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Xbox continues its “reset” with dramatic restructuring

28 points dgrin91 1 hour ago 18 comments

datsci_est_2015 41 minutes ago | parent

Idiot directors and VPs don’t realize that the independence is what leads to the games being different enough to justify separate existences. Put the same teams on Halo and CoD and they’ll converge and cannibalize each other.

Or maybe they do realize this and are willing to sacrifice the IP at the altar of Moloch.

Rebelgecko 38 minutes ago | parent

TBH it seems like the Halo teams have been trying to copy COD for a while (going as far as adding COD mechanics to the Halo:CE remake).

If they're under the same roof, my optimistic hope is that they'll try to focus on how to differentiate the IPs. But realistically we'll probably just end up with even more micro transactions

sylens 31 minutes ago | parent

Eh, a lot of these studios have not performed well at all over the last 10-15 years. It seems like Phil Spencer was the type of boss that let these teams run wild and be creative, and all he got back was a bunch of late, over budget, underwhelming games.

Halo Infinite from 343/Halo Studios stands out in particular. They thought that game was ready to ship in late 2020 and showed it off on their summer showcase, where it triggered such an intense backlash they delayed the game for a year and it still came out with minimal content.

Halo and Rare going under Activision could be a good thing. But if you want to be cynical, they are moving all of these studios out of "Microsoft Gaming Studios" and into Activision, Bethesda, King, etc. to make it easier to sell each of those individually or spin off the whole thing altogether.

SllX 10 minutes ago | parent

What is there to sacrifice? There hasn’t been a new Halo game since 2010. Just fan fiction, remakes & anthologies.

unethical_ban 35 minutes ago | parent

>“For Halo, our goal is clear: make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place,”

Are those opposing goals? Why say "while" as if they are in competition with each other?

Iridiumkoivu 34 minutes ago | parent

Guys, there’s now a non-zero chance that we will see a proper official Halo game running on top of a Quake 3 Arena derived game engine within our life-time. Childhood fantasy might become real. “:D”

asdff 33 minutes ago | parent

There hasn't been a proper official Halo game since Reach though.

2OEH8eoCRo0 20 minutes ago | parent

I thought Infinite was quite fun but you could tell they cut a lot of content.

fidotron 32 minutes ago | parent

The astonishing thing with the Halo franchise is that 343 kept being given chances to go again, and again, when it clearly just wasn't working. By the time they get round to releasing a great new Halo people that loved the original will be taking out their pensions.

It cannot be understated the extent to which the console industry, including third party publishers and devs, needs Sony and Microsoft to both stay competitive. In that light the drastic moves being done at MS are long overdue, but maybe not sufficient. It's also an open question if consoles (outside of the Nintendo universe, which is a very different audience) have a future at all.

theandrewbailey 3 minutes ago | parent

Halo used to be what everyone wanted (both to play and dethrone), but now it's standing in the corner eating glue. Moving it under Activision is certainly an extreme measure, but if it means everyone who touched on it in the past 15 years can't anymore, I'm listening.

lain98 29 minutes ago | parent

MS as a company remains perpetually in reset mode.

theandrewbailey 1 minute ago | parent

[delayed]

2OEH8eoCRo0 21 minutes ago | parent

I think they have an impossible task. Make a good product that is a pleasure to use for players and devs while being more profitable.

lenerdenator 19 minutes ago | parent

Their only goal is to be more profitable.

lenerdenator 20 minutes ago | parent

Obsidian became a part of Bethesda, huh?

The Fallout TV show probably had to be the final straw for how much independence Bethesda gets to have. Boy, to have been a fly on the wall in that conference room.

"The TV show is doing gangbusters and you're telling me you don't have any F*CKING RELEASES IN THE CAN?!?! Stick Starfield, Todd, you're done with your 'art'."

mikestew 5 minutes ago | parent

I mean, I'm not even asking for a new installment, but the TV show is in New Vegas now, and not even a remaster of Fallout: New Vegas? In a world gone mad with advertising, I'm truly shocked that the single tie-in was a remaster of Fallout 4.

autoexec 7 minutes ago | parent

I really don't understand the point of Xbox.

Nintendo has the worst hardware, but consistently delivers a small number of really great games you can't play anywhere else. Any game you can play on a Xbox you could also play on a real PC and have a vastly better experience and far more utility. Xbox is just a shitty, ad infested, crippled gaming PC. Playstation is heading in that direction as they lose more exclusives, but at least their hardware is better than Microsoft's so the games look/play better.

Microsoft might as well give up and just sell a bunch of low-mid range gaming PCs in console shaped cases, running windows, ship them with controllers and just brand them as Xboxes. At least for now. Eventually Microsoft wants games as a service, where you buy a dumb terminal/cheap thin client and they stream games you pay excessively high prices for but never actually own to your screen.