There have been multiple studios working on Halo for a while now.I wonder if 343 will be the only Halo studio. They've got Halo 5 and the series has been yearly for a while now so a 2016 Halo game by 343 or someone else?
A competent and malevolent company (let's take a GAF favorite, like Ubisoft) would be churning out new Gears, Halo, and Fable games annually, regardless of quality, to maximize revenue.
Since MS shut down Ensemble and made Rare develop avatars I have no respect for them left.
However, there really is nothing shady about this. Just bad management and (probably) bad luck.
They were just always kinda shit at managing their own studios.
Not sure if serious...
Microsoft does have a yearly iteration rhythm for both Halo and Forza. Not that this has anything to do with the subject at hand.
Halo 3 - 2007
Halo Reach - 2010
Halo 1 remake - 2011
Halo 4 - 2012
Halo MCC - 2014
Forza is biannual, as is Forza Horizon. The games are nothing alike other than featuring cars and a livery editor. Only the most liberal use of the term annualized franchise would consider them the same thing, in the vein of an Assassin's Creed or a Madden. ODST, Combat Evolved, and MCC are an expansion, a port, and a collection of ports. None of them sell anywhere close to the real entries, so I don't think the Halo fanbase treats them like annualized entries.
Since MS shut down Ensemble and made Rare develop avatars I have no respect for them left.
However, there really is nothing shady about this. Just bad management and (probably) bad luck.
They were just always kinda shit at managing their own studios. If you think about it, many of their big/good IPs were developed by third party studios (Halo - Bungie, Gears - Epic, Alan Wake - Remedy, Crackdown - Realtime Worlds, Killer Instinct - Double Helix/Iron Galaxy, Forze Horizon - Playground Games) etc.
Really, the only big first party MS IP is Forza, right? Other then IPs they just flat out bought like Gears or Minecraft.
Yep. "Business" happens. I see nothing shady about it unless you have some sort of agenda.I wouldn´t even call it "bad management".
It´s just management.
Nothing shady here.
Business as usual.
It's not "shady" it's poor management and it's a problem with every develeoper/publisher..
Take Sony for a example with TLG. There handling of fall games - a yearly delayed Driveclub that launched broken, LBP that is still broken) was incredibly poor as well.
The implication was of a deliberate misleading of consumers.
I kinda see where OP is coming from. Announcing projects and teams even way before they have anything tangible outside of a CG trailer can be seen as a ploy to create buyers now and if they fail to deliver then at least they got some folks to buy the console. I mean imagine MS E3 last year without the Scalebound, Crackdown, or Phantom Dust trailers.
That said it is just as likely mismanagement is at play. However, how trustworthy will the CG trailers be at this years E3 from MS?
This is a very uninformed opinion. Sony did close a good number of studios, but it would be off-topic to mention those - we don't want to turn that into a SonyToo thread.
In many regards, Microsoft also had a lot of success in terms of first party. They helped Bungie turn Halo into something truly massive. Turn 10 is by all account a very succesfull and productive studio. Rare, even though many on these forums don't like their new direction, did sell a shit ton of products under Microsoft's supervision. Lionhead, I would tend to agree, but I would put that on Molyneux's departure rather than Microsoft's management. And they had a ton of succesful relationships with independant teams (Epic, Remedy, ...).
They had a few bumps, but who hasn't in this industry ?
I don't know. I feel that as long as there is no money involved it is up to the consumer to keep their expectations in check.
In the case of MCC of course they need to do good by them, but in the other cases... shit happens. If none of those projects materialize it hurts them more than it hurts people who can just spend their money elsewhere. I don't see anything "shady" about that.
edit - nvm - I cba calling out post histories even if they are mildly interesting.
So them not showing gameplay footage of Crackdown or Gears of War yet is shady/incompetent?
There's certainly some potentially valid criticism to throw at how Microsoft has handled some of their studios, but it seems you're really trying too hard to come up with criticisms to fill out your theory and that's not a very strong way to form an argument.
Thanks for the detective work lol.
Yeah, but it would have been a 20+ yr thing, as it seems.When I take my rose colored glasses off, the Bungie story is about money. Destiny, like Halo is a 10+ yr thing, it just happens to be THEIR 10+ yr thing
Halo 3 - 2007
Halo Reach - 2010
Halo 1 remake - 2011
Halo 4 - 2012
Halo MCC - 2014
Forza is biannual, as is Forza Horizon. The games are nothing alike other than featuring cars and a livery editor. Only the most liberal use of the term annualized franchise would consider them the same thing, in the vein of an Assassin's Creed or a Madden. ODST, Combat Evolved, and MCC are an expansion, a port, and a collection of ports. None of them sell anywhere close to the real entries, so I don't think the Halo fanbase treats them like annualized entries.
To reiterate, MS could release a new full entry in the Halo series every year, like CoD or AC. They would make far more money, but the games would probably differentiate less between entries and fan burnout would be much more rapid.
Yeah they literally announced it in the e3 briefing. They had Dave Jones on stage. Now we don't know if cloudgine is solely developing it but we know they are seriously involved. A lot of what OP is on about is just speculation about studio closures when he has no idea what happened. There is no defense about how MCC released. That was likely devs hitting a hard deadline and MS deciding to green light it. But then again I don't know.Cloudgine was known about for sometime, not sure what OP is on about.
For you and others who think it's 100% Microsoft's fault they closed...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/crunch-culture-killed-ensemble-studios
Even their own staff disagree with you.
Yeah, but it would have been a 20+ yr thing, as it seems.
Forcing a studio to make one IP (sequels) forever is horrible.
It would bore me to death and the games would get worse and worse.
People can argue back and forth on whether or not this is a "shady" business practice from MS. It is clear that MS has done it over and over to try to convince gamers that this time they are really going to support their system with a strong 1st party library.
But it does point to the reason why I will never buy a MS console. Serious first party studios are almost non-existent on Xbox. Always have been. Instead they throw around money to buy the best 3rd party exclusives at the beginning of a generation to get people to buy their console, then abandon even 3rd party exclusivity once they have the hardware numbers they are looking for.
Nobody should be shocked that Sony is leading this generation. The majority of gamers choose Playstation by default. That's what MS is up against and has never set themselves up to succeed against it. If Sony releases a console at the right time and price to compete with MS then they will always win. And it's because people know that Sony's 1st party studios are actually a real thing and they are going to be making games the whole generation that you wont be able to find on an Xbox.
Just let me add this to the conversation please, since there is always a reverse of the medal and treating decisions and look at them just from one side seems a little bit selective.
Victoria/Ensemble closing? Well, you act like as if MS is closing studios just for fun, which obviously is not right. With every closing there are reasons why things are happening. Especially in the case of Ensemble the studio was a nightmare in terms of performance, costs and value. There are multiple articles on the web where developers even agree with this. Sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions. Victoria was stucked in early developement stages and incubation for far too long with zero output and no concrete results. When people lose their jobs - this is a very bad thing. For the individuals these decisions suck. It will always suck. And whatever the reason are - it will still suck for every single one. For the general decision seen from a business standpoint itself - there are always reasons prior to things happening. Like always in life sometimes these reasons are justified - and sometimes not so much.
Crackdown is in full-production. Just give it some time please. I try to give as much updates in the Crackdown thread as I can at the moment. Rest assured we are working super hard to deliver something big. I can talk much more about Crackdown with you guys later this year. I like having an open discussion with the community - so I hope that's how we can handle things later
Why people thing because they did that with tomb raider, they are doing it with all the exclusive?
And they are supporting the system, just because they changed a studio (amd we don't all the facts about why this happen) it doesn't mean that the game its not coming.
I'd say that none of these are even close.Sony has done similar things in the past; The last guardian, Driveclub, Killzone's fake resolution. all publishers have done "shady" things which in reality is just bad PR.
Just let me add this to the conversation please, since there is always a reverse of the medal and treating decisions and look at them just from one side seems a little bit selective.
Victoria/Ensemble closing? Well, you act like as if MS is closing studios just for fun, which obviously is not right. With every closing there are reasons why things are happening. Especially in the
of Ensemble the studio was a nightmare in terms of performance, costs and value. There are multiple articles on the web where developers even agree with this. Sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions. Victoria was stucked in early developement stages and incubation for far too long with zero output and no concrete results. When people lose their jobs - this is a very bad thing. For the individuals these decisions suck. It will always suck. And whatever the reason are - it will still suck for every single one. For the general decision seen from a business standpoint itself - there are always reasons prior to things happening. Like always in life sometimes these reasons are justified - and sometimes not so much.
Crackdown is in full-production. Just give it some time please. I try to give as much updates in the Crackdown thread as I can at the moment. Rest assured we are working super hard to deliver something big. I can talk much more about Crackdown with you guys later this year. I like having an open discussion with the community - so I hope that's how we can handle things later
Based on how Mattrick ran things, you do know that he isn't there now right. Also the claim that "lol M$ has no first party" that he made has no basis in reality.Because, besides a few exception (japanese games on PS4 because Xbox One is non existent, indies focusing on a single platform), no developper/editor will build a big exclusive game without a big check in return. It's common sense.
Anyway, his point isn't that they aren't supporting the console, on the contrary. He is just assuming that they will stop supporting it with third party exclusives after a while.