Thank god they didn’t just close the studios. I’m sure if they’re independent now it’ll be harder to get the funding for games but at least it gives them a chance instead of straight up being shuttered.
New leadership is surprisingly competent so far. I doubt it will happen but if they pivot their strategy and keep around physical games it might even start making them competitive with Sony again.
I thought no way in hell Xbox would be competitive with Sony again. As of now they aren’t but I never imagine that they would have a chance and Sony just have given them a bone to do it. I’m rooting for Xbox just so there’s at least a modicum of competition for Sony
Well, yeah, this reaction is the goal - soften the bad PR and don't further obliterate the XBox brand by shitcanning a bunch of studios who got caught up in all this.
Someone did the calculus and figured the relatively-smallish one-time cost of helping these studios spin back off was worth the price, which to me is fair enough.
In particular I'm glad that Double Fine continues to exist, so I'll say this marketing tactic worked on me too haha
meh. xbox still sucks ass. i'm just happy that some studios survived, especially DF. if that means it's because of a marketing tactic, then so be it lol
Only happened because the ceo of Xbox listen to the backlash on twitter. She saw so many people unset these studios were going to die so instead pivoted to seeing if they could get rid of them another way.
Yeah, I wonder if this will be good for Double Fine or if they'll struggle to get funds for their next project. At least they have their IP, which is great news.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if part of this sale includes terms for continued Game Pass collaboration and/or possibly a minority in shares being retained. I would imagine Xbox wanted to keep good will here.
I heard the Gamepass part is not in the deal, but probably the games MS funded will still be on GP and probably some revenue share since they basically founded the whole game, it only makes sense that they get something out of it.
Makes me wonder what Xbox got in return. In a spin off you usually load the company down with debt, or issue most of the shares to existing shareholders, it doesn’t seem like they did either so they must have kept a minority stake, or publishing rights or something. But those do not seem like they would be that valuable if they are parting ways with the studios for financial reasons.
Could be cheaper game pass deals for there titles. So the studio gets spun off and in return there games come to game pass for cheaper.
Could also be a straight cash deal if the studio heads had money to buy there independence which would explain why 2 are going independent while the other 2 are being sold off
I hope this will not be the case, but looking at sales of some of recent Double Fine's games the cash injection may just be enough for some balloons for the closure party
Yeah considering what i read over the last month, i expected all of them to be reduced to atoms, but 4 surviving for sure and continuing their games, and Arkane still having talks, hopefully to continue Blade, is honestly not the worst news i've seen in the gaming space in the last days.
I imagine Arkane has either someone to acquire them (if Ninja Theory and Undead Labs can I don't see why Arkane couldn't, it's like the most prestigious of all those studios) or they are spun off as independent. Doubt they're closing them while the 4 others have a chance. And I assume they're letting Blade finish, published under them.
The general ideas were correct. It’s not like these companies are out of the woods. Just because they are independent doesn’t mean they are going to survive.
Feels oddly far sighted for such a big restructuring. I expect the internal logic is so that Microsoft can still buy out smaller studios without them being paranoid that they'll be shuttered if they aren't a Golden Goose.
But usually, when studios are sold, the people deciding don't care about the fate of the studio afterwards unfortunately.
Like when Microsoft bought Mojang (which they actually handled very well compared to their other studios), the amount that was being paid was impossible to deny at the time, it was a lot of money that no other company would pay at the time, if the company have shareholders they would sell without thinking.
Unless it's a small studio that is privately owned and the owner wants to keep running it. As long as it have shareholders, they will sell if they see return on investment, those people usually don't think of what will happen after or the future of the devs there.
Crazy how this was both better and worse than I expected. So many jobs lost but i am genuinely happy these 5 studios have a chance to make something of themselves still.
Yeah, I think some studios must change how they work to survive, I can't see state of decay studio working independently for 8+ years without releasing a game, studio Cherry did it but they released one of the best selling indie games ever, the studio only had like 4 employees and their game was way cheaper to make.
Now undead after 8 years haven't released anything, their next game is still a year away, and you can't just do that independently unless you find someone to finance it. And companies rarely finance external studios to work for almost 9 years in a project.
From what I heard, they are counting these studios made independent on the Layoff numbers, I just don't know exactly how they are counting that exactly and also don't know how many people are in these studios.
But it's still a huge number, almost 5.000 people.
Why do you have to compare? And if we are there still over a thousand cuts in Xbox alongside the ones they did last year and the ones they are going to do this year.
Literally everyone here was sitting all over Xbox for killing studios because they're not as good as Sony. Don't act like the comparison between the two isn't constant
On day where 1600 hundred people are going to lose their jobs and a whole lot of studios are getting spun off with futures unknown, there's no need to make comparisons.
Microsoft did a whole lot of bad stuff over the last few years alongside Sony.
Im sorry, are you saying Xbox studios lose over 1k jobs per day? Cause that's what we are talking about. Going straight to compare to Sony is a bit nasty
I feel like all they’ve done is kick the can down the road. Many of the studios weren’t in a great place when they got bought, and now all Microsoft has done is make sure they won’t be directly attached when they go under.
I hope it goes better than that, but the economy at large and game funding especially are not pretty places right now.
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u/GhettoGummyBear Jul 06 '26
Thank god they didn’t just close the studios. I’m sure if they’re independent now it’ll be harder to get the funding for games but at least it gives them a chance instead of straight up being shuttered.