Ever since Microsoft started on their spending spree of acquisitions in 2018, gamers have feared the worst. Would Microsoft simply out-spend Sony to secure market dominance?
Would PlayStation gamers be deprived of innumerable great games? Were they building Game Pass into a video gaming Death Star?It turns out we should have feared the opposite.
Death Stars do have a tendency to blow up, after all…The past six months – pretty much ever since Microsoft closed the staggeringly huge acquisition of Activision Blizzard King – has seen almost every aspect of Xbox as a platform thrown into doubt.
From first party games being console exclusives, to potentially quitting the hardware business, and now even the mere continued existence of their expensively acquired studios, there’s a complete lack of certainty to where the Xbox business is heading.This week’s closure of Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, and Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Games’ integration elsewhere came as a massive shock.
Arkane Austin’s Redfall was a flop, there’s no denying that, and the fact of the matter is that, even if a studio has been pushed down a particular path by management, no team is truly immune to failure.