's pretty damn flaccid to me.

[Brad]

I think the problem with the Series launch was that they made two consoles. One of them is the most powerful gaming console ever made and the other is less powerful than the best model from their own previous generation but with an SSD in it. I wish they'd done a Disc/No disc split on the series X but I do get that financially the Series S was a genius move. A lot of people can find £250 for a new console.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Every cloud and all that...

https://twitter.com/peter_dalton/status/1615969760155471875?s=20&t=vm1pXRgQAn0ATpa-SmVMDQ

[Neon Ignition]

https://twitter.com/BathrobeSpartan/status/1616169276984942599?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1616169276984942599%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=

A report that 1/3 of 343 has been axed and that the studios days as a game developer are largely over. Moving forward campaign DLC for Halo Infinite has been abandoned and the studio will only have two focuses, MP support for Infinite and oversight of the Halo license. Future Halo games will be outsourced to external studios.

[fishbowlhead]

https://twitter.com/BathrobeSpartan/...5Es1_&ref_url=
A report that 1/3 of 343 has been axed and that the studios days as a game developer are largely over. Moving forward campaign DLC for Halo Infinite has been abandoned and the studio will only have two focuses, MP support for Infinite and oversight of the Halo license. Future Halo games will be outsourced to external studios.

Was the Tory party put in charge of 343?

[nonny]

Pretty deep cuts to be fair but then given the criticism from all quarters it seems like the right move?

I think where Infinite is right now as a multiplayer game, with Forge out and season 3 approaching adding custom browsing support it's at a turning point where the community will basically revive it... the sandbox in the game is solid and the user content created so far is absolutely unbelievable. You give that a front end everyone can access and suddenly the game is overflowing with content.

So we may yet see it stabilise and gradually thrive as a free title across all platforms. For many that ship may have sailed but the Halo community is actually still as strong as ever when you look at creators and players... it's the wider audience that needs to be convinced to come back.

As a campaign experience and multiplayer title I think it has been a solid entry. As a GaaS though it has been a total failure with terrible lead times on additional content and stupid pricing across the board in the store. All of that points back to bad management and some terrible decisions along the way.

So maybe 343 doesn't continue on Halo... although at this point with Bonnie Ross departed (who I think is probably the main person responsible) and these layoffs maybe the 343 responsible for the failures already doesn't even exist.

Interestingly there is a lot of other work going on in the community away from Halo Infinite. The MCC creation tools were released into Steam a few months back and that has basically blown the doors wide open for users to basically do what they like with every game in that compendium. Plus 343 already stated they would be adding in every single piece of cut content over time (including stuff like the Halo 2 E3 demo levels that never made it into the final game).

[wakka]

Feel bad for the folks at 343.