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Perfect Dark Cancelled, The Initiative Shut Down

You'd think after 7 years they could at least shit out some 5-10 hour long Game Pass exclusive before shutting down.
Or a remake of the original... surely a good idea for a first game and revive the ip a bit?
It feels like too many people just got jobs in creative industries just to pay bills and have no care for releasing a product. Bunker down like this 6/7 times and retire. Closing the whole studio is the only option.
 
I still think it's western, because I can name of a few successful examples (see if you can spot the trend):

  • Kojima Productions
  • Tango Gameworks
  • Grasshopper Manufacture (admittedly more AA)
  • RGG (was spun out of Sega A&M to make Yakuza games)
Western new studio specifically build to churn out AAA right after their inception I can only think of Respawn, and with TF 1&2 not really selling as expected, with probably insane expectations, TF3 might have killed them, while APEX then kinda happened. EA bought them before Apex, so I guess they bet on Apex working out, but would have closed them EA-style if not.
 
What I find odd is the narrative that A.I. replaced everyone's jobs at Xbox

AI isn't making this game now is it
I bet this is just self marketing. That's the message they want to send to shareholders, press and the rest of the world. ai isn't doing shit at Microsoft. The reason they needed these cuts is years of bad management and biting off more than they could chew in terms of aquisitions.
 
So this game was either years off from release or broken beyond repair.
I doubt they'd cancel something they'd at least try to wring some money out of, even if it was a last-ditch effort. See also Redfall.
 
I bet this is just self marketing. That's the message they want to send to shareholders, press and the rest of the world. ai isn't doing shit at Microsoft. The reason they needed these cuts is years of bad management and biting off more than they could chew in terms of aquisitions.

Exactly

Evil bastards
 
Re: 7 years dev and only a vertical slice (or a fake gameplay demo as previously reported)

So how many times was the game scraped and rebuilt from the start? You don't go 7 years without having many failed versions.
 
Nothing can beat Concord for sure, this would have been another PD Zero at its best.

PD Zero wouldn't even be that bad if they fixed some of the controls and improved the enemy AI.
honestly, maybe they should make a remake of PD Zero on a lower budget... surely when there's a whole game as a direction to follow they can't fuck it up... right?
 
PD Zero wouldn't even be that bad if they fixed some of the controls and improved the enemy AI.
honestly, maybe they should make a remake of PD Zero on a lower budget... surely when there's a whole game as a direction to follow they can't fuck it up... right?

This trailer looked pretty ambitious but I guess the management felt too little too late, if this is all they had to show after 7 years of Dev.
 
This trailer looked pretty ambitious but I guess the management felt too little too late, if this is all they had to show after 7 years of Dev.

and I don't understand how that can even be. it really feels like that most western AAA devs can't properly develop gameplay and game design concepts anymore. and without a concept as a direction, you'll just be stuck in an endless loop of prototyping some bullshit noone will follow up on.

it can't be this hard to make a new PD title. I bet if you gave a group of 30 hardcore Perfect Dark fans with game dev experience a AA budget, you'd have a decent concept developed within 3-6 months. and a fully developed game in like 3 years.
 
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Jorge Molina it full of shit... 7 years looking at your fucking desktop image... and you and your team couldn't even provide actual gameplay after 7 fucking years... and you wonder why MS did close the studio and fire all you up... if anyone of your team had a minimum level would have been moved to another team... what an expensive wallpaper I must say...

Rainy days ahead... hah what a good one 8Ball wisdom your desktop gived to you.
 
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7 years and they still weren't close to shipping the game?

Microsoft were right to smother this project with a pillow.

At this point if you don't see that MS/Xbox management are THE problem with one failure after another with regard to actually completing and releasing games then I don't know what to say.
 
It really chaps my ass that we'll never get another one. That og on the 64 was great. Hell, I'd even like another kameo.
 
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Obviously just my opinion here but...

Xbox management knows exactly what they are doing. They have amassed a dragons horde worth of game ip/content that they can use for the next 20 years as digital offerings. They don't need new games and they do not need studios to make said games. Why do you think they are bragging about all the revenue they brought in last quarter? They know that outside of Nintendo (which is its own bubble) exclusives do not matter and all content is going digital and its going multi-platform.

They do not give a shit about the optics from gamers since gamers don't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to corporate strategy. They also do not give a shit if "gamers rise up" to abandon the Xbox platform...they have already proved that gamers will buy their products on other platforms. Once Gamepass gloms onto competitor's current/future hardware MS will cement themselves as the most valuable (and profitable) publisher of interactive entertainment.
 
Obviously just my opinion here but...

Xbox management knows exactly what they are doing.

Yeah, they knew exactly what they were doing when for years and years they sat back and watched 343i ruin their biggest gaming IP and extinguish one of the medium's biggest and most successful cultural icons to the point of near obscurity.
 
100 years from now, how is history going to look at this era? I'm thunderstruck. 21st century America lifts up the authors of such statements and rewards them with wealth and adoration. A polygonal spy babe, invented out necessity; the 007 IP being too expensive to use James Bond again. Thousands if not millions project substance and depth onto the sharply pointed, angular breasts and easy-to-render pixie cut. Dreaming up a personality, backstory and heroic traits.

I wonder if the guy from Rare who mocked her up for the first time right before lunch one day in the 90s is still shaking his head, wondering how everything has run so far afield.

Look out below ↓
 
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I think both this team and MS/Xbox were clearly inept on this project.
How many studio's have bought, cancelled games and shut down studios.

One maybe two studios you could give them the benefit of the doubt. But when MS have cancelled this many games and studios, it's quite obvious who the problem is.

All these publishers and studios they bought can't be this collectively bad.
 
Had the N64 but missed out on this series. Heard it was a good series over the years so I was curious about it a little. But after seeing the showcase of the new unrelelased one, can't say I'll miss it or mind it got canned.
 
How many studio's have bought, cancelled games and shut down studios.

One maybe two studios you could give them the benefit of the doubt. But when MS have cancelled this many games and studios, it's quite obvious who the problem is.

All these publishers and studios they bought can't be this collectively bad.
Sony too. They bought a bunch of studios the past 5 years and shut down many too. And their biggest bet Bungie has tanked too.

It gets to a point I think what happened is all the new internal studios or independently acquired studios had great luck:

- MS and Sony with tons of cash to spend
- Low interest rates back then (it didnt start ramping up till 2022), so with rates so low might as well spend the money. Notice how all these new IPs and studios all popped up around 2017-2021-ish
- Next gen PS5/SX were around the corner or just launched, so they had a gold rush strategy to hurry up and buy up studios and keep up with each other tit for tat
- Despite some of these studios promoting themselves "from veterans working at COD, EA, etc...." turns out they are junk and it's way different to run a studio grassroots style than already working at a big corporation being one employee number xxx out of 1000s where the company has already been around for 30 years. But MS/Sony trusted them anyway
- Many of these games and studios that bombed out had a GAAS Fortnite rush mentality hoping another shooter IP will break the bank with the masses. And MS/Sony (like many) want that GAAS banger

It's basically no different than throwing darts at the Nasdaq to pick stocks. Since the biggest stock gainers have been tech stocks, just toss and pick whatever tech company it lands on and bust the budget buying shares..... "We'll, one of these has to be a 10-bagger!"
 
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Sony too. They bought a bunch of studios the past 5 years and shut down many too. And their biggest bet Bungie has tanked too.

It gets to a point I think what happened is all the new internal studios or independently acquired studios had great luck:

- MS and Sony with tons of cash to spend
- Low interest rates back then (it didnt start ramping up till 2022), so with rates so low might as well spend the money. Notice how all these new IPs and studios all popped up around 2017-2021-ish
- Next gen PS5/SX were around the corner or just launched, so they had a gold rush strategy to hurry up and buy up studios and keep up with each other tit for tat
- Despite some of these studios promoting themselves "from veterans working at COD, EA, etc...." turns out they are junk and it's way different to run a studio grassroots style than already working at a big corporation being one employee number xxx out of 1000s where the company has already been around for 30 years. But MS/Sony trusted them anyway
- Many of these games and studios that bombed out had a GAAS Fortnite rush mentality hoping another shooter IP will break the bank with the masses. And MS/Sony (like many) want that GAAS banger

It's basically no different than throwing darts at the Nasdaq to pick stocks. Since the biggest stock gainers have been tech stocks, just toss and pick whatever tech company it lands on and bust the budget buying shares..... "We'll, one of these has to be a 10-bagger!"
Sony haven't bought 2 of the bigger publishers on the market promising they will never ever fire anyone or shut down their studios eh... Sony too my balls. MS only.
 
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Sony too. They bought a bunch of studios the past 5 years and shut down many too. And their biggest bet Bungie has tanked too.

It gets to a point I think what happened is all the new internal studios or independently acquired studios had great luck:

- MS and Sony with tons of cash to spend
- Low interest rates back then (it didnt start ramping up till 2022), so with rates so low might as well spend the money. Notice how all these new IPs and studios all popped up around 2017-2021-ish
- Next gen PS5/SX were around the corner or just launched, so they had a gold rush strategy to hurry up and buy up studios and keep up with each other tit for tat
- Despite some of these studios promoting themselves "from veterans working at COD, EA, etc...." turns out they are junk and it's way different to run a studio grassroots style than already working at a big corporation being one employee number xxx out of 1000s where the company has already been around for 30 years. But MS/Sony trusted them anyway
- Many of these games and studios that bombed out had a GAAS Fortnite rush mentality hoping another shooter IP will break the bank with the masses. And MS/Sony (like many) want that GAAS banger

It's basically no different than throwing darts at the Nasdaq to pick stocks. Since the biggest stock gainers have been tech stocks, just toss and pick whatever tech company it lands on and bust the budget buying shares..... "We'll, one of these has to be a 10-bagger!"
It's impressive, the company that every year produces at least one GOTY candidate is the same one that produced Craig the Monkey and Redfall
 
7 years ,
7 fucking years
I would totally understand year 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Like no body asked them the progress over the years ?? Like cancelling after 7 years is just mindboggling.
Microsft seriously needs to reconsider wtf are they doing
 
100 years from now, how is history going to look at this era? I'm thunderstruck. 21st century America lifts up the authors of such statements and rewards them with wealth and adoration. A polygonal spy babe, invented out necessity; the 007 IP being too expensive to use James Bond again. Thousands if not millions project substance and depth onto the sharply pointed, angular breasts and easy-to-render pixie cut. Dreaming up a personality, backstory and heroic traits.

I wonder if the guy from Rare who mocked her up for the first time right before lunch one day in the 90s is still shaking his head, wondering how everything has run so far afield.

Look out below ↓
the 21st century's become the age of the grift. & mark knopfler saw it all coming:
 
7 years ,
7 fucking years
I would totally understand year 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Like no body asked them the progress over the years ?? Like cancelling after 7 years is just mindboggling.
Microsft seriously needs to reconsider wtf are they doing
not having one game out is inexcusable, but really they should have been able to get 2, or close to 2.

I think Microsoft was managing these teams with a "I'm the cool mom" vibes and well now they need to crack down.
 
7 years ,
7 fucking years
I would totally understand year 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Like no body asked them the progress over the years ?? Like cancelling after 7 years is just mindboggling.
Microsft seriously needs to reconsider wtf are they doing
And after having to bring in a third party to help for close to 4 of those years.
 
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