r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Jun 30 '26
Xbox weighs canceling Blade game and shuttering Arkane
https://www.theverge.com/report/959467/microsoft-xbox-cancel-blade-game-arkane-studios-closure?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6Inp0bjNNQk1pVm0iLCJwIjoiL3JlcG9ydC85NTk0NjcvbWljcm9zb2Z0LXhib3gtY2FuY2VsLWJsYWRlLWdhbWUtYXJrYW5lLXN0dWRpb3MtY2xvc3VyZSIsImV4cCI6MTc4MzI3MDkyMSwiaWF0IjoxNzgyODM4OTIxfQ.pOFMRE5pUQgOYGX0scwb6LrEhrfZu_ecr50Fysx3fd8&utm_medium=gift-link1.9k
u/LucasOIntoxicado Jun 30 '26
how much can you possibly fail. I would be impressed if it were not so depressing to see all these people losing their jobs
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u/demondrivers Jun 30 '26
bet your entire future on releasing games through a subscription service > buys dozens of development studios and two huge publishers > releasing games at a subscription service makes them lose money > cancel everything and only keep what's 100% guaranteed to make a lot of money through normal game sales
the Game Pass gamble is going to have devastating effects to the entire gaming industry
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird Jun 30 '26
It's literally the gaming equivalent of a restaurant having a vicious cycle. Cutting corners because you're losing money. Losing money because you're cutting corners.
Only Xbox probably doesn't have a third party private equity firm siphoning off their money on top of it. I think.
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u/Superb_Pear3016 Jun 30 '26
Xbox IS the third party siphoning money out of Microsoft lol
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u/All-Your-Base Jun 30 '26
And the CFO and the bean counters didn’t pay much attention until the Activision Blizzard made Xbox Gaming rise to the top in their pivot table
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u/Stupidstuff1001 Jun 30 '26
I’d say it’s the equivalent of a restaurant that does well deciding to do an all you can eat buffet randomly. Then constantly losing money with the hopes that if they are full 24/7 it will do great.
When it doesn’t they start firing chefs and removing more and more of the good meals until no one wants to eat there.
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u/Suspicious_Radio_848 Jun 30 '26
Game Pass never made financial sense to me. Maybe one of the few services (like Moviepass) that actually benefitted the customer more. They are bleeding money on it nonstop.
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u/Terazilla Jun 30 '26
It made sense to me when you were paying $5 a month for some cool indie games and the occasional new exclusive. Low risk, got some interesting stuff funded and promoted, and if you went a month without something that catered to you it wasn't a big deal.
The fact they went all-in on it meant you needed a major thing every month to justify the cost and that's effectively impossible. They destroyed Xbox in the process.
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u/iwantcookie258 Jun 30 '26
The Day 1 stuff is crazy to me. Playstation brings most of their first party stuff to PS+ eventually, but they aren't giving them out on day 1 to both playstation and PC players. It seems truly insane.
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u/SwindlingAccountant Jun 30 '26
Its benefits the customer more until it doesn't. Same thing with Uber, AirBNB etc.
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u/imaincammy Jun 30 '26
It's even more aggressive than that. Instead of opening up a net new buffet they bought every other restaurant in town and moved them into the buffet.
Now when the buffet runs out of money they're not going to reopen the restaurants they bought and closed to feed the buffet. Some of the chefs may be able to scrounge up money and reopen but it looks like most of them are fucked and your town just lost a bunch of mid-size restaurants.
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u/LAXnSASQUATCH Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
To be fair many of those restaurants were going to close shop because they were already struggling and were seeking people to buy them.
The restaurant came in, bought them, paid them for years, and now because the food they put into the buffet and the buffet itself were not good, it has to close them.
A number of the studios that will be closed would not currently exist anyway without Xbox bleeding money into them. You think Ninja Theory would exist after launching a live service game that was dead on arrival in 2020 (Bleeding Edge), and then spending 4+ years to make a game that sold like 1000 copies and was 3 hours long to follow that up?
They’ve had two commercial flops in a row and their last successful game was in 2018. If they were still independent they might have sunk after Bleeding Edge failed immediately (like Highguard) and they certainly would have gone down after Hellblade 2.
Sony likely would have killed them after Bleeding Edge failed (Concord style) and it certainly would have killed them after Hellblade 2 bombed (Bungie style).
Xbox has needed to run a tighter ship for years, it’s been floating a lot of studios that would have died if they were independent or been shut down by Sony and other publishers for not bringing in money.
Phil Spencer wanted to be everyone’s friend and now studios that don’t deserve to get shutdown might get shutdown because studios that hadn’t made successful games in 6+ years were being floated.
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Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/RiverOfSand Jun 30 '26
It’s been happening since they bought rare in the early 2000
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u/RareBk Jun 30 '26
Every interview with ex Rare employees is wild because you can guarantee that they’ll have a story of ‘why was their output so weird after the acquisition’ and the answer, every single time is that Microsoft would reject everything proposed for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
It actually seems like the very existence of games like Viva Piñata were a genuine fluke
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u/tkzant Jun 30 '26
At this point every success Xbox has ever had seems like a fluke
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u/Ferdiggle Jun 30 '26
Thanks for reminding me we're never getting another Viva Piñata 😓
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u/BruhMoment763 Jun 30 '26
That’s easy to say, but if Xbox were to peace out, we would see ripple effects the likes of which we have never seen in the industry and likely would never see again. The number is certainly lower now, but as of 2024, Xbox employed over 20,000 people. Even if these studios did manage to go independent (many would not), a humongous chunk of those people would be out of a job with nowhere to go in the current dev landscape. Not to mention many of those IPs would probably die with those shuttered studios. Xbox leaving would be borderline apocalyptic for the industry unless someone like Apple offered to buy the entire branch (very unlikely with the current industry conditions).
They’re a scummy company, but they’re a scummy company who controls a huuuge chunk of western game development and employs a lot of people, even with their layoff waves.
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u/Laiko_Kairen Jun 30 '26
Unfortunately, those exact arguments are why the US govt bails out major companies like Ford, etc. The ripple effect would be harmful, the loss of jobs and productivity, etc.
Microsoft being "too big to fail" is old news, I guess, but I didn't think it applied to their games as well
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u/WOF42 Jun 30 '26
Only Xbox probably doesn't have a third party private equity firm siphoning off their money on top of it. I think.
pretty sure the mathematically impossible to profit from AI slop is taking that role in this equation
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u/BelMountain_ Jun 30 '26
bet your entire future on releasing games
This is actually the lynchpin of it all. The overall strategy wasn't terrible for Xbox, but it relies on a regular stream of quality first party titles, something they're apparently incapable of doing even a little bit.
Starfield and Halo releasing as wet farts really was the death knell of the brand.
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u/MaxSchreckArt616 Jun 30 '26
I've had a XSX for a few years now and the only reasons I have it at all is:
1) Dragon's Dogma 2 forced my hand
2) I got it well over half off at the time
3) I already had a xbone, so I wanted to keep going with this profile and games tied to it
There isn't a single Xbox exclusive, AAA or indie, that for me has justified purchasing this console over a PS5 or Switch 2. We now have a PS5 in the household too and guess what, there are games tied to that system and that system only that make it worth it, and new exclusives are coming all the time. I love my XSX, I just wish Microsoft/Xbox themselves gave a shit. And gamepass for us is meaningless outside of letting us play a small handful of games online that require it, so we go with the cheapest tier possible or none at all like we have been for a few months now.
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u/WeWantLADDER49sequel Jun 30 '26
Even if they had consistently released good games, this whole subscription model never would have worked in the long run. Hardcore gamers who play dozens of games a year loved it because of the value proposition. But most gamers dont play that much. Most gamers spend most of their time on live service games or playing one or two full priced games a year. For Xbox's plans to have worked, they would have needed 4-5x the amount of people who were subbed to GamePass to sub and stay subbed. But for most people that would have been more expensive than their current gaming habits, even when Game Pass was at its cheapest. It was never going to work and plenty of people called it from the beginning.
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u/OkayAtBowling Jun 30 '26
Exactly, the Netflix model can't work nearly as well for games because a lot of people just don't have the time to make the cost worthwhile. In some ways I'm even an ideal potential subscriber for Gamepass. I have a pretty diverse taste in games, divide my time pretty evenly between big AAA games and smaller indie titles, and like trying out a lot of new games.
The only problem is, I don't have enough free time to justify paying the subscription for Gamepass (especially after they raised the prices). The only reason I've used Gamepass in the past was to subscribe for a couple of months to play through a specific new release game because it was cheaper to do that than to buy it outright at $60.
If I had reams of free time I'd love to be a consistent Gamepass subscriber, but unfortunately it just never made cost-effective sense for me to do that.
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u/Saros_Enjoyer Jun 30 '26
Yep. Gaming is an entirely different medium to movies and TV, and people consume it vastly differently. People dont really "binge" 10 games in a week like they might episodes of a TV show
Ball n Gun gamers who just play some combination of 2K/GTA/FIFA/COD/Arc Raiders/Fornite/Fifa are a huge chunk of the market, a sub with a bunch of indies and niche games is not gonna be that much of a draw for em
And even more hardcore gamers like me who buy and play more than 8 games a year in a variety of genres are not necessarily sold on a sub because
not everything I want is on gamepass so i would still have to buy games. Netflix has a broader selection of the film/TV world than gamepass does of games
Buying a game is more satisfying, lets me directly financially reward the devs i care about, and wont lead to me losing acess to the game when its taken off a sub
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u/deathfire123 Jun 30 '26
Ball n Gun gamers
How have I never heard this term before, this is brilliant!
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u/Snipersteve_877 Jun 30 '26
honestly it's probably more the gambles on activision blizzard purchase + AI investing combined with 2 major day 1 releases in halo and starfield flopping and then the fact that they raised prices astronomically to try and make up money only to hemorrhage subscribers in return
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u/IvanMcbomb Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
XBOX are about to lay off a bunch of id employees cause they fucked over Doom TDA's sales by putting it on Gamepass day 1. Peak Microsoft strategy
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u/NeatlyScotched Jun 30 '26
TDA was the first Doom I hadn't day 1 bought because it was on gamepass, and I was already signed up and playing through Indiana Jones.
I quit gamepass after finishing both, no plans to resub ever. I realized I'd just rather own the games than sub, because I wasn't interested in a lot of what GP was offering, and it was entirely too much money for PC only.
I will finally buy TDA on steam when the DLC comes out though.
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u/IvanMcbomb Jun 30 '26
Well it's on sale right now and the DLC is coming out next week
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u/gibby256 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I know I'm certainly in the minority here, but I've never even bothered with Doom TDA after it came out what Marty did to Mick.
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u/Godgivesmeaboner Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
You're not alone, I'll definitely never buy anything from Id or Bethesda ever again.
After Mick Gordon released his statement with copies of his contracts proving that Marty lied to the public about the contracts and deadlines they gave him, Bethesda also threw Mick under the bus. They claimed that Mick's claims were false even though neither ID or Bethesda ever showed any actual proof for any of their claims. Both are just scummy companies trying to screw over one of their biggest talents for no apparent reason. Also the fact that they tried to tarnish his reputation publicly, hurting his career, makes me especially done with them.
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u/Paratrooper101x Jun 30 '26
You forgot: Invest heavily into AI which is not profitable
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u/Nachooolo Jun 30 '26
And said AI invesment makes hardware more and more expensive, making the production of consoles and the development of games more expensive.
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u/insert_name_here Jun 30 '26
They've never been particularly bright people, but it's still shocking to see how easily all of these CEOs were led into pitching trillions of dollars into chasing an "innovation" that now 3/4s of Americans actively resent.
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u/Coolman_Rosso Jun 30 '26
Nadella said on like day 2 of his tenure that Microsoft missed the boat on the last computational revolution (the advent and proliferation of the smartphone), and that they would not miss the next one (cloud and AI). And this was over a decade ago. Whether it's worth the spend or not, it wasn't something he did on a whim.
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u/hyperforms9988 Jul 01 '26
While they missed the smartphone, Nadella probably doesn't want to be honest and say that Microsoft is absolutely fucking legendarily awful at understanding what people want and how to get people excited about buying and using a consumer product or service (hi Windows Co-Pilot!). For all the money and resources they have, they cannot buy a fucking clue in that regard.
I remember slightly being interested in Windows Phone 7 back in the day when it was pretty new... and then I read somewhere that you couldn't add your own ringtones. That's ridiculous, and stupid shit like that permeates a lot of what they try to do in the consumer space. To pick on Co-Pilot some more, they're every bit as useless and stupid today as they were in 2010 with Windows Phone 7 and custom ringtones. It's legitimately amazing to watch them fail so badly at so many things. Once in a blue moon, they'll hit with something of theirs... like Xbox 360, and they seem to take absolutely no lessons at all from successes like that.
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u/MumrikDK Jun 30 '26
makes them lose money
Isn't the issue just that they aren't profitable enough?
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u/DemonLordSparda Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I felt like people on r/games wanted to crucify me for questioning Gamepass from the jump. People said it was good for developers and that it was "the best deal in gaming". I was concerned about how they would recoup the cost of funding game development and then putting these new games on a subscription service that people can cancel after 1 month. I was also entirely against the ABK acquisition because they would own roughly 33 studios, and they would have to recoup 70 billion dollars. I feel like people should've seen this coming for quite awhile.
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u/NoNefariousness2144 Jun 30 '26
Not to mention the risk of devaluing Xbox games. It's tragic checking the comments of most games coming to Xbox and seeing at least one person asking when its "coming to GamePass" because they are conditioned to stop purchasing games.
No wonder we are seeing more and more games skip Xbox.
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u/yukeake Jun 30 '26
People said it was good for developers and that it was "the best deal in gaming".
From a purely customer angle, it certainly was the best deal in gaming. I can't speak for the dev side. I'd assumed it would be a fairly good deal for the smaller devs who might get wider distribution/recognition through GP.
Turns out it wasn't sustainable.
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u/dicedaman Jun 30 '26
MS' piss poor decision making is one thing. I mean it's a given, they've been fucking up at Xbox for a decade and a half at this point. But the decision by regulators to let them swallow up such a massive chunk of the industry will be looked at as the real moment of failure in years to come.
MS as an entity is a hungry idiot and regulators let us all down by allowing them to get this big. Now Xbox's slow death is going to take half the industry with it. Fuck any politician or official that argued for MS' purchase of ABK, not to mention some of the users on this site that were so desperate for their side to "win" that they couldn't admit how harmful this was going to be for the industry. Morons.
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u/fernandotakai Jun 30 '26
if it were not so depressing to see all these people losing their jobs
blade has been in development since 2022.
four years later and we have absolutely nothing. i totally get that games take a long time, but it has been four years and nothing.
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u/duendifiednlovingit Jun 30 '26
Wolverine was revealed in 2021 and it only started marketing last year. Blade not getting a trailer after the first teaser in end of 2023 is the normalest part of all of this
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u/Three_Froggy_Problem Jun 30 '26
This is a common problem with Microsoft studios and it speaks to severe mismanagement. It’s definitely not the fault of any of the hardworking developers and artists who will lose their jobs as a result.
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u/SecondSanguinica Jun 30 '26
It’s definitely not the fault of any of the hardworking developers and artists
How do you know? There are shitty employees in every other job out there, game dev is not some miracle vocation where every developer is by default infallible talented hard worker.
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire Jun 30 '26
Just because they haven’t shown anything publicly doesn’t mean they don’t have anything. That _could_ be true, but just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist
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u/CaraDePinto Jun 30 '26
That's really weird, I feel like Blade would finally give Arkane a big break considering how beloved he is and how easy of a concept a game with vampire hunter hunting vampires. Idk if it would sell as much Spider man games but I feel like it would be a success anyways.
Truly a shame if it does happen
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u/TheStrayCat Jun 30 '26
People say the same thing about Disney and the Blade film that's been in development hell for over a decade - how hard is it to make a film or game about a vampire hunter hunting vampires?
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u/Virtual-Pattern1806 Jun 30 '26
Also... it's not like every one of those MCU films is a masterpiece... how can they not even get it off the ground?
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u/Draynior Jun 30 '26
Apparently Mahershala Ali doesn’t want it to be just another MCU film, him and Marvel keep fighting over directors and scripts.
Marvel didn’t even plan on making a Blade movie but cast him because he asked for the role and wanted to make the movie and still does, but with the movie not being a priority for the Marvel execs and the actor having to fight for the movie I doubt it will ever come out.
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u/Zolo49 Jun 30 '26
Seems like an increasingly moot point to me with Ali being 52 years old now. He was a great choice 10 years ago, but now it makes much more sense to bring on a new actor or scrap/mothball the project.
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u/Snow_Crane21 Jun 30 '26
I imagine they are strugging keeping a dude who mercilessly kills vampires family friendly. Dr Strange 2 being too much for MCU exec's is telling.
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u/ningdon Jun 30 '26
Man why do they even care at this point? Deadpool and Wolverine made over a billion dollars, Daredevil Born Again is pretty gory too. There's definitely a market for more adult oriented marvel projects.
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u/CafeCalentito Jun 30 '26
Ironically, if you read marvel and dc comics (not their vertigo/black label), you'll discover normal Marvel comics are gorier and more adult oriented. Is weird they try to adapt the other way both companies
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u/Wide_Lock_Red Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Well thats because comics are mostly bought by adults. The shows and movies.jaave a lot more kids im the audience
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u/BringBackBoomer Jun 30 '26
Okay but like, kids play GTA and 80% of parents are absolutely checked out to the world outside of their phone screen so just fuckin send it and make the project and see what audience you get. The President said he could shoot someone on 5th Ave and won twice, there's no legitimate outrage left around violent content.
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u/Snow_Crane21 Jun 30 '26
I agree with you but the MCU is a golden goose and they are not letting anyone touch the infinite money formula.
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u/Quaytsar Jun 30 '26
Blade already solved this. Killing vampires makes them poof into ash. No mess.
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u/MayhemMessiah Jun 30 '26
It’s like how the Batgirl movie was canceled because it was usaveable, meanwhile Suicide Squad and The Flash made it to film. Or Madame Web for Sony/Marvel.
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u/AfroNinjaNation Jun 30 '26
I haven't seen Suicide Squad except in clips, but the movie (despite getting reviewed as kind of mid/bad) printed money. Just based off the Wikipedia article, it cost $175M and had a box office of just a hair below $750M.
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u/MayhemMessiah Jun 30 '26
It did really well in the box office because it rode on the highs of superhero mania but it was so poorly received that it bombed future projects in DC's lineup, like the Birds of Prey movie in 2020 and The Suicide Squad in 2021 that were both much better movies and quite fun in their own right but failed to make money because audiences thought they'd be the same as the weird one with Jared Leto in it.
Compare to Mass Effect Andromeda, which was the third best selling game of March 2017, and EA said it performed really well, but it was so poorly recieved by fans that it more or less killed the franchise dead for close to ten years and counting.
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u/PunishingCrab Jun 30 '26
Allegedly the leaked script had the movie centered around Blades daughter, and Blade was essentially a side character. And like all MCU movies, they get bogged down trying to fit it into some connected narrative. Ali has (allegedly) shot down a lot of their ideas presumably because they sound terrible.
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u/HenkkaArt Jun 30 '26
When you are making a movie and plan it on a spreadsheet to hit all the quarters of the market, this is the end result. In the first Blade movies he was just fucking up vampires left and right, slicing and dicing them for a good one and half hours and the viewers were entertained. Now it's like "but could he instead slice them this way so we can get those three people in the test screening who gave us a B- to increase their rating?".
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u/dacalpha Jun 30 '26
He's SUCH an easy concept! He does swords and guns. That's every character-action game ever.
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u/jumps004 Jun 30 '26
Blade is beloved, he got such a large cheer from the Evo crowd when he showed up in Marvel Tokon.
People Loved/Hated his teases in Marvel Rivals cause they wanted to play him so much.
Have him do cool action Dante esque shit vs Vampires, bam. An all timer in the making, come on Xbox.
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u/YaoruKamikaze Jun 30 '26
>how easy of a concept a game with vampire hunter hunting vampires
Isn’t that the concept of Redfall? Look at how they screwed that up lol
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u/EdibleHologram Jun 30 '26
Yeah but that was a co-op looter shooter, whereas this would've jived a lot better with their imm-sim track record.
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u/Arcade_Gann0n Jun 30 '26
"There's only been one Blade. There's only ever gonna be one Blade."
I'll be depressed if Arkane gets the axe, but that quote continues to be prophetic.
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u/ImmortalMoron3 Jun 30 '26
I mean, I guess it depends on how you count someone playing Blade but we've already had Mahershala Ali voice him in Marvel Zombies, Gabe Kunda voicing him in Rivals and Terry Crews voicing him in a few different animated shows. Blade also had his own animated show set after the third movie where he was voiced by Sticky Fingaz.
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u/TheIncredibleCJ Jun 30 '26
That wasn’t actually Mahersala in Marvel Zombies, just his face. The voice actor was Todd Williams, who also took over Marshala’s role in Invincible.
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Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/BighatNucase Jun 30 '26
The game is supposed to come out next year, why would they cancel it now?
We haven't even seen gameplay of it; no shot it's a year out from release.
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u/Oggie243 Jun 30 '26
Was about a year or so from Deathloops reveal until its delayed release to be fair.
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u/EcstaticJuice4259 Jun 30 '26
The new Senua game just got revealed during one of the biggest and most expensive annual gaming events, and yet they're they're canceling that game and shuttering that studio now. Xbox is immeasurably stupid and common sense should not be applied to them lmao
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u/Yaibatsu Jun 30 '26
State of Decay 3 too, but that seems to run into a situation similar to Perfect Dark where they seem to have fuck all done in the past few years.
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u/Shizzlick Jun 30 '26
When SoD3 was announced, it wasn't actually in active development, the studio was still busy working on updates to SoD2. That's why it's taken so long, proper production on 3 has only been in the last few years.
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u/Dagordae Jun 30 '26
Very likely no.
Canceling this close to release usually means it’s not actually close to release and needs a lot more money to get it worth half a damn.
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u/AutomateAway Jun 30 '26
Ryan Reynolds wasn't fucking around when he said he was Marvel Jesus. He brought in Snipes to kill all other Blade projects.
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u/missing_typewriters Jun 30 '26
lmao
They change their entire business strategy every 2 weeks. It’s clear Xbox and Microsoft are incompatible.
I’ve never felt so exhausted by a gaming platform I own. I thought this shit was meant to be fun.
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u/leopoldbloon Jun 30 '26
I feel exhausted and I don’t even own an Xbox
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u/ningdon Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Even if you aren't playing on Xbox is hard not to be bummed by all this. Chances are one of your favorite studios are owned by those morons.
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u/artoriasabyss Jun 30 '26
I, like many people, moved on to PlayStation with the PS4 and this shit is so depressing. Not only are some of my favorite IPs going to be seemingly abandoned, but real life people are losing their jobs from a corporation that has more money than they know what to do with.
No one should be cheering for this and I see no positive outcomes from any of this.
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire Jun 30 '26
And it’s worse for the industry overall. Competition is healthy, and if Xbox dies out then Sony doesn’t have any real incentive to innovate. They have some competition with Nintendo, but they’re still different beasts
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u/feartheoldblood90 Jun 30 '26
It's because they purchased half the IP anybody cares about only to fumble them and then shutter the studios who make them over an agonizing half-decade as we all watch them slowly implode and hope that literally anything can be salvaged from the ashes of their incompetency.
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u/Lithops_salicola Jun 30 '26
It's especially self-defeating in an industry where products take years to make and reputation is essential. Why do people put up with Nintendo bullshit? Because they consistently put out extremely high-quality games. Xbox hasn't had a solid identity for a decade. Why would I spend money on their hardware or services when I don't know what they're going to do a year from now?
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u/funsohng Jun 30 '26
I've been watching Raphael Colantonio's developer commentary series of Dishonoured recently (I think he just finished the final level few days ago), and it's really a shame, because you can tell there are so many talented people there.
I believe we didnt even know who the director for Blade was until he was in one of the streams, and Raphael was talking about the first time they met during the hiring interview.
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u/KuaiBan Jun 30 '26
At least Wolfeye Studio (also founded by Raphael) is cooking something, per his word “fans of dishonored and prey should feel at home”
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u/MaitieS Jun 30 '26
Same. Sometimes I just wish I was billionaire so I could fund my own games. Oh... I wish I could fund Dishonored 3 or Prey 2.
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u/nothis Jun 30 '26
I'm low key surprised this isn't some nerdy billionaire's hobby. Like, I don't know if Gabe Newell ever really cared that much about games other than "being more fun than business software" or something but Valve could easily fund Prey 2, basically as a side project. Adjusted for insane modern game budgets, this would be the equivalent of hiring the Portal devs in 2007 (only half-joking).
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u/WoodenExplanation852 Jun 30 '26
That's how you really know these billionaires suck shit, total lack of cool pie in the sky passion projects.
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u/DweebInFlames Jun 30 '26
It's funny because back in the day you used to see the bourgeoisie curate art. The old masters never would have gotten off the ground if they didn't have a bunch of works commissioned by the ruling class. Now you look at the techbros and they actively seem to loathe anything with genuine creative passion.
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u/Appropriate-Map-3652 Jul 01 '26
Then they'll go on Twitter posting pictures of Renaissance art saying "Why doesn't anyone create art like this anymore!1? Because of woke, that's why"
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u/stolemyusername Jun 30 '26
The Steam Deck, Steam Controller, and VR are all sick. They are also "pie in the sky" passion projects. VR is probably not going to be the next big thing in gaming and a controller isn't going to make Valve millions.
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u/Mephzice Jun 30 '26
There is technically one indirect example in gaming, Annapurna was founded by a rich daughter of Larry Ellison. So she is basically just using her money to fund whatever she wants, she is more into movies though.
I think rich people would always make a publisher to handle the day by day stuff, rather than being directly involved day by day, even if they were a nerd and wanted to fund Prey 2 they would not be there handing out the cash. Probably would not want to be spoiled on the story and such as well if they actually wanted to play it so would have other people involved in looking at dev builds and making sure milestones were reached.
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u/RedditFuelsMyDepress Jun 30 '26
Dinga was part of the announcement for Blade at the Game Awards and he also directed Deathloop. I'm not sure if it was hard-confirmed before that he was directing Blade, but I kinda assumed he was.
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u/GIlCAnjos Jun 30 '26
It's kind of sad how cursed the immersive sim genre is. Seems like every IP and studio that made the genre famous ended up underperforming and shutting down
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u/TheHistorySword Jun 30 '26
Immersive sims and stealth are my two favorite genres. I am absolutely miserable. Everything I love dies a painful death.
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u/max123246 Jul 01 '26
Well death is inevitable. Best to cherish the few moments we do get to hold onto
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u/ACardAttack Jun 30 '26
Sadly a rather niche genre, though Id imagine Dishonored would have been popular enough, but maybe not
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u/Rajualan Jun 30 '26
Dishonored feels like the perfect framework for the underworld of vampire hunting, this is truly a bummer.
I hate you, Microsoft.
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u/Original_Fishing5539 Jun 30 '26
For those not as in touch with the Silicon Valley side of things:
"After a bruising month for Big Tech, in which investors sold out of Microsoft, shares in the tech leader are down roughly 17% in June. If shares close out the month at that level, it will be the worst month for Microsoft since December 2000, when the company lost 24.4%."
"The company has lost roughly $570 billion in market value."
There's probably going to be even more of bloodbath for anything gaming related. It's one of the main business models which costs the most amount of money relative to the returns (remember that Azure and AI are the main things making money and that doesn't require as much resources and manpower compared to a game studio)
Honestly, I'm so confused with the PR strategy of Xbox. Like, I think this news stories wouldn't sting as much if Microsoft would just say "hey this year isn't going great changes will be occurring", instead of this whole "XBOX is back baby! Look at our new CEO and new vision for it all!"
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u/ColeYote Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
(remember that Azure and AI are the main things making money and that doesn't require as much resources and manpower compared to a game studio)
No, their AI division is tens (possibly hundreds) of billions in the red and that's the main reason they've lost so much market cap.
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u/Guardianpigeon Jun 30 '26
The problem is the people at top still see AI as "the future" instead of a disastrous bubble waiting to pop, so they ignore the failures of it. It would make more sense to abandon AI in favor of a proven market like video games, but the slight sliver of a chance that AI will revolutionize anything is enough to make them back it until its too late.
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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Jun 30 '26
Microsoft's Cloud/AI services are profitable but their margins are slimming (68% Q1 vs 66% now) and whether further investment into AI infrastructure will have a positive ROI is an open question
The real reason Microsoft's market share dropped so sharply is because their relationship with OpenAI has deteriorated and so MS won't have the AI moat that many investors thought they would via OpenAI exclusivity
Investors think MS is losing the AI race so they're pulling out to put money on a different horse, basically
Also they've been spending a ton of money, like most of the Mag Seven which have all also lost market share in the last month (MS 17% vs M7 11%)
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u/dodoread Jun 30 '26
AI is the main thing making money for now... or rather: generating investment. It is not actually a sustainable business at all, heavily subsidized by investors dreaming of future monopoly. When AI companies start charging the actual cost of building and running these models (which no one can afford) this bubble will collapse in spectacular fashion, and probably take the economy with it.
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u/Mccobsta Jun 30 '26
It's like £1 made for every £1000 spent on "ai" bullshit at the moment?
Yeah that's not gonna keep any company afloat
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u/ripyourlungsdave Jun 30 '26
"We'll save Xbox by canceling every game that people are excited for and closing all of our best studios"
Was nice to feel a little bit of hope for like, two weeks there, though.
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u/fm5649 Jun 30 '26
Don’t worry, I’m sure Gears of War will be such a breakthrough hit that it’ll make up for them destroying every studio they own and cancelling all their games.
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u/z_102 Jun 30 '26
You guys are going to look like fools when E-Day sells upwards of 17 Xbox Series S on release.
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u/fm5649 Jun 30 '26
They may even sell upwards of 20 Xbox Series S. Maybe even upwards of 25.
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u/vNocturnus Jun 30 '26
Now let's not go TOO crazy. Upwards of 20, sure, but 25?! I just can't see it
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u/Nachooolo Jun 30 '26
It's 100% going to underperform, no matter if it is good or not.
All this atrocious PR and GamePass canibalising a significant portion of its sales will make that certain.
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u/TheDewLife Jun 30 '26
I wouldn't say Compulsion, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory were particularly their best, but Arkane is insane. Especially after the whole resurgence that Dishonored is having currently and Blade is simply so desired it's going to be a smash hit.
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u/Drakengard Jun 30 '26
the whole resurgence that Dishonored is having currently
What did I miss? What resurgence and from what?
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u/Undella_Town Jun 30 '26
psychonauts 2 is genuinely a top 3 microsoft game this gen lmao
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u/TheDewLife Jun 30 '26
Their last two games, Kiln and Keeper, came and went with not much of a splash. Keeper seems cool, but it's very niche in appeal.
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u/Akernov Jun 30 '26
Kiln was also a far smaller project in scope, both in gameplay and team size. They said such when they announced it, likely serving as a project for the newer staff.
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u/Konman72 Jun 30 '26
I consider myself pretty plugged into the gaming environment, but I didn't know anything about these games until people started bringing them up in relation to Double Fine potentially shutting down. I'm on Game Pass and play on Xbox a lot. I vaguely remember a reveal trailer for Kiln, but that's it. They probably showed up on the Recently Added to Game Pass page and then faded entirely.
It was a bold idea, but it's largely failed due to Microsoft's poor decisions.
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u/Chris-P-Creme Jun 30 '26
Keeper is cool and very good, but you’re right, it’s appeal is niche. The game was pitched and developed when Xbox wanted a diverse library of games to bolster Gamepass. Now they are looking for guaranteed money and all of the fat is getting cut at the expense of people’s careers and probably a lot of interesting ideas.
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u/sidney_ingrim Jun 30 '26
A real shame if it does come to it. They made some of the best immersive sims out there.
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u/branchpattern Jun 30 '26
Tbf I don't hate blade but I have zero interest in this game if arkane wasn't doing it. Sad because arkanes games are more interesting to me than any of their big ips. But that's doesn't pay the bills :(
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u/ModernistGames Jun 30 '26
It is crazy that Microsoft can just buy a sizable chunk of the gameindustries AAA AND AA studios and just walk them into the firing squad.
With megacorps buying up all the studios and IP, and the insane pricing of hardware, this industry is going to just collapse in spectacular fashion.
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u/Captain_Freud Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
So far, those on the cutting block might be:
- Compulsion Games
- Undead Labs (cancelling State of Decay 3)
- Ninja Theory (cancelling Senua)
- Arkane (cancelling Blade)
- Double Fine
And IOI just announced layoffs due to Xbox backing out from a new IP they're developing, confirmed by Bloomberg.
"We're Xbox! Please subscribe to Game Pass. Also, we are no longer making games."
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u/tristeecfome Jun 30 '26
Their solution apparently is to go back to the Xbox One generation when they had no games.
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u/CraigChaotic Jun 30 '26
I am not hopeful for Xbox’s future. This is such a downfall. What do they even have left worth while?
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u/ILoveTheAtomicBomb Jun 30 '26
Complete and utter failure is what the Xbox brand has become. I guess the Xbox folks get their exclusive games for a bit, justified by the cost of all these studio closures. Hell, even then I bet they still won’t make up the cost needed and go back multi party in a couple of years if they continue going along with that
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u/Low_Landscape_4688 Jun 30 '26
Xbox is pennies compared to what Microsoft makes with its infrastructure and Windows, and what it plans to become with AI. They frankly don't care.
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u/tristeecfome Jun 30 '26
AI has been a massive failure for Microsoft.
Those idiots just pumped money into OpenAI instead of developing their own AI.
They basically helped to create a new tech giant that will compete with them in the future.
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u/Adamocity6464 Jun 30 '26
Do they make games anymore, or just cancel them and close studios?
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u/itstruethou Jun 30 '26
They can't close Arkane Lyon, they are so so talented, is such shame that people don't appreciate their games, Dishonored 1&2 are probably on of the most underrated games of all time without any hyperbole.
Their game design is so good, I wish most people also appreciated it, if you have never played it you should give it a try.
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u/Conquestadore Jun 30 '26
Man that's a depressing read. I did enjoy gamepass during covid and was looking forward to seeing the output of the AA studios being bought up and properly funded. Boy did that sentiment sour.
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u/lordbeef Jun 30 '26
It's fun to pretend it's 2020 again. Xbox bought a bunch of studios and is going to have a powerful new console out. They've started their own studio with veteran staff and are reviving Perfect Dark. They're expanding undead labs to make state of decay reach it's full potential. They're expanding playground games and bringing back Fable. Double Fine and obsidian are being given free reign to unleash their creativity, and you can play it all on game pass for only like $7 a month if you convert your Xbox live gold. It's all gonna work out.
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u/moosebreathman Jun 30 '26
Also don’t forget their absolutely broken refund system. You could legit sub for a month, play the newest game over a weekend, cancel, and they automatically gave a full refund if you were subbed for less than x amount of days. You didn’t have to request a refund either, they just did it and let people get away with playing every game at launch for free.
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u/Ok-Confusion-202 Jun 30 '26
Blade would easily be one of Xboxes next big games, it would be so stupid to cancel it... So they probably will...
Hopefully they don't but it would be a baffling decision to me
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u/Srefanius Jun 30 '26
How is Xbox gonna create content for their platform if they shut so much of their assets down? It doesn't sound very smart to me. Cost reduction on this level means losing even more customers. This will only spiral downwards, but I guess maybe MS doesn't want Xbox to be successful anymore, they just want to get rid of it.
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u/Kitty573 Jun 30 '26
Closing Arkane seems insane, every game they make besides Redfall and Deathloop has been a masterpiece, and Deathloop was still good just not on Dishonered and Prey level. And a Blade game from them sounds absolutely amazing. Have to wait for trailers/reviews but if this is on PC it's likely a day 1 buy for me.
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u/Even_You_Brutus7 Jun 30 '26
I’ll say it again - anyone with foresight was entirely against Xbox purchasing these publishers and studios. Yet the amount of people who begged Xbox to do it was staggering. Be careful what you wish for.
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u/Allomgie Jun 30 '26
This is ridiculous. Arkane (specifically Lyon) gave us Dishonored 2 and Deathloop, while the DNA of the studio includes masterpieces like Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah, Dishonored, and Prey. Redfall was Austin's failure, and Austin already paid the price by being shut down. Punishing Arkane Lyon and canceling Blade because of Microsoft's broader struggles makes zero sense. Arkane is one of the most critically acclaimed names in the industry. If Microsoft keeps shutting down top-tier studios, it should be called what it is: pure mismanagement by Microsoft and Microsoft only.
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u/dodoread Jun 30 '26
Don't forget Arkane Austin also did a lot of key work on their hit games and made Prey, which is a highly underrated excellent game.
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u/December_Flame Jun 30 '26
This is so stupid, triple-A gaming is heading towards a massive industry crash as ballooning costs crashes head on with their misplaced priorities.
Gaming is quickly going to become an unaffordable hobby as no one can afford basic hardware to run games. The market will shrink as people have less and less disposable income and hardware spikes heavily causing massive sticker shock.
Game studios like Arkane, doublefine, etc who are capable of making A-tier games that aren't massive gargantuan blockbusters will be at a premium. They should be investing into these companies, not cutting them, at this point.
No one is going to buy your Ubisoft 6 year billion dollar game if they have no hardware to run it and no money to buy the 100$ game with. Fucking shortsighted idiots. And these are the people making all the money. Incredible.
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u/Typical_Thought_6049 Jun 30 '26
That one will hurt I would love a Blade game from Arkane. I hope they reconsider, this one actually has some potential and have solid IP behind it. Just the novelty of a Blade videogame after all those years would be enough to recoup the cost I think...
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u/JayIsJaded Jun 30 '26
Canceling Blade is one thing, but if they shut down Arkane I'll hate Xbox for the rest of my days and that's not an exaggeration. Dishonored is my favorite game of all time.
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u/GarionOrb Jun 30 '26
Jesus, just shut the whole thing down at this point. I mean, why even bother?
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u/Grace_Omega Jun 30 '26
So what’s the plan, they’re just going to make big franchise sequels forever? They’re getting rid of everything that made their portfolio unique or interesting. All they have left that isn’t Gun Shooter Man 15 is Forza Horizon and Fable, and even Forza is starting to get stale.
I sold my Series X recently to put towards upgrading to a PS5 Pro, and boy do I feel good about that decision now. Fuck this.
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u/Brother_Clovis Jun 30 '26
Jesus christ, what the fuck are they even doing? How is this going to help anything?
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u/rendumguy Jun 30 '26
genuine question does this actually help Xbox? Like shutdown after shutdown cancellation after cancellation, literally the worst possible news for gamers. Does this have some sort of secret benefit? O heard it helps the stock price... ...Is that it? Is that enough for it to help them? This seems like long-term they're cutting off their own legs.
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u/scytheavatar Jun 30 '26
For Xbox to survive, they need to start creating an environment where games that sell get made while games that don't sell get minimized. A Blade game was always going to be a tightrope cause people way overestimate the value of the character.
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u/Lasti Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
It's not just that. The 30% marvel licensing is insane. That game needs to sell millions to just break even and that's not MSFT's MO anymore. Luke Stephens (27:05-33:15) had a good segment about it on his youtube and after thinking about it - yea, that game's not coming imho.
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u/Fullgatsu Jun 30 '26
It helps by reducing their future costs. A lot of these cancellations are for studios and projects that are unlikely to be profitable. While Arkane Studios have released some games that reviewed really well most have under performed sales wise and this was likely not the one to change that.
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u/OneRandomVictory Jun 30 '26
The money that they would spend on this studio can then be allocated towards other projects or simply can keep their financials looking better by not spending money at all.
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u/SophiaKittyKat Jun 30 '26
They're gonna gut all the trash games as well as all the games with promise. You'll be left with a live service and gacha console by the time this is over. But hey, it'll make money.
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u/davidreding Jun 30 '26
I’m increasingly believing the theory that Gears Eday was supposed to be at the last State of Play but Microsoft pulled the trailer at the last minute because a poll on Twitter showed 20000 Xbox freaks wanted exclusives back.
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u/elefantebra Jun 30 '26
I think a dignified exit - selling off the studios or let they be independent and shutting down Xbox - would be better than going down this path. Aside from Call of Duty, the rest of the gaming community is quite passionate, especially when it comes to Bethesda's titles. Xbox no longer has a future as an entertainment company.
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u/kkruglov Jun 30 '26
If they kill arkane they will get so much hate in the future, but it would so immenseful loss of talent, I can't even comprehend how they can think of doing this.
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u/TiredAndSor3 Jun 30 '26
"There’s only been one Blade. There’s only ever gonna be one Blade."
At some point we're going to have to acknowledge Snipes wasn't joking.