President of Xbox at Microsoft asked about the closure of Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, spends close to a minute saying almost nothing
The recent closures of Arkane Austin (Dishonoured, Prey) and Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) have sent ripples throughout the gaming industry. Arkane has a beloved library of games, but recently flubbed on Redfall—while Tango seems unceremoniously shuttered after the comparative success of its most recent title.
Microsoft's messaging on exactly why Tango Gameworks was shut down is…. Well, it's mixed to say the least. In the initial internal email, Xbox's Matt Booty signalled a desire to focus on «blockbuster» hits and Bethesda games.
Then, in a later town hall, Booty argued that Xbox as a brand needed to develop smaller games that would win the company more awards. As many have pointed out over the past week, that's pretty much what Hi-Fi Rush was.
Said statement even prompted Tango's Game Project Manager Kazuaki Egashira to tweet out a devastatingly simple «Not enough?» with a picture of the various awards Hi-Fi Rush had gathered.
There's a bit of nuance to be found there, in fairness. Hi-Fi Rush certainly wasn't 'small indie' in terms of its cost, as per the developers themselves—and it had a larger team towards the tail-end of its development. But it did absolutely start small, and it did absolutely win awards.
Recently, Bloomberg sat down with Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, for an interview at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. Overall, the picture that Bond paints is one of struggle—companies of the modern era have to justify their existence not just with success, but growth, and Microsoft's been struggling to do that.
«The last year or so in videogames,» says Bond, «largely the industry's been flat … [we saw some] tremendously groundbreaking games, but the growth didn't follow all that.»
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She's not wrong, here, when she notes that both the cost of AAA blockbuster games and their development time is «going up»—still, Bond argues, Xbox feels a «deep responsibility
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