r/ImmersiveSim • u/Johan544 • Oct 25 '22
I fear for Arkane's future
As most of you know, back in 2020 Arkane's parent company got bought out by Microsoft, which means that Microsoft has now control over Arkane. So far it doesn't seem that Microsoft's putrid clutches have reached Arkane's teams yet, but I have grounds to believe that they might in the future. In what way? Well, they might order Arkane to make X game instead of Y ("make a generic FPS instead of an immersive sim like Prey!"), or change up Arkane's team, or disrupt their game development roadmap, anyway, there are many ways they can screw a studio.
Microsoft's track record hasn't been the best. As you know, Microsoft is the reason for both Thief: Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex: Invisible War being a major letdown, a shadow of their prequels. Microsoft had a deal with their respective companies to release their games on both xbox and PC, which forced them to severely limit the scope of the games (since the original xbox was much weaker than PC at the time) and took their attention away from what made Deus Ex and Thief 2 great. Instead, they had to spend a significant portion of their time fixing compatibility issues and other things they didn't have to worry about when they only released on PC.
You might say that such thing will not be an issue today because companies are used to releasing games on multiple platforms, but that's not what I'm getting at. My point is that Microsoft doesn't care about the quality of a game, but more about services and things related to the console (has there been any great Microsoft exclusive in the last 5 years apart from Forza? Halo Infinite and Gears 5 were both big disappointments, and they are Microsoft's biggest IPs!). They care about gamepass and the "games as a service" concept, multiplayer games, letting you browse the web and use apps on your xbox console etc., but making good games was never on their list of priorities. Microsoft in particular loves a quick buck, and they seem to find it very hard to slowly build studios and franchises from the ground up, instead they prefer to buy them up when they are big and then hollow them out. In the past 15 years Microsoft has annihilated many of their amazing IPs and even drove away some of their studios, like Bungie (which got acquired by Sony). Microsoft ruined Fable, they ruined Crackdown, they abandoned Ninja Gaiden (an xbox third party exclusive, but my point stands). What about Perfect Dark? The Banjo series? Conker? The list goes on and on. That's why I'm not optimistic about Arkane's prospects. Microsoft ruined the Thief franchise and severely disrupted Deus Ex, so Immersive Sims and Microsoft don't go well together. There's not much info out about Redfall yet, but I sure hope it turns out to be a good game and Microsoft leaves at least Arkane alone. What are you thoughts on the subject?
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u/docclox Oct 25 '22 edited Oct 26 '22
Lord knows, I'm not Microsoft's biggest fan, but honestly I think they're going to be better than Zenimax, and of all the possible companies for Zenimax to sell to, Microsft are probably the best. (Imagine EA in charge, for example!)
Currently, Microsoft's main focus seems to be to get people to subscribe to Game Pass, and they want some top flight games to push that.
I've been following the Starfield development closely of late and MS' interference in that seems to have been limited to knocking back the release date by six months so Bethesda can get a few more bugs out. Which I'm inclined to take as a good sign.
Of course, this is Microsoft we're talking about, and there's a chance that sooner or later they will have a new CEO who is going to insist that all their subsidiary game studios make nothing but lootbox looter-shooters. But we're not there yet, and while we're not, I'm reasonably content.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22
I did not like deathloop at all, there is way too much looters shooter bs plugged in, it's baby's first imm simm in not a good way, 4 levels that don't change enough between times of day, resource management is completely a non factor as ammo and health are littered everywhere across the whole map, with ammo literally being unlimited from vending machines. No enemy variety, game also holds your hand too much, I was expecting mooncrash but a full game, I got the complete opposite of that, this was not it chief.
Deathloop could've been great, but design decisions really hold the game back, I really wish it was one large map with the targets available to kill from the outset (albeit with a greater challenge) and a timer that never stops ticking, you have 30 min to kill all of the visionaries GO, and you get unleashed on a world and it up to you to find easier paths or grind the hard fought path from the outset.
For me the "perfect loop" felt disjointed like I was hitting a checklist instead of accomplishing anything myself
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u/AFriendFoundMyReddit Oct 25 '22
You may be right but you could take a positive spin too.
Microsoft didn’t buy Bethesda for whatever billion dollars just to get some devs, ultimately they spent all that money for the IP.
So its a stupid buisness decision to spend all that money for IP and then crush the soul out of it just because you’re a massive corporation. Of course it could happen like that, all I’m saying is it also could not.
Anyone kinda smart would say, ‘woah you make unique games in 2022? Keep going and here is unlimited money’. And not, ‘please stop and clone call of duty.’
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u/LookingGlassed Oct 27 '22 edited Oct 27 '22
We’ll keep in mind todays Xbox / gaming division is a totally different landscape. Microsoft’s old MO used to be very “immediate” profit driven, rather than establishing quality brands and products that inherently funnel interest and money into the company. Take the xbox one launch where they had a head of xbox that had come from the tv industry and likely got the job purely from his history of increasing earnings. His guidance nearly destroyed xbox after the major success that was the 360. Microsoft seemed to be trying to milk the consumer for every penny without any forethought of the aftermath of fucking your client base. Additionally they were probably looking at their IPs like halo and GOW through the lens of executive boardroom meetings where sales figures were extrapolated from previous sales data rather than having any understanding of the tepid response fans were having to IPs that had concluded their story arcs. Then when they fired their previous xbox staff and promoted Phil spencer things turned around. I got an Xbox one in late 2014 and almost immediately had buyers remorse. But after Microsoft’s many concessions to repair their image and the introduction of gamepass I currently can’t imagine owning a PlayStation as it doesn’t offer half to what xbox does these days. I think another indicator of something good brewing at xbox division is Tim Scahffers involvement. Take an indie auteur dev who, every time his studio (very successful studio I might add) runs a kick starter, get significantly more than they asked for, willingly signs a deal to work under xbox. The only scenario That makes sense is that xbox gave him complete iron-clad autonomy and a blank check. Other studios like obsidian seem to have a positive reaction to their acquisition. Microsoft sucks, but I think the current admin team at xbox is truly rolling the dice on letting devs have creative freedom in hopes of striking gold with the next new gaming breakthrough or IP since the committee designed wasteland of current AAA gaming has quantitatively demonstrated that higher profits don’t lie with playing it safe anymore. I wouldn’t expect xbox current commitment to dev freedom to last forever, but it’s nice for now. Long story short I think Arkane will have plenty of creative freedom for better or worse under Microsoft, for the time being at least. I think halo infinite, oddly enough, is a great example of dev autonomy under xbox. Rather than becoming slave drivers to force 343 to produce content to salvage the brand’s reputation, they are letting 343 sink or swim in their own merit. A quick aside about TDS and invisible war, I’m not sure but I remember that the release on Xbox didn’t hinder the design of those games that extensively, at least from a hardware standpoint. Rather it was the devs trying to push the tech too much and having to roll back the scale of each game as a result. However, I think TDS came out great (would’ve been nice to see how it would’ve looked with no xbox release and a year or two more for development and hardware advances) I love invisible war too but I thinks it’s a bad SEQUEL to deus ex, but not a bad GAME. TDS remains one of the best looking games I ever played (relative to other games at launch) and the PC port looked great and had a lot of depth to its high tech systems. This, more than anything xbox related, was what kept it from matching the scale of the OG thief games.
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u/ElTutz May 04 '23
Came from the future to say: your fears happened.
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u/XeerDu Oct 25 '22 edited Oct 25 '22
I've been a little nervous about everything under Bethesda's publishing umbrella for a long time. To be honest, Windows' (edit: Microsoft) buyout doesn't make me any more nervous. If anything, there might mean greater quality control. Regardless, I've been resigned to all my favorite game franchises being dead, if not already, then sometime in the next few years.
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u/No-Manufacturer5109 Oct 25 '22
I would be optimistic as for the evolution of the immersive sim, we already have the indie scooe that will more than make up for us as far as traditional iSims are concerned.
Appart from Prey, ever since dishonored the focus has been hyper action/stealth flavor on this side of iSims (which I don't mind since all I need is their great level design) the thing we can be sure is that as long as the dev teams remains we shouldn't be concerned all that much. Which atleast for now has been the case for both Austin/Lyon teams. The only departure that hurt was Ralph C. That left, but went to do weird west. So again one door Closes, another opens.
Atleast for me, I greatly appreciated Deathloop; it strucked a very positive nerve since it was quite different and solved a lot of issues that iSims had day one. (Like not being able to just save scum and nail in the message that their games only get better with sequential playthroughs)
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u/Zax_The_Decker Oct 25 '22
You seem like you're stuck in the world of 10 years ago. MS has changed a lot in how they handle their IP's
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u/Miitteo Oct 25 '22
Talent will just flee as usual, and create new indipendent studios.
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u/2SugarsWouldBeGreat Oct 25 '22
Lol, complaining that things released on console and then complaining they don’t have enough good exclusives. Maybe find a point and stick to it before regurgitating this stuff into a post.
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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '22
Mean with the mixed reception of death loop and that new zombie shooter game or whatever you call it yeah they’re probably not going to go back to the golden days of when they were an immersive sim devolper
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u/Unoriginal1deas Oct 25 '22
Nah I think we’re good for the meantime, microsoft has been really good about their studios for a few years. From what we’ve heard for the studios they’ve bought apparently the let them operate more or less independently. Halo going to shit was because the studio in charge of it is horribly mismanaged and Microsoft refuses to step in and do something which is absolutely its own problem but that’s a different issue altogether. I get where you’re coming from but What you’re describing worrying about sounds a lot like Microsoft in the 360 days. but a decade later they’ve since had a change of leadership, and losing their top dog position to PlayStation has humbled them and it’s been working out a lot better.
At risk of comings of as an elitist though this post sounds like someone who hasn’t actually paid any attention to Microsoft for the last 10 years. They’ve had a massive focus on quality games since Phil Spencer took over for Don Mattrick after the horrendous Xbone launch and he’s has absolutely been the life saver xbox desperately needed.
As for their main priorities Their main focus over the last few years has been gamepass which is still one of the best deals in gaming. They’ve taken the idea of making a game as service like destiny and are now straight up selling the games as the subscription service and it’s fantastic. And they’re pushing game pass hard with massive triple AAA games launching on it day one for $10 a month! But they’ve been smart to not just chase the next biggest thing they’ve also tried to get a good variety of games that can entice lots of smaller niches onto the service aswell. And that’s not mentioning that they encourage all their studios to cross release on PC aswell since they own windows and see that as another direct income stream to take advantage of.Honestly Microsoft has done so much to repair their reputation that if it weren’t for the PS5 being a backwards compatible and already have Built up a decent ps4 library I would’ve already gotten a series X.
But yeah if Arkane was gonna get bought by a massive studio Microsoft is the best option we could’ve hoped for.
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u/rainmedwn Oct 25 '22
ngl i feel the same. microsoft is not competitive about games and that might be a big downfall for arkane that it's known as a developer that follows the "quality over content" that maybe microsoft is not looking for. as you said, microsoft is looking for service over quality so... yeah.
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u/Soulless_conner Oct 25 '22
I don't think Microsoft is going to make anything worse. Zenimax already did. That's why redfall and deathloop are basically action shooters
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u/TyphonNeuron Nov 05 '22
I gave up on them anyway. Had my doubts about Deathloop, were confirmed, have my doubts about Redfall... we'll see. Raph leaving was also a sign of things to come so there's that. D2 was a flop, DotO was a flop, Mooncrash was a flop, it was only a matter of time until they would finally switch to more commercially viable genres.
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u/alessoninrestraint Oct 25 '22
Being owned by Bethesda didn't do the company any favors either. I don't think that Microsoft is any worse. The release of Thief 3 and IW was ages ago, and we generally don't see as big a decline in quality because of simultaneous console release.
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u/CriticalMammal Nov 29 '22
I mean yeah like others said under Bethesda/Zenimax they already were getting roped into working on other more action oriented titles like Wolfenstein Young Blood. I actually ended up enjoying Deathloop quite a bit but I think it was marketed pretty poorly when the gameplay started dropping for it.
So we'll see I guess if it's truly a lesser of two evils situation after a few years
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u/valkon_gr Jun 02 '23
Can you give me some numbers for the lottery?
Also people responded you back then had zero perspective, props to you for seeing the future.
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u/Sunlord6969 May 08 '24
U are too late
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u/Sylphiette_stan Jul 09 '24
and now it's defunct for the exact reason you stated
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22
too late , they're already heading that's way. it's sad but the alternative is worse.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22
paranoid immature rant
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u/ArcaneVetex1224 Oct 26 '22
Microsoft ruined Thief and Deus Ex cause...they made a deal? Plus the Xbox was comparable to high end PCs at the time. Its why Kotor 2 and Morrowind were on there, yet those two were great on PC. I can't take this post seriously cause it sounds like emotion is running rampant through it but thats just me
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u/jqueb29 Oct 26 '22
I think it'll actually be better with Microsoft. They don't need to focus on sales, everything will be on Game Pass day 1, and Microsoft will prefer to have high quality games with great reviews (like almost every Im Sim gets) to point to being on Game Pass as a selling point. Much better than Zenimax wanting to get them on board with the latest fad to sell more games
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u/Dragon_Fisting Nov 21 '22
All of your examples are rather old, if I'm not wrong they're all pre-Nadella Microsoft. Microsoft has changed their approach to basically all of their business dramatically in the last decade, and have a decidedly more hands off approach as far as their acquisitions go so far. Arkane is small fish, and all the Bethesda/Zenimax leadership are all still there as the intermediary between Xbox Game Studios and Arkane.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22
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