Earlier this week, Xbox announced that it would be shuttering several studios it had attained as part of its $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda, including Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, and Roundhouse Studios, the last of which is being absorbed into another team. Collectively, the studios’ produced games like Dishonored, Prey, Redfall, Mighty Doom, Hi-Fi Rush, and more. These studios, and some of the more innovative titles that they developed, seemed at one point to be the future of Xbox’s floundering brand. After a downturn in many of Xbox’s large key franchises due to mismanagement, the shifting priorities of its audience, and the Xbox’s dwindling image across the world, titles like the ones these teams were developing seemed like the start of a promising new era for Xbox, one that might be marked by more creative, sustainably made games that weren’t designed to bleed its audience dry. – Moises Taveras Read More
After shutting down multiple Bethesda studios, Xbox and Bethesda leadership held a town hall meeting with staff to discuss the closures, explaining that the company’s studios had been spread too thin and that it wanted to focus on fewer projects moving forward.
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
On May 7, Xbox announced that it was closing three studios—Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush), Arkane Austin (Redfall), and Alpha Dog Games (Mighty Doom)—with a fourth support studio, Roundhouse Studios, being absorbed by the team behind Elder Scrolls Online. According to a new report, on May 8, in the aftermath of these surprising shutdowns, Xbox President Matt Booty and Zenimax head Jill Braff held a large meeting with staff and laid out the reasoning behind the cuts.
As reported by Bloomberg, during the meeting Booty praised Hi-Fi Rush, but wouldn’t go into specific details on why the studio behind the colorful action game had been shut down.
Speaking more broadly about the closings, Booty reportedly explained that Xbox and Bethesda’s studios had become spread too thin, like “peanut butter on bread,” and that team leaders felt understaffed. The idea being that by closing studios, Xbox would free up resources elsewhere within the company. Booty also told staff at the meeting that Akrane Austin’s closing had nothing to do with Redfallflopping with fans and critics.
Reportedly both Tango and Arkane Austin had pitched games to work on next, including a Hi-Fi Rush sequel and possibly a new Dishonored or similar single-player immersive sim-like game. Those likely won’t happen.
Braff allegedly said that she hoped the closing of some studios would allow Bethesda/Zenimax to focus on fewer projects in the future.
“It’s hard to support nine studios all across the world with a lean central team with an ever-growing plate of things to do,” she said, according to a recording Bloomberg reviewed. “I think we were about to topple over.”
Tango and Arkane were trying to hire more people while pitching new games, and both Braff and Booty reportedly suggested that the long, expensive road those teams faced before being able to release something new was the main reason for closing the studios, implying that it was just bad timing as Microsoft looks to trim down costs and overhead. It’s reported that more cuts are likely for Xbox, according to people who spoke to Bloomberg.
It’s also reported that ever since the massive $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition in 2023, Microsoft leaders have been ramping up their scrutiny of the Xbox division. The Verge reported on Wednesday that executives at Microsoft and Xbox had discussed not adding Call of Duty games to Game Pass, and raising the price of Game Pass Ultimate. However, nothing is concrete yet.
Microsoft’s leaders taking a bigger interest in Xbox might help explain why Booty and others are looking to cut costs. Either way, it’s likely more folks at Xbox will lose their jobs in the future.
One of the worst years for cancellations, cuts, and closures in the history of the video game industry has just claimed its next victims, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Developers and fans alike are in disbelief. “Great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it’s a fucking gut stab,” wrote Dinga Bakaba, director at Arkane Austin sister-studio, Arkane Lyon.
Why The Hot New Redfall Gameplay Trailer Left Us Feeling Cold
Set up in 2006, Arkane Austin helped develop the acclaimed 2012 whale-oil-punk immersive sim Dishonored, before leading development on 2017’s haunting sci-fi shooter Prey. Tango Gameworks, meanwhile, was founded in 2010 and is best known for making the Evil Within series of survival horrorgames, before bestowing a collective breath of fresh air on the video game industry last year with the colorful rhythm hack and slash platformer Hi-Fi Rush. Microsoft shut down both studios today, as well as other Bethesda subsidiaries Roundhouse Games and Alpha Dog Games, citing a need to focus on “high-impact” “priority games.”
“This is absolutely terrible,” tweeted Bakaba, co-creative director at the remaining Arkane studio, in the wake of the news. “Permission to be human: to any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry, and your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.”
The Deathloop co-director at the Microsoft-owned studio continued:
Don’t throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don’t make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.
For now, great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it’s a fucking gut stab. Lyon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all this, and respect affected folks’ voice and leave it room to be heard, it’s their story to tell, their feelings to express.
Inside baseball, but if I read ‘immersive sim curse’ from the community, especially from a fellow dev, I swear to God… Please, let’s talk about the *real* challenges instead of rehashing irrational anxieties of the past. Even more inside baseball, but with a very, very wide range, as a wise and sorely missed man said: “Please Stop.”
Harvey Smith, co-director on Redfall at Arkane Austin, called today’s new “terrible,” adding that the team there had been through a lot together. Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays. “Your talent will lift you up, and I will do anything I can to help,” tweeted Smith. John Johanas, game director at Tango Gameworks, was also at a loss. “So this is how it ends…” he wrote. “Unfortunately I don’t quite have the words…But at least thank you to everyone who supported us.”
Back when Microsoft acquired Bethesda in 2021, its burgeoning Game Pass model seemed like a potentially great fit for Arkane Studios, whose creatively ambitious projects didn’t always seem to find the audiences they deserved. If Bethesda would never greenlight a Prey 2, maybe a deep-pocketed tech giant would see it as as a worthwhile addition to its Netflix-like subscription gaming library. If nothing else, the newly acquired teams would have no shortage of other holes to fill in Xbox’s struggling first-party lineup.
Adam Boyes, co-CEO at Iron Galaxy Studios, juxtaposed today’s carnage with Microsoft’s bottom line in a tweet screencapping the company’s recently announced quarterly profits of roughly $20 billion. “It hurts dude… it hurts,” wrote back Rich Lambert, head of ZeniMax Online Studios. “Angry. Frustrated. Shocked. Furious. Speechless. Dumbfounded. Perplexed,” wrote Alistair Hatch, another long-time veteran of Bethesda. “I have so much love for the studios affected. The people that made those teams were incredible, hard working, dedicated, and talented.”
People from other Microsoft-owned studios and outside the company have also been horrified by the news. “We took a lot of inspiration from both Evil Within and Evil Within 2 when developing Alan Wake 2,” tweeted Remedy Entertainment game director Kyle Rowley. “They are both excellent horror games and I’m very sad we will not get to see a continuation of the franchise from Tango Gameworks. “Why do I still do this?” tweeted Obsidian Entertainment communications director Mikey Dowling.
“Arkane did solid work and had a highly talented and motivated staff,” Mike Wikan, the former Retro Studios developer who led design on Metroid Prime, wrote on LinkedIn. “Companies need to understand that burning your Creative Production Studios to the ground is NOT the path to profitability.”
As Microsoft tries to beef up its in-house Xbox studios, it may want to be more careful about leaving a trail of broken promises when things don’t go as planned. A year after the hyped vampire shooter Redfalllanded with a thud, a Kotakureport highlights how players are still waiting for the advertised post-launch DLC they already paid for.
Redfall’s Bite Back Edition is a $100 collector’s variant (or $30 add-on) that includes, among other content, a pass for “two future heroes” to complement the game’s original four. As you may have guessed, the new playable characters still haven’t materialized.
In addition, Microsoft-owned Bethesda has gone silent on the new protagonists’ absence since November. “We’re continuing development of The Hero Pass and we’re excited to share more about Redfall’s new heroes and other updates later next year,” developer Arkane Austin wrote late last year.
At the very least, it seems customers are owed clear communication — or refunds if Bethesda has noped out of further development. Engadget has reached out for comment, and we’ll update this story if we hear back. In the meantime, Kotaku’s reporting on the maddening saga is worth a read.
This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.
After months of silence, vampire shooter Redfall is receiving its biggest update yet following a disastrous launch back in May. The second big patch will add the Game Pass multiplayer game’s long-awaited 60 frames-per-second mode on Xbox Series X/S, as well as a host of gameplay improvements and bug fixes.
Why The Hot New Redfall Gameplay Trailer Left Us Feeling Cold
“Today’s update brings Performance Mode to Xbox Series X/S, stealth takedowns, a bevy of new controller settings, and a lot more changes to Redfall,” the development team wrote on Bethesda’s website. While the 60fps mode is the biggest addition, a raft of accessibility features and improvements to stealth gameplay and aiming sensitivity are also welcome changes. Whether it’s enough to begin addressing some of the deeper disappointment around Redfall’s lackluster enemy encounters and unfulfilling progression system remains to be seen.
Redfall was panned by many critics and players when it launched earlier this year. Expected to be the first-party blockbuster that would end Microsoft’s drought of console exclusives, it instead failed to live up to the months of marketing hype that preceded it. In addition to bugs, performance issues, and complaints about the core gameplay loop, it also launched on the “next-gen” Xbox Series X/S with a “next-gen” price tag of $70 but without the 60fps performance option that players on PC would have access to.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer apologized for the situation at the time, but a report by Bloomberg later revealed other issues underlying the game’s rough development. Made by Arkane, best known for immersive sims like Prey and Dishonored, Redfall was instead an online multiplayer game that at one point was planned to include microtransactions as part of a push by parent company ZeniMax into live-service monetization. While those features were stripped out, a lack of development resources and constant turnover reportedly made it hard for the studio to deliver on Redfall’s confusing blend of genres and gameplay mechanics.
Recently, Bethesda marketing head Pete Hines said in an interview that despite the harsh reception, Redfall wouldn’t be abandoned. Instead, he expected new players joining Game Pass a decade from now to give the game a shot and enjoy it thanks to ongoing post-launch support. With Cyberpunk 2077‘s recent 2.0 victory lap after a botched release, many are wondering if Redfall can pull of something similar, or if Microsoft will pour the money into it required to make that happen.
If it does, it will still have a big uphill battle to fight. The game only has a few dozen players on Steam at any given moment. Still, Redfall’s second update is a start.
Things haven’t been going great for Xbox recently. Microsoft is facing stiff resistance in its attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard. It released hardly any big exclusive blockbusters last year. And it just cut over 10,000 jobs last week, including many senior developers at Halo Infinite studio 343 Industries. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tried to remain upbeat and do damage control on each of these points and more in a new interview with IGN.
“Every year is critical,” he said. “I don’t find this year to be more or less critical. I feel good about our momentum. Obviously, we’re going through some adjustments right now that are painful, but I think necessary, but it’s really to set us up and the teams for long-term success.”
This week captured both the peril and promise facing Xbox right now. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a drop in net-income of 12 percent for the most recent fiscal quarter compared to the prior year. Xbox gaming hardware and software were down by similar percentages, and Microsoft said nothing about how many new subscribers its Game Pass service had gained since it crossed the 25 million mark exactly a year ago.
Then on Wednesday Microsoft provided a sleek and streamlined look at its upcoming games in a Developer Direct livestream copied right from the Nintendo playbook. Forza Motorsport was seemingly quietly delayed to the second half of the year, but looked like a beautiful and impressive racing sim showpiece. Arkane’s co-op sandbox vampire shooter Redfall got a May 2 release date. Real-time strategy spin-off Minecraft Legends will hit in April. And to cap things off Tango Gameworks, maker of The Evil Within, shadow-dropped Hi-Fi Rush on Game Pass, a colorful rhythm-action game from left field that’s already become the first undisputed gaming hit of 2023.
Vivid colors and deep blacks It’s Oscar season which means it’s time to binge all the nominations before the big day. Why not enjoy these pieces of art on a new TV from our friends at Samsung?
“2022 was too light on games,” Spencer confessed in his IGN interview. 2023 shouldn’t be thanks to Redfall and Starfield, Bethesda’s much-anticipated answer to the question, “What if Skyrim but space?” But both of those games were technically supposed to come out last year. Meanwhile, Hi-Fi Rush, like Obsidian’s Pentiment before it, is shaping up to be a critically acclaimed Game Pass release that still might be too small to move the needle on Xbox’s larger fortunes.
Spencer remained vague when asked how successful these games were or their impact on Game Pass, whose growth has reportedly stalled on console. “I think that the creative diversity expands for us when we have different ways for people to kind of pay for the games that they’re playing, and the subscription definitely helps there,” he said.
Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, Starfield, and a new The Elder Scrolls Online expansion due out in June are also all from Bethesda, which Microsoft finished acquiring in 2021. The older Microsoft first-party game studios have either remained relatively quiet in recent years while working on their next big projects, or, in the case of 343 Industries, were recently hit with a surprising number of layoffs.
Following news of the cuts last week, rumors and speculation began to swirl that 343 Industries—which shipped a well-received Halo Infinite single-player campaign in 2021, but struggled with seasonal updates for the multiplayer component in the months since—was being benched. The studio put out a brief statement over the weekend saying Halo was here to stay and that it would continue developing it.
Image: Bethesda / Microsoft
Spencer doubled down on that in his interview with IGN, but provided little insight into the reasoning behind the layoffs or what its plans were for the franchise moving forward. “What we’re doing now is we want to make sure that leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan that they need to go build,” he said. “And Halo will remain critically important to what Xbox is doing, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.”
Where Halo Infinite’s previously touted “10-year” plan fits into that, however, remains unclear. “They’ve got some other things, some rumored, some announced, that they’ll be working on,” Spencer said. And on the future of the series as a whole he simply said, “I expect that we’ll be continuing to support and grow Halo for as long as the Xbox is a platform for people to play.” It’s hard to imagine Nintendo talking about Mario with a similar-sounding lack of conviction.
It’s possible Microsoft’s continued struggles with some of its internal projects is partly why it’s so focused on looking outside the company for help. Currently that means trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion and fighting off an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal trade Commission in the process. Microsoft had originally promised the deal to get Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush would be wrapped up before the end of summer 2023. That deadline’s coming up quickly, even as the company continues offering compromises, like reportedly giving Sony the option to continue paying to have Activision’s games on its rival Game Pass subscription service, PS Plus.
Spencer told IGN he remains bullish on closing the deal, despite claiming to have known nothing about the logistics of doing so when he started a year ago. “Given a year ago, for me, I didn’t know anything about the process of doing an acquisition like this,” he said. “The fact that I have more insight, more knowledge about what it means to work with the different regulatory boards, I’m more confident now than I was a year ago, simply based on the information I have and the discussions that we’ve been having.”
