He means first party software development for 360.
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Phil Spencer: "I know we have to take risks [after Scalebound cancellation],"
- Thread starter Alpha Phoenix
- Start date
He means first party software development for 360.
Fata1moose
Banned
Fable Legends was a risk, still nothing like it on the market. Yet it never got a proper chance.
From the sounds of it, they underestimated how much people would want a remake, tried to retool it to expand the project and it was going to be too much to change with what they had given the dev. It was super disappointing.
Iced Arcade
Member
Game was leading up to be the next too human and maybe they didn't want that again.
daTRUballin
Member
What game? Scalebound or Phantom Dust?
Norse
Member
This has always been my beef. Don't show shit at e3 unless it's going to ship before the next e3.
ok, so 20m to make.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Note: if you want publishers to actually switch to this, get ready for a couple extremely boring E3s as they draw down older content, and then extremely uneven E3s going forward.
JesseEwiak
Member
The actual problem is that the gaming industry is this weird beast where everybody tries to keep secret what everybody else is working on. I mean, everybody knows what movie is being worked on the second it gets greenlit. That hasn't seemed to make Hollywood implode.
Particularly as MS is at the start of a new cycle with Scorpio and most of the projects are just starting. I expect a lot of CG trailers like ReCore.
Not really feasible. How can you predict delays?
IgotElbows
Member
"...you can expect Microsoft to of course continue to invest in projects from its own studios as well."
Aka more Halo, Gears, and Forza.
Aka more Halo, Gears, and Forza.
100%TrophyMaster
Member
MS needs to expand on exclusive IP's outside of Halo, Forza, and Gears if they want to stay relevant. They need to bring in the crowd who isn't all in on FPS/racing if they want to compete. Give me Sunset Overdrive, Ori, and Alan Wake sequels. Expand on Rare games like Perfect Dark and Banjo. They should do something different like an exclusive horror IP or anything at this point to get gamers back. I loved my 360 and I own an X1 but I haven't felt the need to go back in quite some time. They need to knock it out of the park at E3 this year--rooting for them to succeed with Scorpio
Geez, now I'm sad. The cynic in me is saying they're doing this because Halo 6 isn't going to feature splitscreen again and they don't want to put out a Halo game that featured 4 player online splitscreen for its multiplayer now that Halo 5 has come out and Halo 6 is coming up. Sigh...I would love a Halo 3 Anniversary but Frankie was pretty adamant in another thread that there's going to be no such thing
Dlacy13g
Member
So now games need to have sequels to prove risk?
CassidyIzABeast
Member
All of those games are Phil's. He's been in charge of first party games since 2008 back when he was General Manager and then took over for Shane Kim as Corporate VP in 2009.Is Phil the only person to blame for all the incidents & lack of action that has clouded Xbox's current situation? Probably not. But as he said, being the head of Xbox, he bears the tip of the spear and brunt of the responsibility.
I sincerely hope what the insiders have been hinting in regards to lack of big & new unexpected announcements is not true, because honestly 2017 is kinda the make-or-break point where we should stop giving Phil a pass because if we look at video games development as a 3-5 years journey, we're approaching the 4 year mark of his tenure.
I made this in response to Welfare asking about games greenlit after Phil took over, and anecdotally, I think the ones in green are ones that are greenlit after Phil took over. Orange is uncertain, since the time when Xbox bought Gears and gave it to Black Tusk is blurry in the early 2014 period. And not sure when Sea of Thieves got greenlit too.
Not a very nice picture in terms of announcements. If anything, E3 this year needs to doubly impress because last year was pretty weak in terms of announcements.
Nah. To me it seems like they have obliviously withheld at least a couple of games that are going to suddenly drop out of nowhere. Usual MS modus operandi, shift all development to the next thing.
I am surprised that some Xbox fans are this pessimistic.
The question is that are they going to keep their promise and release those games for OG Xbox One as well?
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
One thing is for sure, Phil's position is more difficult than the positions of 98% of people posting about how badly he is doing his job... lol
I think it just means that Phil isn't all powerful or knowing and that he doesn't have a blank check. He is beholden to his superiors.
If I had to take a guess now after digesting the info and letting the pain of the cancellation subside so that I could take a step back and look at it from a different perspective I would speculate that both parties where partly to blame.
I think that at one point PG was meeting all of their deadlines and things where going really smoothly and this made Phil overly confident and so he dedicated larger portions of his finite budget to other projects.
These other projects are going amazingly well and are looking very promising and they are making all of their deadlines.
All of a sudden PG isn't making their deadlines for some reason and the budget is stretching thin. (and this very well could be because MS was asking to much of them suddenly or something else that MS might have done, we just don't know yet. But what I will say is that I personally don't think Spencer himself would want to do this to a dev team as well as his reputation so it probably came from higher ups if it happened at all that is.)
So what do you do if you are in charge? You just started a bunch of projects and signed deals with these people that they just need to meet their deadlines and they are and the projects look amazing on top of it. On the other hand you have a project that has been missing deadline after deadline.
That is a tough role to be in. That is all I am saying.
anothertech
Member
No no no, it's not the showing sht that matters. It's the cancelling sht. We love seeing everything a year or two out, that's fine. But when it get cancelled, that's the beef.
That bolded part is what we don't know and what we need to know to actually decided who might be at fault here. The reason some people are confused is because Platinum is known for meeting deadlines, working with smaller budgets and getting a game out (whether good or bad, see Transformers or Kora)
Except the next thing, isn't really next, is it? All games coming out of them should be for this phase, and that includes all currently in circulation boxes for the end of 2017 and the foreseeable future of this generation.
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
Right, but do we always know exactly what any developer is working on? I made a point in my other post that the reason it hurts so much is that we saw so much of it. But that projects from huge studios and prolific devs get canned all the time but we just don't hear about it. So unless we know every single thing PG are working on 24/7 then we don't know how many of their projects don't come to light.
Also, it was their most ambitious project. I mean even the greats can make a mistake and bite off more than they can chew. I'm not saying that that is what happened just that it shouldn't be removed from the equation as a possibility.
This.
And you don't even need to talk behind closed doors when there are several high profile ugly splits with Xbox.
I kept saying that the biggest blackmark here isn't just the cancellation of these games but the increasingly apparent revelation that going with Xbox for any exclusivity deal is a toxic endeavor
Forsaken82
Member
Not if it remained as awful looking as it was at E3...
I was hoping Scalebound ended up amazing, but even I had to acknowledge the fact that everything they've showed up to this point has been god awful. Odds are the cancellation occurred because Milestones were not being hit. Which means additional funds beyond budget that need to be spent on a game that was likely perceived as a minimal profit risk. Ultimately, this was probably considered a low risk title to invest in initially if they stayed within a certain budget threshhold. I think this game was intended for building a new brand, hoping to make a small profit and build upon it in a sequel.
There's taking a risk and just throwing money away... odds are it got to the point of throwing money away. You can look at it like that of a money pit. from a business standpoint does it feel right to continue to sink money beyond budget into a project that you don't even expect to be a success.
But this is all hypothetical...
CrispyBoar
Banned
Yeah, how? Not doing a good job of it so far by cancelling games left & right.
It doesn't look good for the Xbox brand's reputation.
It doesn't look good for the Xbox brand's reputation.
Nitty_Grimes
Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Oh well at least there's Sea of Thieves to get my single player fix from...
...oh.
...oh.
The_Darkest_Red
Member
Phil has always been great at talking.
gears 4 was before Phil took over at least officially.Is Phil the only person to blame for all the incidents & lack of action that has clouded Xbox's current situation? Probably not. But as he said, being the head of Xbox, he bears the tip of the spear and brunt of the responsibility.
I sincerely hope what the insiders have been hinting in regards to lack of big & new unexpected announcements is not true, because honestly 2017 is kinda the make-or-break point where we should stop giving Phil a pass because if we look at video games development as a 3-5 years journey, we're approaching the 4 year mark of his tenure.
I made this in response to Welfare asking about games greenlit after Phil took over, and anecdotally, I think the ones in green are ones that are greenlit after Phil took over. Orange is uncertain, since the time when Xbox bought Gears and gave it to Black Tusk is blurry in the early 2014 period. And not sure when Sea of Thieves got greenlit too.
Not a very nice picture in terms of announcements. If anything, E3 this year needs to doubly impress because last year was pretty weak in terms of announcements.
Crackdown was also being spoke about lightly in 2013 so I don't think that's Phil either. Ntkrnl also leaked it before Phil took over.
BigSoftieFF
Member
But I really liked Too Human. Not sure why but I did and would be day 1 on a sequel.
The implication is that Xbox's budget has been lowered, thereby making it harder for them to sustain any more risky ventures. It's possible that Microsoft executives have been putting pressure on Xbox, and that the whole gaming segment is being closely scrutinized regarding performance. Big changes may be afoot if Scorpio doesn't do well.
SneakersSO
Member
Huh? No, MS is not at the start of a new cycle with Scorpio. I have no idea why this idea keeps coming up, but its a mid-gen upgrade, NOT a new console generation. This idea is like a weed that just refuses to go away.
BlazinSkatinAxel
Member
Phil had been over Microsoft Game Studios since 2008.
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
Yeah, Phil doesn't have a blank check. He has a budget he has to work with. I mean it's not like he can go to his superiors during quarterlies or something and say, "I realize this particular project is bleeding money at the moment and you want me to cancel it... but wtf guys this is a freaking Hideki Kamiya game!" I mean... do you really think the suits would understand that? Hardly anyone outside of GAF would even understand what that meant lol.
Crayon
Member
Against.
We know.
CassidyIzABeast
Member
Studios with bills and employees to pay.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
There are plenty of other publishers. Might even be less risky, which I'm sure MS can appreciate that sentiment.
Tell that to Obsidian and all the first party studios that have been shut down out of nowhere
Phil does his job well. He talks a certain way, and people listen to what he says as if he were making heartfelt solemn promises to them about their future. Dude is literally in this position to keep people from leaving their pool of service users in search of satisfactory gaming elsewhere.
How many years of empty promises and the transparent pandering to the shoppers impulse will it take for for some of you people to finally let it go?
How many years of empty promises and the transparent pandering to the shoppers impulse will it take for for some of you people to finally let it go?
CassidyIzABeast
Member
There are plenty of publishers and plenty of them pass on games. If Microsoft is the one out of that plenty who says yes then that's who they're working with.
What studio was shut down just out of nowhere?
CassidyIzABeast
Member
Tell that to Iron Galaxy, Moon Studios, Playground Games, Frontier Developments, Undead Labs, Regeant Games, Sumo Digital, Certain Affinity, and whoever else they work with in the future?
DeadManWalking
Member
Live on promises folks! Another 3 year circle can begin! Maybe this time they will actually release something. . Semsgood.
Also cant wait for next forza not to be called forza 7.
Also cant wait for next forza not to be called forza 7.
Bitch Pudding
Member
Correct, but just to put things into perspective, GG started working on HZD in 2010. So whatever Phil greenlights right now will take quite some time.
And my point is: If Phil actually initiated a couple of new games back then when he took over three years ago, then we should be able to see the results this year. But for all we know MS has nothing in the pipleline, except the usual suspects.
Well, I guess relying on the Halo-Gears-Forza trifecta could be called "risky", so that' that.
Crayon
Member
They announced it so early and with so little information that it's turned into a kind of savior prophecy. It's out of hand and there are still months to go.
"It's a monster."
Zeuanimals
Member
All the way back in 2003. But Forza 1 was a brand new franchise by a brand new studio in 2005 and I wouldn't really say it counts. So you could say 2005. They also adopted a strict two year dev cycle after FM1, which is pretty insane.