Upset at rumours of job cuts at Xbox and suggestions that EA refuses to sell the Dead Space franchise, a reader argues that publishers should let developers go when things don’t work out.
There was a story this week about how the number of people using their Xboxes to watch Pornhub had dropped sharply over the year. A lot of people just treated this as a joke, especially as the percentage happened to be 69%, but as soon as you start to think about it you realise what a terrible sign it is of how well Xbox is doing.
It’s nothing to do with porn. The point is there’s no outside reason why anyone would stop watching it on Xbox to that degree, so instead you realise this is the sort of raw stat that Microsoft would never make public themselves. It’s not that Pornhub users went down over the last year, it’s that everyone using an Xbox for anything dropped by that amount.
You combine that with the fact that no new Xbox first party game this year seem to have sold well (do you even remember Ninja Gaiden 4 and The Outer Worlds 2, let alone the disaster that has been Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7) and there’s rumours of Microsoft in general making thousands of job cuts early next year.
Not only are thousands of talented people going to have their jobs sacrificed on the altar of AI, but Xbox is going to be hit even harder because the games aren’t selling, the hardware isn’t selling, and those that already bought it aren’t playing it anymore.
Everyone knows what that means, it’s only a question of exactly how bad it’s going to be. But this isn’t just going to be individual people’s jobs, this is going to be whole studios. Who would bet on Double Fine or Arkane making it through to Christmas next year. Or even Easter?
I’d say it was unnecessary but at this point I don’t trust Xbox to do anything right when it comes to gaming (or much else really), so I’d rather they just sell them on now before the worst happens. They never seem to do that though, they just shut studios down and that’s it.
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There’re no considerations that these were pre-existing businesses that Microsoft bought and then ruined, they’re just not allowed to continue. I guess because it’s too much effort to find a buyer or they don’t want a rival gaining a useful asset. Only one I can think of they treated well was for Toys For Bob, who I assume they were going to shutdown, when they bought Activision, but let go independent.
Why can’t they do that for everyone? If you don’t think a studio is working out anymore than get some money from selling them or letting the developers themselves buy it out. But they don’t and it’s not just Xbox either. EA is just as bad.
We all know what would’ve happened if Battlefield 6 wasn’t a hit but now all the developers involved are trapped making that forever and franchises like Burnout and Need For Speed and Dead Space and dozens of other are effectively locked up forever.
This week it was said that developers wanted to sell on the Dead Space franchise to anyone that wanted it, because they knew EA would never touch it again, but there’s no sign they will. They’d rather keep it on the off chance they can make some money from it or they can stop someone else from doing so.
It’s so wasteful and disrespectful to the developers. If their games aren’t selling well it’s far more likely to be the publisher’s fault, in terms of interference, bad marketing, or unrealistic expectations.
I doubt there’s any way to untangle the mess that Microsoft has got into, or to get EA to sell its unused franchises, but there should be. Instead, the only way for these developers to survive is to all leave at the same time and set up a new studio somewhere else. But why not just do the honourable thing and let them separate without all that hassle.
By reader Hastings
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