Summary

  • Xbox closing Bethesda studios for blockbuster titles is a bad move for creativity and the industry as a whole.
  • Focusing only on massive projects like Elder Scrolls and Fallout may hurt the diversity of games being developed.
  • Studio closures show a trend towards prioritizing big-budget games over unique and innovative projects.

It’s hard to be part of the game industry (or report on it) and not feel unrelenting despair at the state of things. Earlier this week, Xbox announced it was shuttering several studios under the Bethesda umbrella, including Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and more. All of the studios were attained in Microsoft’s $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax, which it kickstarted after hearing that Starfield might be a PlayStation exclusive.

The studios being shuttered have produced some excellent games: Dishonored, Prey, and Hi-Fi Rush were developed by Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, the two losses most bemoaned by the gaming community. They were also developing the most interesting games – while Arkane’s latest game Redfall was a swing and a miss, Hi-Fi Rush was very well received by players and largely lauded by critics as being one of the best recent Xbox exclusives.

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How many of these studios will be shut down within five years of their games getting released?

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It’s been revealed that during the closures, head of Xbox Studios Matt Booty told the affected studios, “These changes are grounded in prioritising high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games.” Looking at what’s left of Bethesda’s studios and what we know to be in the works, it seems like Booty is referring to the main Bethesda team working on the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, which are the company’s most popular franchises.

Tango Gameworks, in particular, was in the process of pitching a sequel to the beloved Hi-Fi Rush, and would have needed to hire more staff to develop the game. Arkane seemed to also be hiring for future projects, possibly pitching a new single player title that may have been a new Dishonored game.

While Redfall was a miss, it’s largely because Arkane Austin had been pushed into making a co-op shooter when it usually made single-player immersive sims. I wish we could have seen a new Dishonored game.

According to ZeniMax head Jill Braff, the company was overwhelmed by the number of projects in development over the nine studios, and decided to shut down studios it deemed extraneous. Considering that Bethesda seems to now work exclusively on massive, decade-long projects – Fallout 4 released in 2015, Skyrim in 2011, and Starfield took about a decade to make – you’d think that Bethesda would want to keep studios that are making smaller games, in shorter time frames, that players actually like. Its “blockbuster games” require a lot more resources, much more time, and can be incredible money sinks if they’re not received well.

Starfield is one such example – a decade in development and $200 million were put into a new IP that ultimately turned out to be widely considered just okay. Studios investing only in blockbusters are making huge, ill-advised bets, keeping all their eggs in one basket while closing down studios doing perfectly good, not to mention unique and interesting, work. Every company seems to be doing this, making the market more hostile to games that take chances and aren’t “blockbuster games”.

So yes, while it’s easy to focus on the inhumanity it takes to put hundreds of talented employees out of work for wanting to make more critically lauded games, we also need to remember that it’s also stupid. It’s bad business strategy to be focusing only on the big projects, and yet here we are, watching one of the biggest gaming companies in the world do just that. We can only hope that the employees of these studios land on their feet and go on to continue making cool games, because the industry will be worse off without them.

Xbox Game Studios

Date Founded March 1, 2000 CEO Phil Spencer Parent Company Microsoft, Microsoft Game Studios Subsidiaries Mojang Studios, Obsidian Entertainment, Playground Games, 343 Industries, Zenimax Media Consoles Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox One X, Xbox Seires X Accessories Xbox Elite Controller Series 2, Xbox Series S Paper, Xbox Adaptive Controller Expand Collapse