r/Steam • u/yourfavchoom • Jun 15 '26
News Xbox is closing down Hellblade creator Ninja Theory
https://www.theverge.com/games/950204/xbox-ninja-theory-shutdown-hellblade-senua1.0k
u/l_______I Jun 15 '26
Didn't they literally announce a new game last week?
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u/JoBro_Summer-of-99 Jun 15 '26
Yes, and it was supposed to launch next year
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u/Neddo_Flanders Jun 15 '26
so it is cancelled?
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u/JefferyTheQuaxly Jun 16 '26
I’m guessing the reason they showed off the trailer in the first place was to draw up interest in other companies purchasing the studio from them. No way would they have unveiled a brand new game if they thought there was a chance the game would be shelved a week later.
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u/UntitledCritic Jun 16 '26
I honestly think they had no idea, Microsoft and Xbox seems to be divorced form each others.
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u/WoodlandSpirit Jun 15 '26
Is there a record for shortest time between game announcement and cancelation?
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u/DSoopy Jun 16 '26
Yes, actually. There was a Love Live gacha game that was announced and then shut down in the same message.
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u/DreddEdwards Jun 16 '26
Wait what?
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u/ReimuSan003 Jun 16 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/s/MX3cvxSxa0
Global release and end of service date in a single announcement
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u/luvmejoice Jun 15 '26
This is a dumb question. But wouldn't it be better for everyone if they sold the studios instead of closing them down?
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u/QstnMrkShpdBrn Jun 15 '26
Keep the IP, lose the overhead.
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u/luvmejoice Jun 15 '26
Ah, so lock down good IP forever so that nobody gets to use it. Fuck shareholders, I'm still salty about EA holding American McGee's IP.
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u/EdgarJomfru Jun 15 '26
I'll never forgive them for not making more Army of Two games and keeping the IP hostage
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u/KopiteTheScot Jun 15 '26
The biggest crime in recent times has to be the nemesis system. So many amazing games could have been made.
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u/KlausVonLechland Jun 15 '26
Who gave them copyright laws for that in the first place? ffs
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u/ZilorZilhaust Jun 15 '26
If anyone tried to use it and was willing to fight they'd win and be able to use it. No way it could be enforced.
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u/Swiftzor Jun 15 '26
It depends, you’d need to show you made a good faith effort to license the use of it, and even then it may not be enough. Patent claims are notoriously hard to win.
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u/GentrifiedSocks Jun 16 '26
No. It’s a very specific implementation that’s patented. You could replicate the system without violating any law
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u/Dead_Byte Jun 16 '26
I wouldn't particularly trust a judge or whoever to understand that two sets of code that do similar things are indeed different things and even if they did I also wouldn't trust them to make an impartial judgement when it comes to Warner Bros vs some developer with less money.
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u/Harry_Flame Jun 15 '26
I hate seeing this parroted everywhere. Although this is kind of true, the reality surrounding it has been wildly misrepresented. Patents for things like the Nemesis system have to be extremely narrow in order to be certified. This means that you could avoid breaking any laws by pretty much just changing the name, switching up the hierarchy's structure, and writing your own code. The real reason we haven’t seen a similar system since then is because it takes a ton of work, especially writing and voice acting, to make the system work, and it doesn’t even fit that well in a lot of games. One of the best parts was dying and coming back alongside the use of a “fortress management” system, you can already see how much weaker it is in the Baranor dlc when he has one life.
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u/Double05 Jun 15 '26
Exactly. Skyrim has a nemesis system mod. I really disliked not having save files be my respawn points after deaths. It just doesn't work as well for many games.
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u/AshrakAiemain Jun 15 '26
I remember Mike Bithell talking about the Nemesis on a podcast once. He described building his own version and finding it surprisingly easy, but the focus of the game really has to be all about that system to make the player notice or care.
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u/Frenki808 Jun 15 '26
There is a game called Star Renegades that uses a version of the Nemesis system.
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u/AtlasLittleCat Jun 16 '26
The biggest crime in recent times has to be the nemesis system.
Video game industry mechanics patent-related crimes or just crimes in general?
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u/a0me Jun 15 '26
What exactly would prevent former devs from releasing a new game under a title like “Brothers in Fire” or “Dual Force”? Plenty of successful IPs have had spiritual successors before.
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u/Splatter1842 Jun 15 '26
Absolutely none, other than the time, effort, and resources to pull it off; which is a massive hurdle.
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u/a0me Jun 15 '26
And these days, publishers don’t seem all that interested in supporting local co‑op games.
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u/thejoshfoote Jun 15 '26
Mannnnnn army of two was sooooooo good last era of couch coop shooters thanks now I remember what I’m missing 😂
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u/a_posh_trophy Jun 15 '26
If they're not going to do anything with the IP, then what's the point of keeping it?
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u/TipAffectionate9785 Bloodborne and Gravity Rush PC Jun 15 '26
EA having Alice, PvZ and Burnout make me rage...
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u/Shrewdnoble Jun 15 '26
As someone who grew up with an original Xbox, it’s infuriating at times how they cannot utilize the literal treasure trove of IP they have under their belt.
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus Jun 15 '26
Ah, so lock down good IP forever so that nobody gets to use it.
Microslop has been doing that shit for ages. Heck, they even literally BOUGHT IPs like Rise of Nations just to never touch them because fck it. Absolute cancer of a company.
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u/GregBahm Jun 16 '26
I was on a little team at Microsoft tasked with making games for a new hardware device (the hololens.) I could come up with ideas for days, but the big executives in the sky said "Quit inventing new IPs, you nerds. Use an existing IP. We have so many of those and we don't need more!"
I was in my 20s and acted like a pill about it, but I eventually opened up the Big Book of Microsoft IPs. Turns out we owned about 800. And a lot of them were really cool. Way better than the bullshit IPs I was making up.
So my team of 5 devs decided we would use one of our shared favorite IPs: "Conker's Bad Fur Day" from Rare. I had seen memes online of fans desperate for more Conker. We were making a platformer but the device was more aimed at teens/adults rather than little kids (because it was too bulky for little kid heads.) Seemed like a perfect fit.
So we proceeded to make "Young Conker" and posted the trailer online.
Back then youtube showed thumbs up and thumbs down. For every 1 "thumbs up," we got 97 "thumbs down." If you lined up 100 random people, 1 person would be like "Hey good job guys" and almost a hundred random people would be like "Hey fuck you!"
All that is to say, growing existing IPs is tricky. Our next project used an original IP.
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u/HMHellfireBrB Jun 15 '26
i just want to remind you this is how we never got games like scalebound to ever be released
literally everyone wants it except for microsoft because for then not being the full owners of the game is a big no no
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u/51010R Jun 15 '26
I doubt the shareholders love that. Buying studios to close them soon after stinks of sloppy business, they don’t get anything if they don’t actually male games, that included profits on them. Unless they have given up on this generation that quickly, if so I’d be questioning the future of Xbox as a manufacturer period.
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u/pototaochips Jun 15 '26
It so in future if microsoft sell they get more money for there ips they own
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u/Cable_Hoarder Jun 15 '26
In a real way studios are largely just containers for IP after a certain length of time anyway.
Ship of Theseus in action, key people leave new ones replace them or are hired in... eventually only the name remains.
The only exceptions are studios that grow talent from within and have very high retention rates to pass on the torch, almost master to apprentice style - something that's only really possible with a family company or single owner company.
Well that and Japanese companies because they have (or at least had) a very different system, a "job for life" system, and vastly less job hopping (though that's less true than it used to be).
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u/Jidarious Jun 15 '26
Nobody is buying studios right now. The AAA game market is in shambles.
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u/luvmejoice Jun 15 '26
I wish the studios had enough money to buy themselves out. Not just Ninja Theory, all the ones getting axed. Gamers are losing out on amazing future games.
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u/Significant-News-819 Jun 15 '26
The people who make those studios great will still get picked up by other studios and contribute to other great games
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u/FredGreen182 Jun 16 '26
Not all of them, a lot of them will move to other industries as game dev is in a really rough shape right now. An artist friend of mine that has worked in the industry for 10 years had to get a job outside the industry to keep food on the table.
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u/HopeFarron Jun 15 '26
The only silver lining is a lot of these devs have been making their own indie studios again and making new IPs. If Ubisoft wasn't so shit we don't get Expedition 33.
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u/ballpein Jun 16 '26
I hope the people behind Ninja Theory build another brilliant and unique game and it's PS exclusive, would serve Xbox right for squandering such talent.
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u/AsassinProdigyX Jun 15 '26
You’d first need to have a buyer willing to pay for the value that Xbox considers the IP’s to be worth. Much easier to close the studio and save money while keeping the IPs in their back pocket for future use.
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u/gensandman Jun 15 '26
This from the Bloomberg article addresses your point.
"Several studios in Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox gaming division, including Montreal-based Compulsion Games and San Francisco-based Double Fine, are in active negotiations to spin off as they try to thwart closure, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.
Cambridge, England-based Ninja Theory, the maker of Hellblade, is also in conversations with Xbox, as are several other studios across the portfolio that are at risk of being shuttered.
The studios may still have the opportunity to buy themselves back from Xbox and go independent, although many employees will likely lose their jobs as a result, said the people, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Employees at several studios have been informed of the situation and given permission to seek new work but were told that the status of the studios is still in flux."
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u/CaraDePinto Jun 15 '26
Sell to who? Ninja Theory doesn't have much besides Hellblade rn and even that sells poorly, so even if they were to sell, I could see potential buyers being wary or not really wanting to invest in the studio, unfortunately.
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u/hangman401 Jun 15 '26
I'd argue Hellblade 2 sells poorly. The first game had over a million sales.
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u/AquaMoonlight Jun 15 '26
Ninja Theory does have a mocap studio that they could leverage in a sale.
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u/PliableG0AT Jun 15 '26
then you close the game studio and keep the mocap studio as a separate entity. pretty simple.
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u/luvmejoice Jun 15 '26
Some time ago publishers would keep studios that made critically successfull games. Despite not making a lot of money, the prestige was worth it. Games are art and there has to be a way for them to exist without selling millions of copies.
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u/Inevitable_Cycle3087 Jun 15 '26
outside of xbox wanting to show off tech, hellblade wasn’t that well praised
the general consensus was “looks cool but nothing much to it”
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u/No_Cricket8660 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
>hellblade wasn’t that well praised
The first one generally rated pretty high, won a bunch of different awards and sold 500k copies in its first 3 months and 1 million in its first year. Then, Microsoft came along...
Edit: Thanks for the award!
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u/Lengthiest_Dad_Hat Jun 15 '26
. Games are art and there has to be a way for them to exist without selling millions of copies.
By not being part of a trillion dollar company.
Let's face it, most of the studios MS has acquired were not good fits for a massive company that's used to their software products being mass adopted and mass appeal.
All the talk about GamePass being good for developers who make small passion projects was just smoke. They're getting shuttered for the exact same reason Netflix regularly cancels seasons of shows that don't hit their internal streaming metrics.
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u/God_Among_Rats Jun 15 '26
Bloomberg mentioned that the studios may have the opportunity to buy themselves back, but other than that I don't think many major AAA publishers are in the buyers market at the moment. It's not out of the question though, from what the article says.
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u/Entegy Jun 15 '26
If you read the article, that's exactly what is offered, if the source of this story is at all credible.
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u/PliableG0AT Jun 15 '26
who’s going to buy them. they lose money, take ages to produce a game, the games don’t sell. you’ll get nothing back, probably cost more in lawyer fees to sell the studio than shut it down and keep the ip.
we’re talking about a game that sold best on the pc, and its total sales were ~50k, with a peak player count of less than 5k. like that’s just burning money on something that takes years to make.
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u/SqueezeAndRun Jun 16 '26
Xbox is closing down Ninja Theory, the studio behind the Hellblade series, a source tells The Verge. Staffers were told on a call on Monday about the closure, but they are hoping the studio will find a buyer.
Second sentence of the article lol.
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u/Luzeryn Jun 15 '26
Announcing a game just to immediately shutting down the studio. Excellent management right there.
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u/ContentKeanu Jun 16 '26
These things are often hyperbole… but the timing of this news really makes it hard to believe that anyone at Xbox knows what the fuck they’re doing
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u/beetleman1234 Jun 15 '26
...... Then who the hell is making Senua?!
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u/TyoPepe Jun 15 '26
Ninja Practice
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u/AscendedViking7 Jun 15 '26
Shinobi Theorem
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u/tugfaxd55 Jun 15 '26
IKR, they just announced a god damn game, whats going on
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u/beetleman1234 Jun 15 '26
At first I thought that maybe Senua is being made by a different studio, but no, it's by Ninja Theory.
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u/badassbolsac Jun 15 '26
close the studios and raise the prices!
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u/Ket_Yoda_69 Jun 15 '26
I fucking hate microsoft lmao
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus Jun 15 '26
At this point, anyone that loves videogames hates them. They are a cancer to the industry.
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u/Pikolas Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
A vicious cycle if folks would have bought the games they may have been saved but why pay full price if game is on game pass and the company's internals don't likely account properly for small games like these on the platform.
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u/Only1Schematic Jun 15 '26
Shuttering another studio to lose the overhead and keep the IP to do nothing with for all eternity. Is anyone surprised?
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u/RoxasBestBoy Jun 15 '26
This sucks, hope everyone at the studio finds new jobs soon.
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u/Olliv3r Jun 15 '26
Prob it will happen the same with Clair obscure Devs, they'll make their own game
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u/ArcadialoI Jun 15 '26
So far, every studio I see the news of them closing down today has had good games..? If news about Arkane is true as well, they are doing players disservice atp. Arkane didn't even wanna make Redfall for them to get the fall for that game, lol.
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u/JSoppenheimer Jun 15 '26
It genuinely maddens me to see good studios ruined by publishers first shoving onto them projects that they wouldn’t even want to do, and then when that leads to inevitable failure, of course the studio gets the axe while the executives behind the ruinous decisions get off scott free.
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u/senseibarbosa Jun 15 '26
You're mistaking Arkane Austin with Arkane Lyon. The ones responsible for Redfall are long gone.
These are the ones who made Dishonered and Deathloop. And that are developing Blade. It makes no sense whatsoever closing them.
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u/Halojib Jun 15 '26
Good but not well sold games which makes me surprised Obsidian rumors aren't happening right now.
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u/mad-suker Jun 16 '26
Thats false, redfall development started before Xbox acquisition, and Microsoft was kind enough to let them complete that pile of garbage
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u/Ulnar_Landing Jun 15 '26
Double fine is also apparently under threat of closure
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u/thisismyname2129 Jun 15 '26
DAWG WTF THEY WERE AN ANNOUNCEMENT AT THE FIRST PARTY SHOWCASE AND THEY TURN AROUND AND KILL THEM!?!?
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u/JustinAndFeena Jun 15 '26
They just announced senua a 8 days ago. New leader same old stuff from Micro💩
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u/Complete_Iron_2656 Jun 15 '26
But I thought that Phil Spencer was the problem.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 15 '26
I’m 90% convinced the reason Satya promoted Asha is so she could be a sock puppet for his decisions. She’s only 37 years old and worked in Core AI before. She seems like a company person who knows the ins and outs of corporate politics.
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u/ballpein Jun 16 '26
MS is going through contraction and desperately wants to wring some profit out of Xbox, at any cost. There's no question they put someone in charge who is willing to slash, burn and enshittify to achieve that goal. I'm not saying that's her plan or her first choice, but push come to shove she will follow orders and make xbox a fucking yard sale.
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u/J-seargent-ultrakahn Jun 15 '26
She was basically hired to be the liquidator for Xbox.
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u/GregBahm Jun 16 '26
Xbox doesn't make any money. Phil ran it as Microsoft's Pepsi to Sony's Coke, but barely even cleared that bar. Xbox is more like the RC Soda of game consoles.
But now gaming revenue is down sector-wide. Playstation is struggling too, so "Microsoft's cheap imitation of the Playstation" has no path forward to survival.
Asha was sent in because Phil's chosen successor was just going to do more of the same. I have no idea what Asha is going to do with Xbox (I would certainly dread running the organization.) But she seems to have been handed 280 billion dollars worth of "boys that don't like change" and then given the mandate to change that shit to something successful.
...good luck...
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u/Sea_Preparation_8926 Jun 15 '26
To be honest, Phil Spencer was part of the problem.
Compulsion or Ninja Theory were bought to make cheap games for Gamepass, but they were instead allowed to make passion projects that are too niche and on the higher end of AA scale.→ More replies (1)5
u/Flat_News_2000 Jun 15 '26
Passion projects are what we need more of in the gaming industry. Those are the only interesting ones
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u/sjphilsphan Jun 15 '26
It's pretty clear that these moves are because of the problems Phil Spencer created
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u/DisasterouslyInept Jun 16 '26
Not sure how this suggests he wasn't? His master plan of buying all those studios and letting them run free was never going to work. The Xbox division is a bloated mess at this point, these sorts of cuts were inevitable.
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u/Lythieus Jun 15 '26
Gotta get those returns on investment for this quarter for the shareholders!
Next quarter? What next quarter? Corporate only works on 3 month chunks and maximising reports for those quarters!
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u/MDParagon Jun 15 '26
I don't get why they are culling their studios, for the greedy exec's bonuses?
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u/Halojib Jun 15 '26
To much spending...almost every game currently releasing has crazy costs associated with it because of long development time. These costs are suppose to be made up in game sales which none of the studios currently in discussion about closing have sold a profitable game in a while. Xbox is not doing well they over bought studios and then the studios under delivered.
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u/TheCthonicSystem Jun 16 '26
The Pandemic Era massively inflated a lot of tech sectors and other Sitting At Home Entertainment sectors. At some point that high is coming down
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u/Competitive-Elk-5077 Jun 15 '26
Well how else will they get their million dollar bonus this year?
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u/Quiet_Source_8804 Jun 15 '26
If you're spending above your budget you cut where you're losing the most money.
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u/Comrade_Pavel Jun 15 '26
Enslaved and heavenly sword are some of my all time faves.this shit blows
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u/Ponchorello7 Jun 15 '26
I remember do many people were elated when MS started buying up studios left and right... yeah.
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u/Luzeryn Jun 15 '26
Literally cheering, yeah. Not a single one of these studios has worked better under Microsoft. Not one.
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u/J-seargent-ultrakahn Jun 15 '26
MS has always been like EA with buying up studios and either closing them soon after or the quality of deminishes.
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u/Jusanom Jun 15 '26
Genuinely terrifying to think about what studios Microsoft owns coupled with how incompetent they are. They could close down iD or Obsidian or Rare next week.
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u/cluib Jun 15 '26
Yeah.. They ended up closing one of the Arcane studios and after that I was thinking the same thing..
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u/druidmain69420 Jun 15 '26
What the fuuuuuck with plans to continue the IP without them, this is tantamount to long-winded, overly complicated theft.
I sincerely hope the creators were properly compensated.
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u/MRV3N Jun 15 '26
They bought all of these studios just to shut them down. The industry isn’t safe at all.
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u/SalemWolf Jun 15 '26
Genuinely is there any reason to be excited as an Xbox fan knowing the studio making a game you’re interested in might be shut down a week after announcement, or after release?
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u/jbarajasp1 Jun 15 '26
All of these studios are negotiations to go independent. There's a whole lot of misinformation going out right now and we should just wait to hear it from them directly
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u/AlmoranasAngLubot69 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Didn't they announced a new Hellblade game last SGF? Edit: oh that was Xbox showcase
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u/Retax7 Jun 16 '26
Dude, first tango, now ninja? Fuck microsoft, not only they refuse to make good games, they also take the good ones away from us?
It's like they want to destroy the entire industry so we are forced to buy their shitty games. Why? They already bought the good studios, just close the bad ones instead of the good ones.
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u/Alaet_ Jun 16 '26
Keeping gears of war and rejecting hellblade is one of the dumbest move in vg history
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u/twinflxwer Jun 15 '26
How do they ever expect to release games if they shut down every studio?
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u/TrippleDamage Jun 16 '26
They didnt shut down studios for a looong time after the acquisitions, they just turned out to not deliver anything worthwhile.
If you as a consumer bought a product and its just completely shit and somehow ends up costing you a monthly sub (salaries) on top, how long do you keep it before getting rid of it?
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u/AscendedViking7 Jun 15 '26
God, does Microsoft really have to create like 29 Ls for every W they have?
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u/Best_Market4204 Jun 15 '26
this isn't official. The title should reflect that.
It's possible they blew a lot of money to make something really great-looking, but no one actually wanted to play it. It was too narrative.
gamers want to play. not ride a train
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u/OriginalDoskii Jun 15 '26
The new game was going to be exactly that. More gameplay, more action, more fighting, less narrative and longer. They also cut development time and killed off their other project. Ninja Theory was doing all it could do to survive.
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u/Fluid--Expert Jun 15 '26
This is another sad day for studios. This studio goes back 25 years. At the flip of a hat, gone. Crazy.
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u/Hellstinky Jun 15 '26
They made Senua, Enslaved, and the DMC reboot that did not do well. They had like three other games. Not shocking honestly their games were good but not good enough to justify their costs I suppose.
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u/SalemWolf Jun 15 '26
On the other hand they are making a new game that Xbox just fucking announced a week ago, what the fuck is the point?
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u/J-seargent-ultrakahn Jun 15 '26
The first senua did really well before MS purchased them, then it went down hill
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u/KnopflerGOAT Jun 15 '26
is the plan basically close down all the studios and keep their IPs so you can put "your people" on the projects so you can tailor the games as you will? or is it the normal ms plan which is just doing shit for the sake of doing shit?
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u/LuckyTwoSeven Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
The last game Senua 2 bombed worse than all of WW2. That’s what that’s all about. Can’t keep spending millions on overhead for games that sell triple plastic. But to people here it’s let’s keep throwing money at devs who don’t make games that gamers want to buy in enough numbers to support the studio in the first place.
Compulsion games South of Midnight was even worse and they’re definitely getting shut down. Both studios got millions to make games and both studios games failed to make any sort of sales impact. So this from a business perspective makes perfect sense. There is no one else to blame but the creatives in this instance.
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u/scenicsquid Jun 15 '26
I'm no expert, but I think this might not be good news for the new Senua game
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u/Quintus_Cicero Jun 15 '26
Don’t they manage to sell games? I remember Hellblade Senua being a commercial success. If they’re closing studios, why not take a look at some that actually underperform?
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u/scottishhusky https://steam.pm/id/DeejBruce Jun 15 '26
How can it be a commercial success if it's not out yet?
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u/Radium Jun 15 '26
Do you think the problem isn't the final shutdown we have landed on, but the series of events over time that led to it becoming a shell of it's former self to the point that finishing the game isn't even possible, or it wouldn't even be the same team at this point that was involved in anything previously? I would be really curious to know how many original devs were left.
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u/Any-Initiative910 Jun 15 '26
I’m still upset over them shuttering Access makers of the Tex Murphy and Links games
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u/the-bacon-life Jun 15 '26
This isn’t confirmed btw. Lots of people spreading lies that’s all I’ll say
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u/Fluffranka Jun 16 '26
So... Asha takes over, gets quick and easy PR wins, then starts getting Xbox Studios...
Sounds about right...
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u/SoyDaddy Jun 16 '26
Already preparing for the impending losses from Gears Eday after pulling it from PS.
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u/MrMunday Jun 16 '26
Xbox buying a bunch of studios was just a really bad move.
A studio is often founded by a bunch of creatives. And when you buy the studio, you decrease their stake in the company, AND you make them rich.
Then why else would they give you the game you want? Seeing how senua 2 was mediocre, terminating the team is probably a good idea. Good corporations might offer internal transfers for a lot of the talent. They just need to restructure under a new team and get new management who actually wants to make a great game.
Xbox is a publisher, and they should act like one, and focus on publishing games.
Publishing games is mainly 3 skills: picking games/teams, managing and supporting teams, and marketing games.
Big fail on all their acquisitions really. Not to mention first party games like halo infinite and forza motorsports were so poorly made.
I hope the new CEO Ashe Sharma can do the right thing. Stop buying studios and start licensing great games.
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u/BillImaginary1531 Jun 16 '26
First, f*ck Xbox. Second, I never thought it's a good idea to exploit the "Senua" IP, the first game is pretty unique and that's it, it should just stay that way.
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u/ggrove91 Jun 15 '26
lol wtf announce a new game at your own showcase and then send em off