REACTION - Microsoft have eroded the promise of their own vision by cutting studios like Tango Gameworks
Picard face slap.
By Jonathan Garrett
07/05/24
You don’t spend the bag that Microsoft dropped on Bethesda without needing to see a tangible return. But whatever their metrics for success, and the corporate expectations that dictate a decision like today’s news, one cannot ignore the human cost, the lack of foresight, and the erosion of the creative promise that Game Pass supposedly affords Xbox as a brand.
The messaging of Xbox First Party, and the pitch central to the premise of Game Pass, was that a subscription release model can augment traditional sales allowing devs to let creativity lead the charge. Today’s closure of studios like Tango Gameworks, who have prided themselves on producing titles big and small with both established and new IP, is an egregious and nonsensical move by Microsoft.
Hi-Fi Rush was a delight; award winning, great engagement, and the perfect AA type release that Game Pass is supposed to facilitate. It doesn’t make any sense to then shutter the studio that produced one of the best Xbox exclusives in recent memory. We very much hope that everyone affected at Tango, Arkane Austin, Roundhouse and Alpha Dog find new industry positions as soon as possible.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
