A Hi-Fi Rush Sequel Was Reportedly Being Pitched Before Tango Closed

thegamer.com:

Xbox rocked the games industry earlier this week by closing down Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, two developers responsible for beloved titles such as The Evil Within series, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and the Prey reboot. Pretty much everyone was surprised by the announcement, including the people at Tango and Arkane Austin themselves, who were reportedly in the middle of pitching new projects to Xbox before being shut down.

This is according to a new report from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, which claims that employees were shocked by news of the shutterings earlier this week. It's claimed that Tango and Arkane Austin were in the middle of hiring people for future projects, which is claimed to be one of the main reasons for their closure, and that Tango was reportedly preparing to pitch a sequel to Hi-Fi Rush.

It's a similar story for Arkane Austin too, which was looking forward to moving on from the critical and commercial disaster that was Redfall. According to Schreier, the studio was looking to get back to its immersive sim roots by pitching a new single player title, most likely a new entry in the Dishonored series, before it was shut down alongside Tango Gameworks.

In the report, it's also revealed exactly why both Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin were shut down, outside of Xbox's public excuse that it wanted to funnel more resources into "high impact" titles. According to Schreier's sources, Xbox president Matt Booty explained that parent company ZeniMax was feeling too spread thin, and that Tango and Arkane Austin wanted to recruit more people to help with their pitched projects.

ZeniMax head Jill Braff also apparently explained that the company was feeling a little too overwhelmed with the amount of projects in development across its nine studios, and that there was a feeling the company was about to "topple over". Quite why Xbox decided to shut down studios instead of investing in them further is a mystery, though very little the company does