Hey Microsoft And Xbox, What The HELL Are You Doing?
Xbox’s leadership has been questionable for some time now, between development troubles on some projects, others receiving …
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March 23, 2026
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"Harmony in Every Heartbeat
Xbox’s leadership has been questionable for some time now, between development troubles on some projects, others receiving …
source
We don’t want another Call of Duty!!!! No just NO!!!!!!
goin downhill. That's what
So, I have a deadbeat brother. Whenever he's asked to do something, it's "I'll do it next week. I'll do it later." And five years down the line he's not done anything.
Look at Phil Spencer and Xbox. "This will be our year! It's just around the corner!" and yet it never comes? 5, 10 years later, still nothing?
Big deadbeat energy.
Watch Ninja theory be closed Next Month directly after they launch Hellblade II. Microsoft spent far to much money, and are now not even marketing their games. Hellblade II has seen so little marketing that, it would seem that Microsoft thinks it's going to be a failure before it even launches. Honestly the Xbox brand is in the trash, and I'm sad to see so many people losing their jobs due to such a poorly planned and operated company. I enjoyed the Hellblade, it was a unique and interesting niche game. It was designed to be a cheaper to buy shorter title. Now instead of $40 like the last game cost Microsoft wants $70 for the new game. Which is way to much for these short, niche games and all ready hurts this titles chances of success. But no way Microsoft keeps a company open that doesn't make live service cash shop trash going forward. The Xbox brand is dead and I honestly have no intention of helping them make it profitable again.
The XBOX brand is in big trouble and everyone in the gaming industry knows it. I sure hope they can pull out of the tail spin, but how can I have any faith in the upper management team that has brought the brand to this point in its current form? XBOX is no longer a "cool" brand, its now the modern Disney-esque brand that people intentionally stay away from.
What are they doing? Closing shit studios and moving the staff to places they can be used more effectively. What's so hard to understand?
Xbox is Dead coming
Microsoft: buy brand
Microsoft: kill brand
Microsoft: concurrents cant use this brand too – profit
Gamers: 🤬😡🤬😡
Microsoft: 🙈🙉🙈🙉 play caloduti 🤡
All they care about is new hardware the lacks the same decent exclusive games. Also their too obsess with focusing on new controllers with different damm colors instead of making decent exclusive games to play the dam controllers with. You still can't use custom music ingame which was a feature back on the 360 SMH!
Ok giving Sony their exclusives eh. So is Sony going to do the same thing & is Nintendo? Fn ridiculous been getting ripped off from Microsoft since after the 360
Let's be serious, they own Rare. Tell me all the breakout massive hits they've had since then?
Microsoft is basically going to devour studios a la electronic arts and suck all the good from gaming it can and replace it with micro transactions. We're just seeing it move faster than it has up to this point.
i own xbox and i really sad about this news, tango game works were a great studio, maybe microsoft should learn from sony on how to manage first party studio
Just want to point out the reports of these companies having staff refusing to work on their actual projects but pushing hair brained creative projects. There's a reason these companies have been stopped and bungies piss poor management shows this. you have to look at a bigger picture unfortunately only one side is being reported. Redfall alone made people ask for the studio to be burnt down
fire matt booty
I've been in the industry long enough now to have seen how things unfold from both sides and I'm honestly not a fan of the outrage culture we've created these days.
Hear me out for a second. I know it's of little comfort for people who have lost their jobs today, but I think press especially has to be very careful about how to write their articles, especially if they don't have good sources or just don't know exactly what's going on – and let's be frank, they usually don't.
I don't have all the information on what unfolded today regarding Microsoft shuttering studios and while trashing publishers in your reports will absolutely generate clicks for you, it's entirely possible and I'd say even very likely that there have been inner dealings for a while that'd reasonably explain this situation.
I've very rarely seen decisions being made on that scale that just make absolutely no sense. It could very well be that Microsoft already had prior discussions with these studios and decisions were made to shutter these studios in order to let them reform in a more efficient way only to then make deals with these new ventures again.
Let's take Tango Gameworks for example. They just made the excellent Hi-Fi Rush, which everyone rightfully loved. And maybe the way to make more of this stuff is for that core team to form a new venture so that they can focus on making more of just that, but not within the – likely bloated – setup they had before.
I'm obviously just speculating and I don't have any inside information, but something like that seems entirely plausible to me.
And if something like that is the case, is the way press is dealing with this ideal? 🤔
The News Headlines are:
"Oh my gawd, evil publisher DESTROYS studio that made HIT GAME out of PURE GREED!"
While if my scenario is true, the headline closer to the truth could be:
"Publisher made a smart business decision that lets studio make more of the product everyone loved within a more efficient setup."
See the difference? Yes, the former will absolutely generate more clicks for you, but if the latter is true, the former also makes you look like you're just feeding the outrage mob for your own personal gain.
And look at it from a publisher's perspective. Everyone loved Hi-Fi Rush and there's obviously great potential there. The talent behind Hi-Fi Rush could most likely create a similar title at a larger scale now, making an even better, more complex product. I'm sure plenty of publishers out there would be interested in that offering because – guess what – that could make them a lot of money.
Do you all really just assume that Microsoft is completely dumb, happy to burn bridges with talented developers that could then immediately make deals with the competition?
I mean… it might be that that's the case, but usually these dealings happen on a somewhat more sophisticated level.
Real life is chess, not checkers, folks.
Bethesda games studios is eldsrscrolls 6, zenimax online is the folk who work on eso
So that team isn't going moved into zenimax online fore es6
gamepass starting to bite their ass
That's one of the reasons I built a high-end PC. There is no need to purchase an Xbox anymore. The only reason why I purchased a Playstation is because their first party exclusives don't release day one on PC yet. When that time comes, I'll be leaving Sony Playstation as well
Microsoft is just ruining themselves and other studios what a shame.
Couldn't even let Sonys big f'up marinate in people's minds before they tried to top it.
Never trust anything these snakes salesmen say
I keep saying over and over again. Microsoft is like a retirement home for game companies and games, a place where game companies and games go to die
Imagine being outrage by this, and then still paying them a monthly fee for gamepass every month. If the hypocrits start putting their money where their mouth is, Microsoft might start listening to their player base instead of just rubbing their balls in their faces all Day long.
Fact is, COVID had a big impact. Conspiracy theories aside, people were stuck indoors playing games so the devs and publishers hired more people to make them. Now people have gone back to work and get outside, sales have naturally dropped.
Now Tango games are reviewed by fans very well, but they are a niche studio. Did those reviews translate to more sales? If not then MS could be cutting their losses. On the plus side, Tango can find another’s publisher or go indie and be their own boss. Rather than make a more mainstream game.
Re Arkane Austin, Prey was again, great but didn’t meet sales numbers. Redfall was a disaster. It’s no secret they didn’t want to make the game they made so it was almost a protest game. That clearly backfired in an industry where sales and $$$ are everything.
I don’t like that the layoffs happened as ultimately real people have lost jobs. But I also can’t disagree with them.
It’s called the economy is shit and even though some of these games are good they are completely unsustainable. The Us Economy is so unstable right now that people are barely eating at McDonald’s anymore to the point where they are missing all their targets.
MS bought all the talent and still found a way to mess it up. Hit franchises just thrown away lol. Theyre a cancer at this point