
I'd call this a comedy of errors if there was anything remotely funny about it.
Big publishers can go stuff it. If they do anything good I consider it an coincidence of capitalism.
Not to dismiss the problems of the people working at or under big publishers, but games in general are not in a dark place. Big publishers are. And have been since like the PS4 and Xbox One when they all were about to abandon the entire industry because angry birds was selling well... they can get fucked, I'm done making their idiocy face of this medium. Play better games from better companies. /rant
The thing is though, Nintendo are a big publisher. And, besides a small handful of things (aka Pokémon) they don't seem to be making morally terrible decisions. Shows it can be done.
I think they have a better cost/efficiency model atm. It can change, tho, in the face of bigger production values that better hardware entails. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's been definitely their decision to stick with games with lesser budget than the typical AAA title. It's just that I'm a little worried that they can catch up with the spiraling costs (and subsequent management decisions) of the rest of the industry once they've got to the point of PS4 hardware, like it's probably gonna happen. Yesterday's words from Furukawa were pretty much in that direction.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I think ctg is on the money. Xbox execs are no longer calling the shots and all they can do is try to maintain morale. Microsoft isn't done yet.
I guess the charitable take is that maybe this particular exec was dead set against all the closures and he's showing his staff that he, at least, understands.
...But who the fuck knows at this point?
You don’t understand. You see, Line go up. And in that brief, fleeting moment of ritual sacrifice, the deadened soul of an inhuman parasitic husk can experience levels of divine bliss far more intense than any true human could comprehend. Line go up, damn it. And so it shall remain going up, until one day it consumes us all, endlessly feeding towards complete planetary annihilation. At which point the spirit of what was once called humanity can rest easy knowing maximum profit has been achieved.
Microsoft recently overtook Apple as the largest US corporation (valued over 3 TRILLION $! Yes, with a T!!). They're broke guys, give poor Microsoft a break.
I'm wondering if Mikami and Kamiya might start a new studio when their non-compete clauses are up? Maybe some of the Tango people can go to this (imaginary at this point) dev studio?
They went from literally loosing money with the OG Xbox to prove they could do something great to just being the worst.
Hopefully they find somewhere. I mean Platinum was born from Clover when that all went to shit. Thankfully Capcom seem to have gone off the taste of their own dicks now.
It's sad, Platinum was my great hope dev team to be the next Treasure... at least in my mind (I was a huge Clover mark as well... still am). At least they're technically still independent, but they obviously depend on major publishers (Nintendo, for example) to do basically anything.
It's seems obvious to me that Kamiya left because of things out of his control. I personally think it's due to their continued push into the "live service" trash sphere, but I'm obviously just assuming. I'm not going to act like he's perfect--Sol Cresta is meh, at best, but he and Shinji Mikami still have a lot to bring to gaming.
I dream of certain things happening with these creative minds I truly respect, but it's obviously best to not hope, or assume anything in the AAA game space. Everyone under anyone's thumb is always on the chopping block.
Hopefully we don't have a full on 1983 game crash, but it wouldn't surprise me at all now.