According to Matt Booty, these decisions are not made by focusing on a developer’s past successes.
2024 will go down in history as one of the darkest years for the video game industry. There are many developers who have lowered the blinds throughout these last few months; decision that has been accompanied by waves of layoffs and cancellations of titles. Xbox surprised last May by announcing the closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks Although this last study had signed a Hi-Fi RUSH tremendously successful. And it is now that Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, reveals that everything is due to both the company’s future prospects as well as sales achieved in the past.
Booty has addressed this topic in an interview with Variety in podcast format: “These decisions are never made lightly.. They are not made quickly, and there are a lot of people, processes and oversight to make sure we make a good decision. They are always difficult,” explains the manager. “I am not going to go into details, mainly out of respect for the people affected and there was a lot of work to deliver Hi-Fi RUSH, which It was a great game and it paid off well for us.“.
“What you have to keep in mind is that, for us, it is both a situation that look towards the future as a look back at a game determined,” the manager continues. “There are many things that contribute to the success of a game. What leaders do you have? What creative leaders do you have? Is the team the same one that delivered something successful in the past? We have to look at all those things together and ask ourselves, Are we prepared for success in the future? And, although there may be factors and situations that previously led to success, they may not remain in place as you look at what you are doing for the future.”
“With many of our studies, we try to look at other options”
Even so, Booty assures that Microsoft considers other alternatives apart from the definitive closure of a developer. “With many of our studies, We try to look at other options“, continues the manager in the interview. “As an example, we recently had Toys for Bob, a studio that previously worked on Call of Duty games, they came out and became a new independent study. And I think we have announced that we have a distribution agreement with them and we will share more details about it when the time is right.
“I’m also thinking about a studio called Twisted Pixel Texas that we acquired and then, due to a kind of change in objectives, it was no longer a perfect union. But that studio continues to thrive today,” he continues in the talk. “We wanted to set them up for success. So we looked at what the options are for keeping a studio open or, you know, having it change hands. And that’s just one of the things we looked at. Sometimes those things work, other times they don’t.“.
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