Now, I think the vast majority of the pain is more than self-inflicted... I think actual business, marketing and focus need to start taking priority over idealistic political PoV. Let the games target their natural audiences and have the broadest appeal... at a certain point, trying to gain 1% of audience means alienating 25% or more.
The problem was that if you kept a studio small and lean, you were often at the mercy of predatory publishers who controlled the distribution channels (pre-network, physical media).
So most studios tried to vertically and horizontally integrate into conglomerates: own their own publishing + have a diversified enough pipeline of games that one flop wouldn't take down the entire works.
Unfortunately, that works at Activision (pre-Blizzard) and EA (00s) scale, but not Microsoft scale (where you essentially own a large chunk of all studios).
This was a reckoning long in coming, as MS XBOX leadership, after some initially brilliant ideas, got high on their own supply and forgot they couldn't endlessly acquire more studio with their parents' cash.
Tbh, they probably should have lured away one of Berkshire Hathaway's acquisition people and put them in a go / no-go decision role.
It's the acquisition price, product, and financials that make something a good deal or not, but XBOX spent the last 10 years valuing potential acquisitions on intangibles (synergy, strategy, if we don't they will, etc).
If you're a video game company, you invest millions of dollars in a project up front, for years, and you don't know until after release whether you:
- Make back all the money you spent plus a healthy profit on top.
- Just break even, but you lost the opportunity cost of all the other things that money could have been spent on with better utility.
- Your game flops and you wasted all the money you spent developing it.
It's also highly uneven. Extremely likely that King (Candy Crush) and Mojang (Minecraft) are making a ton of money, and everything else is a money pit where you pour in millions of dollars and you don't even make your money back.
Or they play some indie game like Among Us and not some big studio expensive game.
They're getting below the rate of return of treasuries. That's abysmal.
Hard to really say. Kiln and Keeper can easily be made up for by the sales of Psychonauts 2. I'm sure an indie Double Fine would not have been able to make those kinds of games.
This takes me back to Pertinent, another small game from a reputable studio, had its main writer saying that "this kind of game would not be possible without Gamepass". Which I 100% believe. Microsoft definitely didn't buy Double Fine trying to make the next Fortnite, but that arthouse strategy clearly isn't a factor these days.
Those kinds of statements show a misunderstanding of both the studio and how the games industry works. Any one of those engineers could have gotten into a FAANG the traditional way and doubled, if not tripled, their salary on arguably less involved problems than what they go through creating a real time game.
Its also likely why Schafer chose to take the studio back rather than go the route of finding a new publisher to work under. He still wants to work on games for a little longer rather than get a last paycheck and retire early.
And yes, no one expects a brand new IP to have the same odds of success as a old IP that's become a cult classic. DF's strategy and directions were not to make the most profitable, safe release because that's not why you buy a studio like DF.
Despite that loss leading strategy, Obsidian has had quite a few other releases that did to make up for that side project. So the studio would overall be in the green despite that.
Absolutely drop-dead gorgeous but I don't think I am going to ever finish it until I get a Deck 3/4 in like 5-7 years.
Only people without GamePass subscription and no desire to get it for even a month or two would buy the game on Steam.
So the majority of people?
I jest, but I honestly don't know anyone who consults the GamePass offerings before making a decision on whether or not to buy a game. It's Steam or pirate.