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[ungalo]

It might as well be. Dev teams are the people that work there. If 70% of the team that made Prey are gone it's a completely different team at this point

The same way the infinity ward of 2007 to 2009 is dead. Yeah the name is the same but so what

Perhaps but if the studio's name still means something you can attract people that want to make a certain kind of game. For IW the name alone makes it a very attractive studio in the industry. Those that work here now are still probably among the best in their category even if they are not the guys who started it. It's probably the same for Rockstar, for Naughty Dog, for a lot of studio.

If Xbox/Arkane are starting a recruiting campaign saying they want to make the next big immersive sim or whatever, they probably can attract people with the good resume. And it wouldn't matter that it's not Colantonio anymore.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

Prey is legitimate one of my favorite games of all time.

Same. I've played through it four times total.

Whoever helmed, and realized, the Prey project over there is immensely talented and I wish those people nothing but the best of luck in their future endeavors. May they work for a company less shit. I already knew we weren't getting Prey 2 considering how hard it flopped but still, sad to read.

 

[Zeypher]

That $7.5 billion acquisition ain't lookin so hot.

It is worth it simply due to the IP licenses Microsoft gains access too.

 

[Fake]

 

[Kvally]

Jason Schreier?

 

[Dane]

As many of us are saying, Phil really needs to implement some oversight mechanics.. I understand that the hands-off approach is working for Playground games f.ex. (and even third parties like Asobo), but in the case of f.ex. 343 and Arkane Austin, it's clearly not working.

The reason why they do this hands off policy is because the worst case scenario for it is miles better than the worst case scenario for a hands on approach like they did in the past and EA did. The issue is that there are too many C Suits having roles at where they shouldn't have like 343i former leadership was always on corporatism to the point they were oblivious to how XGS staff was now working, and Zenimax almost ruining itself, Fallout 76 did bleed some veteran staff from BGS Maryland.

Nintendo for example, has a off hands but very supportive role leadership because the veteran developers are also at the corporate level in contrast with other big companies where its entirely filled with people that were never in game development.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Perhaps but if the studio's name still means something you can attract people that want to make a certain kind of game. For IW the name alone makes it a very attractive studio in the industry. Those that work here now are still probably among the best in their category even if they are not the guys who started it. It's probably the same for Rockstar, for Naughty Dog, for a lot of studio.

If Xbox/Arkane are starting a recruiting campaign saying they want to make the next big immersive sim or whatever, they probably can attract people with the good resume. And it wouldn't matter that it's not Colantonio anymore.

Eventually it does have an effect.

Rare posting a job posting now will not have the same effect as before. Bioware posting a job listing will not have the same pull right now as it would've 15 years ago. 343i posting a job for creating a new Halo will not attract people now as it would have 20 years ago.

Sooner or later, previous popularity wanes and nobody cares what a studio used to do.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Jason Schreier?

better don't drop the soap while taking a bath.

 

[Topher]

Well you can look at Redfall and see an incomplete mess. 70% of the talent leaving over the course of development of a game isn't good regardless of how you want to cut it, specially when the finished game is a shit show. And if you think they lost those people and replaced them with people just as good or even better than you're out of your mind, Arkane ATM won't be where the best talent wants to go to that's for sure.

I didn't say anything about whether or not they replaced the talent with "good or even better" talent at all, now did I? Shrierer pretends that pointing to Texas politics answers that questions when it simply doesn't. He is also pointing to salary, but seems to not take into account the lower cost of living in Texas.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Eventually it does have an effect.

Rare posting a job posting now will not have the same effect as before. Bioware posting a job listing will not have the same pull right now as it would've 15 years ago. 343i posting a job for creating a new Halo will not attract people now as it would have 20 years ago.

Sooner or later, previous popularity wanes and nobody cares what a studio used to do.

Strange you included Rare. They should have no problems recruiting as Sea of Thieves is their biggest success yet.

 

[Shut0wen]

Yet deathloop was actually successful because it was a budget game, i dont get why zenimax just didnt give them money to create a budget title instead of forcing them to make a shitty triple A title

 

[Kurotri]

Same. I've played through it four times total.

Whoever helmed, and realized, the Prey project over there is immensely talented and I wish those people nothing but the best of luck in their future endeavors. May they work for a company less shit. I already knew we weren't getting Prey 2 considering how hard it flopped but still, sad to read.

Raphael Colantonio was the creative director of Prey and also co-directed the first Dishonored, he went on to create his own studio WolfEye Studios. They released a game called Weird West. Not really my cup of tea, but it's cool to see that talent like this didn't leave the industry outright.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Yet deathloop was actually successful because it was a budget game, i dont get why zenimax just didnt give them money to create a budget title instead of forcing them to make a shitty triple A title

budget games dont sell

 

[DaGwaphics]

We'll have to see what the next project from the studio looks like.

I think Redfall is a fun game overall, but it definitely feels like something that was retrofit from something else.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

Raphael Colantonio was the creative director of Prey and also co-directed the first Dishonored, he went on to create his own studio WolfEye Studios. They released a game called Weird West. Not really my cup of tea, but it's cool to see that talent like this didn't leave the industry outright.

Thanks for the summary. I knew Weird West had Arkane people involved, which is actually why I bought it Day 1. Unfortunately, it's janky, buggy and...not great. I never ended up checking who from Arkane was actually on that team. Maybe I made that post a bit prematurely

 

[DForce]

People blamed media bias for the poor Redfall reviews and now it turns out the devs even knew the game was bad. lol.

 

[Topher]

Make note, Sony

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

Why does this narrative exist that MS is incompetent when it comes to studios they acquire? A majority of them are just fine. The ones they’ve had issues with (Rare, Ensemble, apparently Arkane Austin) came in already a wreck with lots of people having left before acquisition.

Especially when you look at the current leadership at MS and their recent acquisitions, where’s all this catastrophe and incompetence? The games they have put out since being bought have mostly been legit good to very good games.

 

[ungalo]

Eventually it does have an effect.

Rare posting a job posting now will not have the same effect as before. Bioware posting a job listing will not have the same pull right now as it would've 15 years ago. 343i posting a job for creating a new Halo will not attract people now as it would have 20 years ago.

Sooner or later, previous popularity wanes and nobody cares what a studio used to do.

I think it's just a matter of continuity and it's all about if a studio is successuful, critically and commercially.

Rare were making least successful games since like 2004 (i'd say even 2002) and the company's identity was pretty much erased entirely after Nuts & Bolts in 2008 (so 15 years ago, that's a lot). Today objectively there is nothing that's connecting Rare to its old roots. There wasn't a passing of the torch of some sort between old and new, they are not exploiting the old IPs anymore, only outsourcing them to small indie studio.

But for the studios i mentioned there was conditions for the studio to attract the best people and to have a smooth transition. You cherish a legacy or you waste it. I think Arkane is still not at this point for now, unless they decide it's not worth it to try again.

 

[Heisenberg007]

People blamed media bias for the poor Redfall reviews and now it turns out the devs even knew the game was bad. lol.

Even Phil Spencer lied that he was surprised by the low-reviews and that the Metacritics score (~65 at that time; now it's ~55) was "double-digit lower than internal review scores."

 

[gothmog]

They were forced to make a game they weren't keen on, that much is true. But they stayed on, and are expected to work professionally. Things like NPCs glitching, sliding down floors, hard crashes etc are things they should be fixing themselves. They owe it to the customers who buy the games.
I've had to do work i wasn't too thrilled about, early in my career. None of that stopped me from doing the best I could.

I agree in principle but the problem is some of those things may be much deeper issues that you would think. This was probably the best they could do given the limited qualified resources and time. Senior people also get stretched really thin when you have a ton of inexperienced people on the team. I spent three days last week helping a relatively new person get something done that I could have done in a few hours. If I do it for them they learn almost nothing. If I help I do nothing but they might not need this level of help next time. And I'm on a relatively healthy project right now.

 

[Azurro]

That's not what it says at all. It says that they had difficulty hiring for multiple reasons, one of them was difficulty in hiring people who did not want to live in Texas for political and cultural reasons.

If you think that means they only wanted to hire certain types of people then you don't know how to read.

Sure buddy, SUUUUURE, that's what it means. Anyway, I'm not going to get more into this.

 

[ReBurn]

I didn't say anything about whether or not they replaced the talent with "good or even better" at all, now did I? Shrierer pretends that pointing to Texas politics answers that questions when it simply doesn't.

Posting a statistic like 70% without providing supporting data is also irresponsible and is something that should be questioned. What are the actual numbers? And what is the turnover rate per year? Having worked in software development for nearly 30 years it really isn't all that uncommon to see entire teams turn over every 2 to 3 years, especially for people with as much mobility as software engineers.

Highly competitive fields have high turnover rates. Wikipedia says that there are 42 game development companies in Texas. Seems like experienced developers have plenty of mobility there. If you don't want to work on the next project go to one of the other companies who are doing a project you want to do.

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

The fact MS chose this pile as the first game to charge $70 for will never not be hilarious to me.

 

[MALpractice311]

LMAO I remember all the shills saying that Arkane definitely wanted to make this project.

No guys, it was a turd concept forced onto them, you should have seen it, as now the studio is basically dead.

Same here. I've been saying since day one Bethesda/Zeni and/or Microsoft was forcing this project on Arkane because all of their prior games underperformed.

 

[Ronin_7]

70% yeah it's dead.

 

[Saber]

Redfall about to pull a Forspoken and flop it’s way to killing its own studio

Well at least Redfall is better than Forspoken, amiright

 

[Kacho]

Yet deathloop was actually successful because it was a budget game, i dont get why zenimax just didnt give them money to create a budget title instead of forcing them to make a shitty triple A title

Zenimax isn't against doing smaller budget games. It's just they have investors to please and games with limited appeal like Hifi Rush and Ghostwire Tokyo aren't going to pull in the money they want. That's why games like Fallout 76 and Redfall exist. Yes, they bombed, but the idea is to make games with broad appeal by chasing current trends in the hopes that you find a money maker.

All these games were greenlit and in development way before the acquisition, so hopefully with no pressure from investors they stick to what they're good at. We shall see.

 

[IFireflyl]

Why does this narrative exist that MS is incompetent when it comes to studios they acquire? A majority of them are just fine. The ones they’ve had issues with (Rare, Ensemble, apparently Arkane Austin) came in already a wreck with lots of people having left before acquisition.

Especially when you look at the current leadership at MS and their recent acquisitions, where’s all this catastrophe and incompetence? The games they have put out since being bought have mostly been legit good to very good games.

So we're ignoring the mismanagement with Bungie, and then 343 Industries? And Lionhead Studios? What about Black Tusk Studios which was supposed to make a new IP, and then Microsoft ended up just shunting them to Gears of War? How about Xbox Entertainment Studios? When you don't cherry-pick the good parts of Xbox, you see an overall picture of poor management. This is why that narrative exists. Because it's true.

 

[Shut0wen]

budget games dont sell

They do, hellblade, deathloop and control have all been successful

 

[Roxkis_ii]

Don't worry guys, I'm sure Microsoft will makes sure to replace all the people who left with passionate contractors.

 

[Badlucktroll]

i dont think microsoft should have bought zenimax. if starfield bombs i think thats it

 

[Fake]

 

[Topher]

 

[kyussman]

Hats off to the devs who had the integrity to leave when faced with making the next GAAS piece of shit.

 

[gothmog]

Now you are MS and just bought Zenimax and the first decision would be to cancel Redfall and the public would not know why, would not know the state of the game. How do you think that would have been perceived by media, twitter warriors and Neogaf? Everyone would think poor Arkane and bad MS who cancel dream games of the devs.

Anyone with a brain would have reacted positively, especially if you said "hey, this game is having issues and we're pausing development to reevaluate priorities". Only morons and console warriors think actually managing your projects is a bad thing.

 

[adamsapple]

Why does this narrative exist that MS is incompetent when it comes to studios they acquire? A majority of them are just fine. The ones they’ve had issues with (Rare, Ensemble, apparently Arkane Austin) came in already a wreck with lots of people having left before acquisition.

Especially when you look at the current leadership at MS and their recent acquisitions, where’s all this catastrophe and incompetence? The games they have put out since being bought have mostly been legit good to very good games.

Aside Redfall and Minecraft Legends, almost all the games they've published in the last 3, 4 years have 80+ on opencritic.

I guess it's the convenient boogeyman.

 

[kyussman]

So this means no more dishonored and no chance of "prey 2".

Very sad day.

I enjoyed Prey but I'm not sure what a second game could have added tbh,seemed like a one and done type game to me.Dishonored however,they built a whole lore and world for that franchise with a world map and everything.....fucking shame if we never get to see more of it.

 

[sankt-Antonio]

Thank you gamers for this wonderful gift. You guys ruined gaming. I dont blame MS for Arkane going downhill, I blame modern gamers for ignoring quality products. We will never have a Prey 2, nor will we ever have an immersive sim ever again. Hope you enjoy your garbage coop gaas games from now on. Dumbasses.

Prey was the worst controlling fps of last gen on a game pad. What a horrible playing game.
I bought it based on Gaf hype. What a let down. Completely get why it was a flop.

 

[HL3.exe]

I read the article. 'forcing design trends' and 'mismanagement' at it's absolute finest.

Thanks Bethesda.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

So we're ignoring the mismanagement with Bungie, and then 343 Industries? And Lionhead Studios? What about Black Tusk Studios which was supposed to make a new IP, and then Microsoft ended up just shunting them to Gears of War? How about Xbox Entertainment Studios? When you don't cherry-pick the good parts of Xbox, you see an overall picture of poor management. This is why that narrative exists. Because it's true.

They didn’t acquire 343, and what went wrong with Bungie? They wanted to be independent. Lionhead came in with two of the main creators having already left and many of the developers gone too. Even Pete left not long after.

If you’re claiming that moving Black Tusk to Gears is “incompetence”, when it resulted in four good to very good games, then I don’t know what to tell you. It’s also a weird thing to see when a lot of people claim MS should have canceled Redfall and made Arkane Austin work on something else. So canceling one game and making the studio work on something else is incompetence, but canceling another and making the studio work on something else is great?

Xbox Entertainment Studios wasn’t an acquisition and didn’t make games. No offense but are you just reading some list of closures or something

Again, there’s a large section of their output that is good to very good. Then there are games like Redfall. And they’ve closed some studios. Same as anyone else. This incompetence narrative is nonsense.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I have no problem with GaaS. The problem comes with converting a single player focused studio to GaaS. It almost never ends well.

 

[Kacho]

Prey was the worst controlling fps of last gen on a game pad. What a horrible playing game.
I bought it based on Gaf hype. What a let down. Completely get why it was a flop.

Yeah, I had the same experience on Xbox. The controls were absolute ass on a pad. I ended up playing it on PC and it was sublime with m&k. RIP to those without that option.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

Microsoft needs to fire Zenimax management

 

[Heisenberg007]

Aside Redfall and Minecraft Legends, almost all the games they've published in the last 3, 4 years have 80+ on opencritic.

I guess it's the convenient boogeyman.

It's funny that you don't even remember Crackdown 3 and Bleeding Edge

 

[GHG]

Prey was the worst controlling fps of last gen on a game pad. What a horrible playing game.
I bought it based on Gaf hype. What a let down. Completely get why it was a flop.

It's not an FPS for fucks sake.

Well done proving his point.

 

[adamsapple]

It's funny that you don't even remember Crackdown 3 and Bleeding Edge

Almost.

 

[Kvally]

It's funny that you don't even remember Crackdown 3 and Bleeding Edge

I loved Crackdown 3!

 

[balls of snow]

Dont you guys just love your favourite franchise gets sacrificed at the altar of gaas so that zenimax can be bought. Fallout, Wolfenstein and a new ip gone like tears in the rain. Doom Eternal got so damn lucky it was too good to be fucked with. Utterly depressing.

 

[GHG]

It's funny that you don't even remember Crackdown 3 and Bleeding Edge

They claimed to like those games though, so I guess that's the problem.