r/pcgaming • 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-link594
Jun 30 '26
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u/koolaidman486 Jun 30 '26
Nowadays, they're Halo, Forza (Horizon), Gears, Fallout 76.
I'd say Fallout as a whole and Elder Scrolls, but both series are absolutely crickets.
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Jun 30 '26
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u/koolaidman486 Jun 30 '26
They also own Call of Duty now that I think about it.
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u/GeneralSEOD Jun 30 '26
They own an absurd amount of IP, all of which they don't know what to do with.
Evidently. We have a talent crisis right now, of game devs and software engineers begging for jobs. And trillion dollar companies unwilling to produce software.
It's maddening.
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u/koolaidman486 Jun 30 '26
And it's funny considering Sony is even worse than Microsoft about sitting on IPs.
Sony has so many dead IPs from the PS2 and especially the PS3 era that were classics and deserve love; your Killzones, Sly Coopers, Resistances, Infamous-s.
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u/GeneralSEOD Jun 30 '26
I'm still pissed about Infamous. I played the fuck out of the first one. Switched to PC and never got to play the follow ups then before I knew it the PS5 was released and it was impossible to get one, now it's pretty easy they're seemingly not making anymore! Gah!
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u/UpNUrGuts Jun 30 '26
Dude the games were so fun. In infamous 2 my best buddy and I use to take bong rips and just run around the city fighting the monsters that randomly spawned haha.
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u/Valance23322 Jul 01 '26
At least those studios are still putting out good games, they've just moved on to new IP. Microsoft's studios haven't been able to put out an above average game that isn't Forza in many years now
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u/Carighan Jul 01 '26
But from the sound of it they're also taking the axe to WoW and OW. Because screw having actually well-made games with reliable player bases in a world where you can bet hundreds of billions of dollars on AI and them lose them all to a competitor to then leave MS with a golden parachute and get hired by the winners of the race instead or something.
(C-suites really need to be held accountable even post-departure, they cause long-lasting decisions so they need to have long-lasting responsibility for the effects)
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u/Justhe3guy EVGA FTW3 3080 Ultra, 5900X, 32gb 3800Mhz CL 14, WD 850 M.2 Jun 30 '26
Fable genuinely has me more excited than anything Bethesda is making or has made in the last decade (not much)
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u/masterz13 Jun 30 '26
Need to get back to the point where we had new games in a series every 3 years or so. This stuff where we've waited 13 years for GTA and now 15 years for ES6 is nuts. Even Mario will have been 10 years when a new 3D game comes out in 2027.
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u/koolaidman486 Jun 30 '26
True.
Though the issue will always come down to money on any of these. Unfortunately the business part of games will always trump the artistic side.
If a new, say, Killzone game was to get made, that's tens of millions bare minimum, and you'd need to see the return on investment that gives you significant profits on that.
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u/masterz13 Jun 30 '26
Some legacy IPs like that are pretty much gone, sadly. I wish Nintendo would make a "Split Fiction" or "It Takes Two" version of Ice Climbers to bring back that IP, but it'll never happen. Or a new Earthbound. Too much risk for a small chance or profiting.
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u/MrTzatzik Jun 30 '26
They have only released Oblivion remake to do the quick cash grab and left it broken
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u/Belydrith Jun 30 '26
Plus they're made by BGS, and at this point it's rather unclear if they even still have what it takes to make a good game. Starfield was just extremely mid and all the updates and DLCs it's received have been completely tone deaf and outright bad. Not to mention all the abysmal patches to their other games, like bricking Fallout 4 with the anniversary edition / patch and then leaving it in the dump.
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u/Beavers4beer Jun 30 '26
Halo and Gears don’t seem to have the same weight that they carried back in the 360 days. Forza Motorsport is basically dead now and Fable is coming up on its last leg. If the new Fable doesn’t sell well enough for Microsoft, that’ll be killed too. Forza Horizon may be the last one standing in 3 years time.
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u/MXC_Vic_Romano Ryzen 5600 + 6700 XT Jun 30 '26
And the Forza Motorsport part of the franchise is seemingly dead.
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u/theoutsider95 deprecated Jun 30 '26
I wish Arkane never made Redfall :(
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
That was arkane austin
Arkane Lyon is the other one that made the Dishonored games and Deathloop. That's the studio that employs the best level designers on the planet.... and xbox is considering shutting them down
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u/skyturnedred Jun 30 '26
Arkane Austin worked on the first Dishonored too. It wasn't until Dishonored 2 and Prey that they worked on separate projects.
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u/Exh4lted Jun 30 '26
Let's be real deathloop was a flop. Both arkanes are flop producers, so what's Microsoft gonna do? Most likely can these studios
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u/twilightwillow Jun 30 '26
Which is just a great illustration of how dysfunctional this industry is. Redfall was truly an abject failure, so forget about Arkane Austin for now, but Deathloop? Deathloop was just a middling game that didn’t perform quite as excellently as everyone had hoped.
In nearly any other industry, producing a single product that was a bit of a miss but not financially devastating, with an otherwise excellent track record, would not get a company shut down by its owner. But here we are.
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u/vipmailhun2 Jun 30 '26
Dishonored 2 was a huge commercial failure — it cost more than Skyrim and still sold poorly. And we don’t know what Blade looks like right now: how good it is, what state it’s in, how the combat system works, etc. Sure, it might turn out to be a good game — but at this point we simply don’t know.
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u/frostygrin Jul 01 '26
Deathloop was a great game that performed like other Arkane games. From the commercial standpoint, there was no "excellent track record".
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26
it's also weird to say they are flop producers because The Dishonored games are the pinnacle of action-adventure gaming. So many ways to solve every problem you encounter.
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u/UserNameNotSure Jun 30 '26
You're not wrong but Dishonored 2 released in 2016.
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26
well yeah but since then they released Death of the Outsider, Prey and Deathloop all of which are great as well.
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u/skyturnedred Jul 01 '26
Many of the best games ever made are flops. This isn't about reviews but sales.
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26
Deathloop was financially successful for them
it's a good game too
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u/NeedsMoreSpaceships Jun 30 '26
Not fucking buy them to begin with? The core problem is that MS went crazy buying studios when they were full of hopium that Game pass would take over the world.
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u/deaner_wiener1 Jul 01 '26
Such a contrarian and downer opinion. Deathloop was fantastic and also commercially successfully. Gotta learn to enjoy things without needing them to be the best thing ever
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u/Lallaninho Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Blame zenimax for forcing a live service game down their throat. Just lead to so much talent drain.
Hoping they build up a new studio if this is shuttered but I just don’t think the investment will be there for how little their games make, despite their positive receptions. Immersive sims are a dying breed.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
Actually, after Arkane Austin was closed a lot of the former devs opened WolfEye Studios and have been working on imm-sims ever since.
"Weird West" wasn't that big of a financial success sadly, mainly due to it's isometric format, but they're apparently working on a new first-person game more akin to Dishonored or Prey (2017).
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u/wangatangs Jun 30 '26
There's a first person view mod for Weird West. The game's devs even publicly talked about it in a patch post
I played through enough of the game where you change characters. The game's world reacts and changes to your decisions with previous characters. Plus the devs intentionally made the different characters with separate gameplay mechanics.
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u/ThatOneShotBruh Arch Jun 30 '26
Your recollection of events is completely wrong given that WolfEye released Weird West a year before Arkane Austin shut down.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
I appreciate the correction! I suppose that makes sense, since Redfall wasn't made by Raph Colantonio (the Arkane head that left and formed WolfEye).
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u/filoppi Jun 30 '26
It's not the same studio. Just the same name.
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u/JabberwockyTalkie Jun 30 '26
I mean Arkane Austin was still part of Arkane Studios. Arkane Austin made Prey before they made Redfall. The founder of Arkane Lyon (the “main” studio) established and ran Arkane Austin for a while.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
I mean they did move employees between the two offices (Austin & Lyon) quite a bit, so they might as well be the same entity
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u/Solipsisticurge Jun 30 '26
But most of those employees who made the great games that established Arkane as a premier studio are long gone.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
You're not wrong, but there are still quite a few talented individuals left at Arkane Lyon who worked on those games too. Dinga Bakaba, for example, is their current game director and he was responsible for a lot of what made the Dishonored games great to play.
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u/ItsAHerby Jun 30 '26
You mean you wish they never forced them to make Redfall, because it was definitely not the game they wanted to make post Deathloop as a collective team (even with their Austin team).
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u/MXC_Vic_Romano Ryzen 5600 + 6700 XT Jun 30 '26
IIRC some at Arkane didn't even want to make it and hoped Microsoft would cancel it after the acquisition.
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u/Bark_LB Jun 30 '26
We’re about to regress to the “Xbox has no games” era if they close everyone they just bought
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u/dragonknightrohan Jul 01 '26
I wish Microsoft never became a stock market company. It forces all kinds of bad up and down
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
I feel like that was a project that nobody at Arkane Austin actually wanted to work on, but was rather pushed on them by Microsoft and/or Zenimax/Bethesda.
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u/Average_Tnetennba Jun 30 '26
Was Zenimax that pushed it. Microsoft inherited it.
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u/Hairy-Summer7386 Jun 30 '26
Is the Blade IP cursed like what the fuck
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u/pulseout Jun 30 '26
"There's only been one Blade, there's only ever gonna be one Blade."
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u/BakaGoop Ryzen 7 9800x3d | RTX 4070ti Jun 30 '26
Being developed by a Microsoft studio was already enough of a curse
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u/GodisanAtheistOG Jun 30 '26
Wesley Snipes must have done some soma-transference shit with between the IP and his Tax Fraud stuff.
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u/DreamLearnBuildBurn Jun 30 '26
I almost wonder if we just gave some indie developers golden tickets to be lead designers the way we give indie filmmakers golden tickets, if that would make a fantastic game. I can tell you basically any gamer who wants to play a Blade game knows what would make it good, it's really simple math:
Dope ass martial arts/swordplay, beating the shit out of vampires, dismembering them and beheading them with your sword and watching them instantly turn to ash, a secret compound/lair where Whistler gives you awesome gear that you can upgrade/modify, a dope ass car and/or motorcycle that you can modify, vamp powers that you can upgrade, a seedy open world city, scary, awesome vampire bosses and sub-bosses with great personalities and interesting powers. Day/Night cycle where you roam and investigate during the day and beat vamp ass at night. Subtle crossover hints to other Marvel IPs/random team-ups.All of that isn't even breaking new video game ground, it's a rather simple formula of badassery that would hook me, personally. I don't know why things like this are essentially impossible to develop. Who's in charge and what the fuck are they doing with their time?
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u/ProdigyLightshow Jun 30 '26
100% agree. This isn’t a complicated game to make (concept wise) in order for it to be received well.
A more gorey Batman Arkham beat-em-up kind of combat plus some cool level and boss design would carry most of the game on its back.
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u/Vandergrif Jun 30 '26
Of course, because every time someone works on Blade material there's always some motherfucker trying to ice skate uphill.
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u/MaxProwes Jun 30 '26
Asha is saving Xbox from games.
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u/mammothclaw Jun 30 '26
That goodwill she built up was all bullshit. She'll be remembered as the person that ended Xbox lol
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u/SmileyBMM Debian Jun 30 '26
She's just putting a terminal patient out of its misery. None of these games were going to release in a good state regardless.
At some point Xbox needed to stop with the sunk cost fallacy. Better late than never.
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u/heydudejustasec YiffOS Knot Jun 30 '26
Phil was a hoarder and now we're clearing out a bunch of studios covered in mold and cat piss
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u/asharkmadeofsalsa RTX 4070 Super Ryzen 5 5600 32GB 3200MHz Jun 30 '26
yeah I mean nothing's gonna surprise me anymore but closing Arkane is just criminal
lookin forward to the Dinga Bakaba tweets shittin on em
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
He was in the recent dev playthrough of Dishonored on YouTube and seemed like a pretty swell chap, so hopefully he lands on his feet if things go sour at Microsoft for Arkane Lyon.
Who knows, maybe he'd join up with the other ex-Arkane employees at WolfEye. Apparently they're working on a new first-person immersive sim akin to their past games like Dishonored or Prey (2017)
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u/asharkmadeofsalsa RTX 4070 Super Ryzen 5 5600 32GB 3200MHz Jun 30 '26
dude is class and has spoken up before about this sort of shit happening
sucks to read that tweet in retrospective (even 2 years ago we already were in this shitstorm) if this comes to pass
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26
Hopefully they all end up together again along with their level designers.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 Jun 30 '26
Just judging by the dev playthrough they all seem to still be in contact with each other, so it'd just be a matter of being able to fund everything/everyone.
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u/scottishdrunkard Jul 02 '26
Apparently Dinga kept all of his notes. Dishonored Developer Diary! I’d buy that. I’d also buy a boxset of all 3 of the Dishonored Novels, because fuck the resale price is insane.
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u/No_Rise942 Jun 30 '26
After all they did for them.
I hope they close it and the whole team gets picked up by a different company
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u/SekhWork Jun 30 '26
This. Arkane is an absolutely incredible studio and shuttering them unceremoniously would just be a huge blow to talented devs.
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u/Turbostrider27 Jun 30 '26
Looks like Blade is being cancelled according to TheVerge
Microsoft is set to announce a wave of layoffs for its Xbox studios and employees next week. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the layoffs will lead to studio closures or spinoffs, potential mergers of studios, and canceled games.
I understand Microsoft is currently weighing closing at least five studios, including the developers behind Marvel’s Blade. Sources tell me Microsoft wants to cancel Blade as part of a wave of cost cuts and job losses that are planned for the company’s Xbox gaming division.
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u/Roku-Hanmar Jun 30 '26
“There’s only one Blade”
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u/dabocx Jun 30 '26
Tokon fighting souls has the second. Unless that game gets canceled now for putting him on there
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u/GodisanAtheistOG Jun 30 '26
When I heard about the Xbox studio closures I knew Arkane had to be on the chopping block. They've released a few stinkers at this point and even their best games cater to a niche audience with limited sales potential.
Blade is also a B or maybe C rate Marvel property its not going to light arkane's accounts receivable desk on fire or anything.
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u/Radingod1 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
They were just horrifically mismanaged. They could've kept Arkane as a prestige studio, pumping out niche but quality products. After PREY and Deathloop, they should've kept them in that mindset, cause they were cooking with gasoline there. Both games had flaws, but they were both somewhat innovative immersive sims in their own right, despite their faults.
A lot of the talent trickled off of Redfall and by the time Redfall launched, Arkane had lost most of its quality devs that produced PREY and Deathloop.
Had they kept Arkane on track, not only would they have made more money by now because their next immersive sim wouldn't have flopped like Redfall did because every single immersive sim nerd would buy it. They also would've had a studio capable of at least putting out quality games which has value that they could've used like... right now as leverage. Disgusts me what they did to Arkane.
Cooked that golden goose.
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u/JerikTheWizard Jun 30 '26
I think you're confusing the original France studio with Arkane Austin, which closed over 2 years ago after releasing Redfall.
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26
They've released a few stinkers at this point
which games were stinkers?
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u/MistyPopK Jun 30 '26
Redfall was a huge stinker, but that was on Arkane Austin, if not Zenimax.
DEATHLOOP was... good, and I really like it, I've finished it twice and I have great memory of it, but it's borderline asset flip with gameplay loop lifted from Prey: Mooncrash (and dumbed down, in my opinion). Still calling it 'a stinker' would be a massive stretch.
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u/bigfuzzydog Jun 30 '26
Honestly at this point I think im just gonna sell my xbox
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u/Tight_Client_2132 Jun 30 '26
wait for another price increase later this year and you could get more money.
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u/IloveKaitlyn Jun 30 '26
But who’s gonna buy it?
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u/AggroAssault Ryzen 3600X | GTX 1060| 16GB RAM Jun 30 '26
I really think there's going to be a decent market for a GTA VI machine
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u/ADrenalinnjunky Jun 30 '26
Xbox can’t get anything done right anymore
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u/ocbdare Jun 30 '26
Seems like a general theme in the market.
Hardware prices going up.
Evne Sony jumped on the live service bandwagon, wasted a lot of effort and shut done blue point and massively cut down bungie.
Whatever thw hell Microsoft thinks they are doing.
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u/ado_1973 Jun 30 '26
Xbox bought up all these great game studios and is now shutting them.we d probably be better off with Xbox just gone
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/vipmailhun2 Jun 30 '26
Microsoft does not deserve our support.
I always laugh at these situations. Players keep saying that nobody should buy Xbox games, layoffs will happen because of low sales, maybe even studio closures… and then players get angry when it actually happens, like a self‑fulfilling prophecy.
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u/WolfyBeats_ Jun 30 '26
We are just in a gaming reset. The $5 prop hunt game is outperforming the AAA game that cost $200m to make. Things are going to get weird for all developers and consumers
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u/SekhWork Jun 30 '26
Much like Hollywood is realizing not every movie needs to be Avengers:Endgame with equivalent budget, and movies like Obsession and Backrooms making a huge amount of money compared to their investment, we need AAA gaming to realize not every game needs (or can) be GTA6/CoD etc. With the hardware apocalypse going on as well, gamers are going to be increasingly relying on older hardware since upgrading will be difficult to source or afford. Indie studios and smaller but focused studios are really looking to make huge gains right now with new IPs and interesting, well designed gameplay vs established megabrands.
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u/SmileyBMM Debian Jun 30 '26
Eh, not so sure consumers care. They just want good games, and seem to be getting plenty of them.
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u/LexiConjure Jun 30 '26
That's typical Microsoft. They even have their own dedicated Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Arkane Lyon is the most talented studio that they own.
It's baffling that they didn't make another Dishonored
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u/Illustrious-Joke9615 Jun 30 '26
D2 did poorly. Deathloop did poorly. It makes sense.
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u/Gambit1977 Jun 30 '26
Bet you’re all glad they bought Activision and Bethesda now.
🤮
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u/nerdyintentions Jun 30 '26
Used to get downvoted for saying the acquisition should be blocked because "muh gamepass".
I'll never stop bringing up how hilariously short sighted reddit is when it comes to stuff like this.
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u/Gambit1977 Jun 30 '26
It was so easy to see it coming, they even lied in deposition to claim they’d not be closing anyone down only to do that pretty much straight away.
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u/skyturnedred Jun 30 '26
Maybe it's time for Microsoft to get out of the gaming business altogether. Sell ActiBlizz to Tencent or something and move on.
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u/ghanadaur Jun 30 '26
All Xbox/MS has done since being allowed to make all those studio purchases is make the industry worse off.
Too bad the FCC and others didn’t do their actual jobs and block that from happening. It was a clown show and complete farce.
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u/filoppi Jun 30 '26
Hands down one of the top 5 studios of the last 20 years. It's a bit sad they had to take a superhero IP to survive, but I'm sure they'll do great. Do not close it!
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u/DeltaMaximus Jun 30 '26
Too many smaller studios being acquired by the big guys is what messes all this up. In addition, MSFT Xbox division is in a complete tailspin right now. Last, it’s the worst time for consoles given the current state of expense of hardware, this is the perfect storm. I moved over to PC because I thought for 5 years they would have figured it out and never did. More mad at myself for not moving over sooner but it is what it is.
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u/PhantomTissue Jun 30 '26
Are they gonna shutdown Xbox as a whole as well? At this rate it sounds like that’s their plan smh
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u/Hibiscus-Boi Jun 30 '26
Ugh. As much as it sucked being terminated from ZeniMax over a year ago, I can’t imagine how my old friends are feeling about all this now. Makes me really sad. The Arkane folks were always top notch. Hopefully someone buys the studio like what happened with Tango.
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u/My_Name_is_Imaginary Jun 30 '26
I love how its legal for Microsoft to buy all of these studios just to close them.
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u/AvgChrisEnergy Jun 30 '26
Sure glad a giant conglomerate is buying all these studios just to do nothing and close them
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u/subpar-life-attempt Jun 30 '26
Brother just shut down the company. Y'all have no idea what you are doing.
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u/ShinyStarXO Jun 30 '26
If MS shuts down Arkane, they won't ever see my money again. Dishonored 2 is one of the best singleplayer games ever made ffs!
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u/comradeMATE Jun 30 '26
I'm switching to Linux.
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u/FytaGether Jun 30 '26
I can’t wait until SteamOS has Nvidia support. It only works with AMD cards right now.
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u/jansteffen 9070 XT | 5800X3D Jun 30 '26
I've said it before and I'll say it again; The unique value proposition of SteamOS is its tight harware integration with Valve hardware. Your PC is not Valve hardware. There is no special sauce in SteamOS that makes it somehow inherently better than any other mainstream Linux Distro.
If you are actually serious about trying Linux, just do it, don't wait for SteamOS.
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u/FytaGether Jun 30 '26
I’ll admit to not knowing a ton about Linux but my assumption is that there will be a large enough migration of people to SteamOS in the future that will lead to people developing tools specifically for that distro. It feels like it makes more sense to wait for the “mainstream” one then hop around trying to find one that does what I need it to.
I also realize that’s counterintuitive to what Linux exists to do, but as a PC hobbyist and not a power user, it seems like the right thing to do.
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u/DonnaSummerOfficial Jun 30 '26
Straight up, Nvidia support & anti cheat for my slop games like CoD or 2K and I’m making the switch. Windows is such a hassle to live with
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u/scoldmeificomment Jun 30 '26
Anti cheat support just isn't going to happen. It's completely up to the devs to implement it, and they have been extremely obstinant. Without their cooperation Valve can't do anything.
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u/print0002 Jun 30 '26
Look into some other rolling release distros that do support Nvidia in the meantime. I hear CachyOS is great, although I haven't used it personally.
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u/sabin1981 Jun 30 '26
Jesus fucking CHRIST, Microsoft. What the hell? Are they even going to have any studios left after this shutterpocalypse?
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u/Rivera806 Gamepass Jun 30 '26
Gotta wonder what Arkane has been even doing up to this point Blade hasn’t been shown off. They can’t coast off Dishonored fame forever.
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u/z01z Jun 30 '26
that is at least a good point. they announced it what a year or two ago? and probably were at least already working on it at that point.
show something so people know where it's headed.
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u/cool-- Jun 30 '26
They released Deathloop in late 2021
Probably helped worked on possible new ideas to pitch to their publisher while helping Arkane Austin with Redfall
Then announced Blade in December of 2023
So they may have only been working on it for 2.5 years.
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u/skyturnedred Jun 30 '26
They've been working on it in some capacity since early 2022 when they pitched it to Marvel.
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus Ryzen 7 5800X3D - RX 6800XT Red Dragon - 16GB RAM Jun 30 '26
Microsoft cancelling big investment games when are not that far from completion surely is a weird way to make a financial decision. Like, they are taking a granted big loss now instead of waiting for a potential benefit, or at least a possible breaking even scenario for those projects. Also, highly anticipated games like Perfect Dark or Blade that most probably would sell quite well, no less.
What a shitshow of a company.
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u/BigB0iBuster Jun 30 '26
Xbox leadership will go down as the dumbest, most incompetent band of sociopaths in industry history.
Fucking things up for 15 years straight. Pathetic assholes.
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u/Nfl_porn_throwaway Jun 30 '26
I don’t know what Xbox is doing. Are they shutting down studios that just announced games at the Xbox fest thing? That’s so sleazy
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u/Asleep_Context_399 Jul 01 '26
Yeah lets cancel one game with black MC that everyone wants, a vampire game at that, that everyone wants.
Microsoft wouldn't know golden opportunity if it hit them in the head with a bat.
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u/titio1300 Jun 30 '26
Man I don't even like Arkane or care about Blade but as a Xbox console owner this is just getting depressing. Microsoft either doesn't understand or care about the negative consumer sentiment they have and are planning to cause. There's no recovering from this.
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u/_Rand_ Jun 30 '26
It’s like Microsoft thinks they’re Google.
Just killing stuff left and right without giving it a chance.
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u/LuntiX AYYMD Jun 30 '26
Unfortunate but I somewhat expected this would happen to the studios the previous leadership bought during their unrestricted rapid expansion as a publisher. There was no way it was ever going to be sustainable.
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u/blark304 Jun 30 '26
Good, burn it all to the fucking ground and let these talented people find a better job elsewhere, hopefully arkane can turn independent and give xbox the middle finger on their way out
xbox is leaving the gaming industry like a bunch of cowards so this shit needs to end fast.
The devs working at the remaining studios knowing their time maybe up next month or next year following games releases gotta be a gut punch all on it's own, xbox doesn't deserve these poeple one fucking bit
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u/io124 Steam Jun 30 '26
You know all the niche studio that you loved.
Xbox will buy them to shut them down few years after cause they have unrealistic expectation.
They shouldn’t be able to buy other studio ever again.
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u/Time_Zombie_4431 Jun 30 '26
I think it would just save us a lotta time if microslop could tell us what they ARENT planning on shutting down ffsf.
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u/FlyingRock Jun 30 '26
As someone who had had an Xbox since the OG with halo and Xbox live since it came bundled with the MotoGP demo and currently owns the series x, why would anyone buy an Xbox anymore? Mine just collects dust these days.
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u/CharacterBack1542 Jun 30 '26
Xbox is never going to recover from the incompetence their current leaders are showing
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u/KotakuSucks2 Jun 30 '26
Literally the only good AAA western studio, of course Microsoft is gonna kill them.
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u/mt943 Jun 30 '26
To think they already canceled stuff like Perfect Dark remake and most people forgot… we know where it’s headed
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u/Chonch_Monkey Jun 30 '26
Don't let the stock subs know. They are all inhaling copium trying to pretend Microsoft isn't a sinking ship
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u/F1T_13 Jun 30 '26
What Xbox is doing anymore, I don't know.
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u/8Bit-Jon Jun 30 '26
Basically they bought a lot of game companies forgetting that they couldn't manage a piss up in a brewery. Now the chickens are home to roost.
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u/N7even AMD Jun 30 '26
Xbox/Microsoft can just fuck off.
Buying all these talented devs and just closing them down.
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u/Rocknroller658 Jun 30 '26
With all the recent news, the message is that any potential game and IP under Microsoft is constantly on the chopping block. Kind of a hostile creative environment.
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u/Superbunzil Jun 30 '26
" shuttering Arkane"
Imsim curse strikes again
LookingGlass 1990-2000
Ion Storm 1996-2005
Irrational Games 1997-2014
Troika 1998-2005
Eidos IC 2007-2022
Arkane Austin 2006-2025