Video game companies are bad | Phoenix Labs sack circa 100 staff

I somehow completely missed the news that Roll 7 have been shut. Absolutely gutted.
OlliOlli on Vita kept me from going stir-crazy whilst sitting around for days on end waiting to see if I’d be picked for a case whilst on jury duty.
Olliolli World is amazing.
Very sad

Great article by Nathan Brown.

twitter.com/nathan_brown/status/1788243627270869135

That image is depressing AF

Left with 3 games that are just reskins of each other while all the interesting stuff is crossed out :simper:

That interview is embarrassing. I have a wider issue around very senior leaders being able to get to a point where they literally say nothing to media etc. if I or any others gave that answer to any manager in the org it would be called out.

I dunno, maybe they do need to focus on some quality outputs and look at what they are producing. I’m not convinced there has been much decent of late. Gears tactics was the last big brilliant release, Forza horizon was great. Infinite, starfield, Forza motorsport, all a bit meh. I love Tango and Arkane, evil within and dishonoured (and death loop from different Arkane) exceptional. I’m excited for hellblade.

My long standing ultimate that I stacked is up next year. I won’t be renewing for cod. I paid £70 for the recent one in Nov and played for all of 10 hours as it was trash. A lot of my mates dropped it too.

I think MS are in a bit of bother personally. They might see some profits and positives having cut costs but unless they have a pipeline of good content, selling cod/halo/forza/gears on repeat for the next few years is a tough sell.

Jenuall wrote:Great article by Nathan Brown.

twitter.com/nathan_brown/status/1788243627270869135

That image is depressing AF

I thought they'd only closed Arkane Austin, not Lyon. Wasn't Dishonored a Lyon game?

Knoyleo wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Great article by Nathan Brown.

twitter.com/nathan_brown/status/1788243627270869135

That image is depressing AF

I thought they'd only closed Arkane Austin, not Lyon. Wasn't Dishonored a Lyon game?

2 was Lyon but the original was a co-production between both

I'm not even hopeful for TES after how poor Starfield sounded :lol:

How the hell have they even managed to mismanage them that poorly? I still think the Xbox line up for the rest of 2024 is pretty good, but hearing about these studio closures, makes me worried for what'll be coming beyond this year, maybe my Game Pass will be getting cancelled once I've finished the likes of Avowed and Indiana Jones later in the year, it'll probably just be an Assetto Corsa EVO/Competizione console after that until Fable comes out, if that comes to Game Pass on launch of course.

It seems mismanagement all over Xbox, look at Halo, this was one of the biggest entertainment IP’s now it’s a shadow of what it used to be. The year delay to Infinite after the poor showing was quite embarrassing and I’m sure these events have even 343 worried. Maybe management are too hands off letting dev’s just make games without any form of structure?

The Xbox of the 360 era to the Xbox of now is unrecognisable.

I have very little faith in their studios delivering much going forward now.

My cheap "Gold to Game Pass" conversion runs out soon after 3 years (plus a bunch of freebies months from reward points) and I was thinking the other day that even though I got it so cheap I'm not even convinced that I got my money's worth out of it during that time.

HiFi Rush was probably the biggest high profile "win" during that time. Outside of that Halo Infinite was good, though the lack of co-op stung and even that was probably an 8 that should have been better. Starfield was crap, Redfall a let down, Outer Worlds fine but nothing special, Forza didn't hold my attention for long, Psychonauts 2 confirmed that series just isn't for me...

There were a few great indies or smaller games that I played via GP like Hades, Ori, Pentiment and Vampire Survivors, but I'd have been better off just buying them.

For me the Game Pass model has fundamentally failed to deliver on its promise and I think I'm probably out at this point

Yeah, Game Pass just isn't doing it for me much, I've only just recently started actually paying for it after the 3 year Gold to GPU deal so might just stick it out for the rest of the year, at the worst I'll be playing through 3, full price games, which is probably the most monetary value I've had out of the service in the space of 6-7 months (by the time I've played the 3 games, if they're all out by December), which isn't great in about 3.5 years with the service.

Where’s Based Phil? He’s been quiet.

twitter.com/Pandyssianrat/status/1789355247330041898

Electronic Arts are looking at incorporating adverts in their games.

Andrew Wilson, EA CEO wrote:...as we think about the many, many billions of hours spent, both playing, creating, watching and connecting and where much of that engagement happens to be on the bounds of a traditional game experience, our expectation is that advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us.

We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that, but we have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences. But more importantly, as we start to build community and harness the power of community beyond the bounds of our games, how do we think about advertising as a growth driver in those types of experiences?

Source: Eurogamer

So, no need to worry as the advertising will be incorporated "thoughtfully"...

"EA Sports, it's ~~in the game~~ after the ads"

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll sell an in game key to disable ads!

Can’t wait for Bet365 ad’s whilst playing EA Sports FC 2026 :datass:

jawa_ wrote:Electronic Arts are looking at incorporating adverts in their games.

Andrew Wilson, EA CEO wrote:...as we think about the many, many billions of hours spent, both playing, creating, watching and connecting and where much of that engagement happens to be on the bounds of a traditional game experience, our expectation is that advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us.

We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that, but we have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences. But more importantly, as we start to build community and harness the power of community beyond the bounds of our games, how do we think about advertising as a growth driver in those types of experiences?
Source: Eurogamer

So, no need to worry as the advertising will be incorporated "thoughtfully"...

Corporate twats love using hundreds of words just to say "we want more money".

Victor Mildew wrote:Don't worry, I'm sure they'll sell an in game key to disable ads!

I mentioned this a wee while back but I suspect that we'll soon see games released in "no adverts" editions... at just £90 each.

jawa_ wrote:Electronic Arts are looking at incorporating adverts in their games.

Andrew Wilson, EA CEO wrote:...as we think about the many, many billions of hours spent, both playing, creating, watching and connecting and where much of that engagement happens to be on the bounds of a traditional game experience, our expectation is that advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us.

We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that, but we have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences. But more importantly, as we start to build community and harness the power of community beyond the bounds of our games, how do we think about advertising as a growth driver in those types of experiences?
Source: Eurogamer

So, no need to worry as the advertising will be incorporated "thoughtfully"...

i'm suddenly glad i don't play their games any more

Video game companies are bad | Phoenix Labs sack circa 100 staff

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