The craziest part of this isn’t even the statement compared to what happened today. It’s that it was posted at the time because other people were reporting Hi-Fi Rush wasn’t selling well.
Real-Variation-8681
I mean I never played it, nor did the game ever appeal to me.
However even I was pretty confused by this, all I’ve seen surrounding this game is praise and positivity, and as I understand it has quite a sizable fanbase.
So from a business perspective, wouldn’t it make more sense to say “hey let’s not fire the one studio that was able to make an Xbox game people didn’t hate with a passion” amidst a time where your company is releasing turd after turd to the point your brand ambassador had to jump on a livestream and publicly state Xbox wasn’t going out of business, because people genuinely thought it was over.
Like I don’t understand. Xbox has IPs such as Halo, Fallout, Elder scrolls, Minecraft, Warcraft, etc. And they own Studios like Bethesda, Obsidian, Blizzard, etc. like there’s absolutely NOTHING stopping them from being successful except their quality assurance, brain dead decisions and out of touch beliefs about what players want. And this right here is just another prime example of what I mean- an out of touch, brain dead decision.
muppet0o0theory
The problem is that while some of these games may exceed expectations their total revenue/margin isn’t beating comps for market expectations of banner video game IP. It’s not enough to outperform, you have to out perform other out performers.
Capitalism gonna capitalism.
Onion__Mage
I wonder how they measure success if a game is on GamePass? I don’t know if the player count of a game on Gamepass translates directly to revenue. Is there some sort of data that tell us how much revenue the game made (amount of new Gamepass subscriptions) when the game was released? Makes me wonder if Gamepass is doing more harm than good. Maybe I am missing something here.
SiliconEFIL
This game would have spawned at least 2 sequels within 4 years in the 2000s.
InitialAge5179
What do you mean by closing it? Isn’t it an offline story based single player? Like what are they doing?
TheohBTW
This may shock some people: They lied.
Spinnenente
i hope the devs found another company because hifi rush is an absolute gem and one of the best games i’ve played last year.
Alastor3
Being “a success” and “selling” are two different things
Recklessavatar
Yes, unfortunately, this is how large corporations work, they need to “cut” expenses somewhere so that the revenue in the annual report is more impressive, and this time the gaming division became the victim. They don’t care about games, just business.
SweetPuffDaddy
Hi-Fi Rush might have done well, but what about Ghostwire Tokyo? Development costs on Ghostwire Tokyo were significantly higher than Hi-Fi Rush, and I don’t think the game sold well.
JurassicFlop
Wasted talent. VP of games marketing at Xbox talks about KPIs and expectations but calls it a “surprise release”
ElJacko170
Even won them their first game award in ages, but nope. Close the whole studio down.
Downtown-Custard5346
I’m a drummer, so when this game first came out I thought “oh this sounds like something I could get into” played it for maybe an hour and got bored. It’s not the worst game, but it’s certainly far from the best.
paparoxo
The Evil Within 2 is also an amazing game. I hope these talented people continue working on other projects.
AnxiousDonut
It was considered a huge success because it had absolutely no marketing. No one knew about it then all of a sudden it came out and people enjoyed it. It didn’t make them tons of money and honestly not that many people played it in the grand scheme of things. This is a terrible example.
Perry_cox29
Look at the numbers. Gross revenue on the level of a successful indie game (but not breakaway success). Net revenue on the level of basically any game that isn’t a flop.
Gamers may have loved it, but it doesn’t stand out in any way at all financially.
And if a truly exceptional game for this studio only competes with slightly above the median, there’s not much point.
Sucks, but a sound corporate decision if you don’t care about the artistry… which public corporations are legally obligated to place second behind stakeholder value
lazzzym
Not understanding Hi-Fi Rush was made by a tiny team in the studio and most of the money & resources was dedicated to Ghostwire Tokyo which is a game most didn’t play until it hit Game Pass a year later.
fcuk_the_king
The best thing for gaming and MS would be if they divested all of their gaming portfolio immediately and stayed away.
The quarterly revenue model as part of a behemoth just doesn’t work for game studios when you can be let go no matter what for a +0.1% increase for the shareholders next quarter.
N_Who
Companies don’t care how good a game is. They care only about how much money a game makes.
Corporations will kill art, if that’s what it takes to monetize it. And video games are not an exception.
Neravariine
You can find plenty of articles saying how many people played it. It reached 3 million+ players but that doesn’t mean 3 million people bought it for full price. Gamepass is good for offering variety but enough support for a whole studio? It will never be enough.
When the business people are asking, “Why should we give you money to make another game?”, reach isn’t good enough. They want hard sales data that shows the product attracted buyers who will buy future games. You also can’t use the new subscriber count as proof people subscribed only for Hifi Rush.
Microsoft says they’re happy but they also want high sells above all.
SilentResident1037
That was over a year ago…
FSD-Bishop
It was a success on game pass but that doesn’t mean it sold well.
Annual_Letter1636
Xbox was not huge success
Profeelgood23
The video game industry is just sad these days. I swear, every other day another studio is being closed down. Another group of developers are being laid off. All to save money. Money. Money. Dumb ass money. I’d guess that over 100 studios have closed or sized down in 2024 alone. Probably an inflated number, but still. It’s just….
Sad.
AidilAfham42
“This team is great! They’re the perfect people to do the next 10 years of Call of Duty! Let’s chop em’ up boys!”
deathbunnyy
I said it years ago, Game Pass was not working. All you had to do was check the community, everyone only played games that showed up free on Game Pass and that became the very first question for any new game coming out. It was a death knell to sales, and especially having these wild expectations is just some hyper EA level shit. Ratchet & Clank probably didn’t sell insanely well, especially because of the production cost, but PlayStation doesn’t just shut that shit down when fans love the games and it’s such a staple franchise.
27 Comments
The craziest part of this isn’t even the statement compared to what happened today. It’s that it was posted at the time because other people were reporting Hi-Fi Rush wasn’t selling well.
I mean I never played it, nor did the game ever appeal to me.
However even I was pretty confused by this, all I’ve seen surrounding this game is praise and positivity, and as I understand it has quite a sizable fanbase.
So from a business perspective, wouldn’t it make more sense to say “hey let’s not fire the one studio that was able to make an Xbox game people didn’t hate with a passion” amidst a time where your company is releasing turd after turd to the point your brand ambassador had to jump on a livestream and publicly state Xbox wasn’t going out of business, because people genuinely thought it was over.
Like I don’t understand. Xbox has IPs such as Halo, Fallout, Elder scrolls, Minecraft, Warcraft, etc. And they own Studios like Bethesda, Obsidian, Blizzard, etc. like there’s absolutely NOTHING stopping them from being successful except their quality assurance, brain dead decisions and out of touch beliefs about what players want. And this right here is just another prime example of what I mean- an out of touch, brain dead decision.
The problem is that while some of these games may exceed expectations their total revenue/margin isn’t beating comps for market expectations of banner video game IP. It’s not enough to outperform, you have to out perform other out performers.
Capitalism gonna capitalism.
I wonder how they measure success if a game is on GamePass? I don’t know if the player count of a game on Gamepass translates directly to revenue. Is there some sort of data that tell us how much revenue the game made (amount of new Gamepass subscriptions) when the game was released? Makes me wonder if Gamepass is doing more harm than good. Maybe I am missing something here.
This game would have spawned at least 2 sequels within 4 years in the 2000s.
What do you mean by closing it? Isn’t it an offline story based single player? Like what are they doing?
This may shock some people: They lied.
i hope the devs found another company because hifi rush is an absolute gem and one of the best games i’ve played last year.
Being “a success” and “selling” are two different things
Yes, unfortunately, this is how large corporations work, they need to “cut” expenses somewhere so that the revenue in the annual report is more impressive, and this time the gaming division became the victim. They don’t care about games, just business.
Hi-Fi Rush might have done well, but what about Ghostwire Tokyo? Development costs on Ghostwire Tokyo were significantly higher than Hi-Fi Rush, and I don’t think the game sold well.
Wasted talent. VP of games marketing at Xbox talks about KPIs and expectations but calls it a “surprise release”
Even won them their first game award in ages, but nope. Close the whole studio down.
I’m a drummer, so when this game first came out I thought “oh this sounds like something I could get into” played it for maybe an hour and got bored. It’s not the worst game, but it’s certainly far from the best.
The Evil Within 2 is also an amazing game. I hope these talented people continue working on other projects.
It was considered a huge success because it had absolutely no marketing. No one knew about it then all of a sudden it came out and people enjoyed it. It didn’t make them tons of money and honestly not that many people played it in the grand scheme of things. This is a terrible example.
Look at the numbers. Gross revenue on the level of a successful indie game (but not breakaway success). Net revenue on the level of basically any game that isn’t a flop.
Gamers may have loved it, but it doesn’t stand out in any way at all financially.
And if a truly exceptional game for this studio only competes with slightly above the median, there’s not much point.
Sucks, but a sound corporate decision if you don’t care about the artistry… which public corporations are legally obligated to place second behind stakeholder value
Not understanding Hi-Fi Rush was made by a tiny team in the studio and most of the money & resources was dedicated to Ghostwire Tokyo which is a game most didn’t play until it hit Game Pass a year later.
The best thing for gaming and MS would be if they divested all of their gaming portfolio immediately and stayed away.
The quarterly revenue model as part of a behemoth just doesn’t work for game studios when you can be let go no matter what for a +0.1% increase for the shareholders next quarter.
Companies don’t care how good a game is. They care only about how much money a game makes.
Corporations will kill art, if that’s what it takes to monetize it. And video games are not an exception.
You can find plenty of articles saying how many people played it. It reached 3 million+ players but that doesn’t mean 3 million people bought it for full price. Gamepass is good for offering variety but enough support for a whole studio? It will never be enough.
When the business people are asking, “Why should we give you money to make another game?”, reach isn’t good enough. They want hard sales data that shows the product attracted buyers who will buy future games. You also can’t use the new subscriber count as proof people subscribed only for Hifi Rush.
Microsoft says they’re happy but they also want high sells above all.
That was over a year ago…
It was a success on game pass but that doesn’t mean it sold well.
Xbox was not huge success
The video game industry is just sad these days. I swear, every other day another studio is being closed down. Another group of developers are being laid off. All to save money. Money. Money. Dumb ass money. I’d guess that over 100 studios have closed or sized down in 2024 alone. Probably an inflated number, but still. It’s just….
Sad.
“This team is great! They’re the perfect people to do the next 10 years of Call of Duty! Let’s chop em’ up boys!”
I said it years ago, Game Pass was not working. All you had to do was check the community, everyone only played games that showed up free on Game Pass and that became the very first question for any new game coming out. It was a death knell to sales, and especially having these wild expectations is just some hyper EA level shit. Ratchet & Clank probably didn’t sell insanely well, especially because of the production cost, but PlayStation doesn’t just shut that shit down when fans love the games and it’s such a staple franchise.