(gentle music) – [Falcon] So, Microsoft has done something quite rash. Back in 2021, Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media, which means they bought Bethesda, which means they bought a bunch of studios that Bethesda owns. And Microsoft decided to close a bunch of ’em. Among those are Arkane Austin, the division of Arkane Studios that was in charge of “Prey,” Tango Gameworks, who brought us the widely different titles, “Evil Within” and “Hi-Fi Rush,” both wonderful games for very different reasons. And they’re also closing Alpha Dog Games, the makers of “Mighty Doom,” a mobile game, and Roundhouse Studios. So, what is this? Hi folks, it’s Falcon, and today on “Gameranx,” we ask the question, what the hell is going on at Xbox? So, from a business perspective, let’s say you buy a bunch of things that make things that make money, and then you take a hammer and you destroy those things. Are you a good businessman? (laughs) No, you’re not. And that’s what happened here. It’s also what a lot of big gaming companies have done in the past, EA in particular, and it’s true that the gaming industry as well as most industries, are feeling the burn, which by the way, wrong tagline for the controller they announced hours after closing all these studios. “Hey kids, it’s me, Microsoft. I’ve closed a bunch of your favorite studios, leaving you to feel burned and you should, you should feel the burn today!” When people got angry about that, they changed it pretty quick. But back to what I was saying, industry-wide things are not going as good as they were when everybody was locked in their house with nothing to do. Kind of not the biggest shock in the world, and then we consider the whole inflation problem and stuff going on in geopolitics. It’s not shocking that it’s harder to make money right now. And while Xbox’s cloud services have been making a lot of money for them, makes perfect sense, honestly, their hardware sales, which includes Surface, it’s not just Xbox, but all of their hardware sales across the board are not doing good. Xbox is of course the premier brand regarding all of that is certainly the most successful thing that they have come up with in terms of hardware. And if that’s not doing great, there’s problems. So that’s the criteria we have going in. And then Arkane Austin, for instance, was tasked with making “Redfall,” a live service game that nobody at the studio wanted to make. Yes, there was a cool idea for a world, but no, these are people who, A, were not experienced at live service games, and B, did not want to make live service games. Both Arkane Lyon, the original French studio, and Arkane Austin’s expertise is entirely in single player, immersive sim-based, shooter/stealth games. And “Redfall” ain’t that. We could go into the development of “Redfall” all we wanted, but it’s a game that suffered a lot. Watch the video for full details.
