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Perfect Dark Cancelled, The Initiative Shut Down

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I'll never understand those that hate gamers and games while working in the industry. Who do you make your games for? AI?
 
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Cry me a river, soy-bitch.
Who drew this woman/man, thing? Why the hell are the females always having masculine jaw lines, looking like a woman who got stuck with too many HGH and anabolic needles.

It looks like from the nose up a woman and from there down, a god damn male troglodyte.

I think they draw these women and are daydreaming these women are strapping on and making these men their bitches. This is embarrassing.
 
I couldn't care less about the woke crap, and don't let how a character looks or what colour it/thing is, stop me from buying a game. The gameplay trailer looked great and was so looking forward to the game :(
Pisspoor studio and game mangerment on Xbox's part, more so to cancle it outright after showing it last year.

I get Everwild being dropped, but not this. Unless to hit the next milestone, the budget and manpower needed were insane, but Xbox should have been more on top of it.
 
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I'm guessing the game must have been in a real piss poor state and no where near releasing for them to can the studio.

Yup. You can only pay for a studio for so long with 0 revenue/income before you just get cut. MS was already 7 years in - gotta imagine this still had years left before seeing the light of day, and this studio didn't have any previous work to bring in some passive rev/sales while they kept working.

It's really too bad, western devs can't figure out how to escape these excessively long dev cycles.

This guy is legit embarrasing shit, someone tell my man to just stop sucking dick for the love of god. Not everything is money

Generally I'd agree but imo he's spot on here. 7 years with nothing to show/close to release is gonna get you cut from anywhere.
 
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It's really too bad, western devs can't figure out how to escape these excessively long dev cycles.
I really don't think this is a western thing or even an issue of dev cycles (which is somewhat systemic - but I don't think it really causally relates to things across studios the way people think).

What it 'is' endemic of is the idea of funding/forming a new studio 'specifically' dedicated to building AAA project(s).
In the last 25 years - I can think of fairly numerous attempted examples of this - and not a single one that ever turned out a success*.

Majority of them go defunct within a couple of years, some survive long enough to get sold, and others (like Initiative) may limp along longer due to major $ backing, and occasionally even survive just long enough to dump something really bad out on the market (most recent such highlight - the Minds Eye, or Concord a year prior). Hell Amazon burned multiple studios worth of people, IPs and more, with literally nothing to show for it after 12 years, using a similar approach.
And it's not Western specific phenomenon either - it's just that western press doesn't usually cover Asian studios unless they actually turn out a hit. The UE3/Cryengine3 era alone was littered with Asian startups attempting the same and turning out a load of nothing.

Also before people start posting random studios that 'recently' produced a breakout AAA hit - I'm talking only about studios that 'start' with 'AAA' as the mission, not by the more normal method of 'release smaller projects first and work your way upwards' which indeed - have lots of nice success stories out there.

*Ok Fine - Kojima Studios may qualify since it actually produced two games that are neither terrible nor a complete market failure, and is built entirely around shipping AAA movi... Game projects, but it's also contentious depending on who you ask.
 
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What the hell is going on at Xbox? They already struggle to make good on their promises of software. Either the people at the head of these studios are incompetent or Phil Spencer is giving them too much leeway (and funding) to just take their time with development.
 
I remember hearing years ago now that they literally couldn't decide on it being a first or third person game years into development. This thing was a total clusterfuck from the beginning
 
Can't imagine having a job for 7 years where no one in the company has produced one single dollar of income for the company. We're just hanging out, doing meetings. Got a nice new espresso machine for the breakroom though! No less than 6 company Christmas parties. Imagine that. We're talking long enough for everyone at the company to have their computer replaced at least once. Probably twice. Zero dollars of revenue.

AAA Gaming deserves a slump. How did anyone think this shit was sustainable?
 
Who drew this woman/man, thing? Why the hell are the females always having masculine jaw lines, looking like a woman who got stuck with too many HGH and anabolic needles.

It looks like from the nose up a woman and from there down, a god damn male troglodyte.

I think they draw these women and are daydreaming these women are strapping on and making these men their bitches. This is embarrassing.
Have you seen jaws of Angelina Jolie and Margot Robbie etc? Manly jaws but pretty women.
 
So maybe now is the time to be real and wonder, whether it is a loss or just another shitty game pretending to be a fan favorite IP just got cancelled. As a gamer it's just bad when you can't trust devs.. and probably safe to say this now more than ever.
 
7 years with literally nothing to show for it besides broken dreams and a few bad trailers.

All these "industry heavyweights" should be embarrassed af..
 
They should at least patch together a FMV movie in the likes of Final Fantasy Spirits Within or the Resident Evil movies
 
Just now seeing this. So 7 years and nothing to show for it, should this be a surprise to anyone? I don't think the game was close to being release on top of that. Unpopular opinion, but this was the right call.
 
I really don't think this is a western thing or even an issue of dev cycles (which is somewhat systemic - but I don't think it really causally relates to things across studios the way people think).

What it 'is' endemic of is the idea of funding/forming a new studio 'specifically' dedicated to building AAA project(s).
In the last 25 years - I can think of fairly numerous attempted examples of this - and not a single one that ever turned out a success*.

Majority of them go defunct within a couple of years, some survive long enough to get sold, and others (like Initiative) may limp along longer due to major $ backing, and occasionally even survive just long enough to dump something really bad out on the market (most recent such highlight - the Minds Eye, or Concord a year prior). Hell Amazon burned multiple studios worth of people, IPs and more, with literally nothing to show for it after 12 years, using the similar approach.
And it's not Western specific phenomenon either - it's just that western press doesn't usually cover Asian studios unless they actually turn out a hit. The UE3/Cryengine3 era alone was littered with Asian startups attempting the same and turning out a load of nothing.

Also before people start posting random studios that 'recently' produced a breakout AAA hit - I'm talking only about studios that 'start' with 'AAA' as the mission, not by the more normal method of 'release smaller projects first and work your way upwards' which indeed - have lots of nice success stories out there.

*Ok Fine - Kojima Studios may qualify since it actually produced two games that are neither terrible nor a complete market failure, and is built entirely around shipping AAA movi... Game projects, but it's also contentious depending on who you ask.
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)
 
You'd think after 7 years they could at least shit out some 5-10 hour long Game Pass exclusive before shutting down.
 
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