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Snake

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Posts posted by Snake

  2. The Xbox Series X|S thread

    in News, Rumours and Discussions

    Posted

    https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-interview-2023

     

    Hi-fi Rush shadowdrop:

    Quote

    Yeah, the shadow drop, it seems like it worked really well this time. It's not a thing we've done a ton of. This was an idea from the team. They'd been playing the game, felt good about their launch date and some of the early signals on quality, and said, "Hey, it would just be fun. It would just be fun to be able to launch this during the Developer Direct and say, 'Play it now.'" So we rolled with that. We're always learning, always listening, and it seems like the community's responding well, which I think is a good signal.

     

    Forza delay:

     

    Quote

    I know there were some questions on the date on Forza Motorsport, because we just revealed the year. Everybody should know just the quality that Turn 10 puts into Motorsport, if you look historically, is going to be there in this game. That's the thing that, first and foremost, is most important, and we will come out with a date, no doubt when we're a little bit closer. But we just wanted to reaffirm to people that this is a 2023 game.

     

     

    under peformance of xbox/ slowing gamepass growth:

     

    Quote

    Well, one thing with Game Pass is we're kind of in unchartered territory in doing what we're doing with Game Pass in the industry. So it's harder for us to go out there and look at examples to help us gauge how fast we should be growing. We're at an all-time high for paid subscribers, and Game Pass, it continues to grow. I'm happy with the growth. We set high internal targets, and people see sometimes we miss those targets, sometimes we hit them, but I'll always be ambitious about what we're trying to do.

    I'd say the quarter numbers that you're talking about with software and services...one of the things to remember is that's a year-over-year comparison. Last year in that quarter, we had Age of Empires, we had Forza Horizon 5, we had Halo Infinite. All of those did really well for us, and as we pointed out, we didn't have that big release in that same quarter of this year.

     

     

    layoffs:

     

    Quote

    As somebody who's been on Xbox for an awful long time, it's always a challenge whenever a coworker...a team member is not going to be on the journey with us going forward. I take to heart the impact on individuals. I see my commitment and my responsibility as the person who heads the business to create a safe place where people can do their best work. And obviously, we have reductions for certain people there. I haven't succeeded at that.

    My commitment is to the business, to the customers, to the teams. I think running a successful business is part of creating a stable place for our team members. The long-term vision that we have on Xbox of building our experience around the player, allowing creators to build games that can reach players on any screen that they want to go play, giving players different ways to build their library, whether it's buying their games, subscribing to their games, looking at access like xCloud and the work that we do on PC. I'm a strong believer in that vision.

    Right now, there's some business that we're having to work through, and part of that is making sure that we have the right resources in the right places to do the best work. Sometimes, that means we have to make some allocations, in this case, some reductions, and I don't take that lightly, because the impact on the individuals is real. But it is, I think, important for us, for the larger organization that's here, that I put this business in the best stable position I can for what we need to go forward, which in the end should create a better place for the great team members that are here building the things that they're building.

     

    343 situation:

     

    Quote

    At the same time, when we launched that game, we know we needed to make some commitments to people about the content updates and our timing on those and the quality, and we didn't hit our own bar for doing that. I believe in the team that's there, Pierre and the leadership team, and the plan that they have. Obviously, [343 studio head Pierre Hintze], he's the studio head now, has been on Halo for a long time. He's worked on [Halo: The Master Chief Collection, he's done some great work there. The team has a very good plan.

    What we're doing now is we want to make sure that leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan that they need to go build. And Halo will remain critically important to what Xbox is doing, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.

    In terms of support studios and other things, that's just part of development and having other partners help us. But the heart and soul of Halo is with 343 and the team that's there, and I have the utmost confidence in the team that's there and leading and the plan that they have going forward.

     

     

    Activision:

     

    Quote

    Given a year ago, for me, I didn't know anything about the process of doing an acquisition like this. The fact that I have more insight, more knowledge about what it means to work with the different regulatory boards, I'm more confident now than I was a year ago, simply based on the information I have and the discussions that we've been having.
    ...
    So my confidence remains high. We're actively working with the regulatory boards around the world that need to approve for this, and it's been a learning experience for me. A lot of time spent, a lot of travel, a lot of conversations, but they're conversations where I get to talk about our industry and the work that we do and why we do it. I think the more regulators are informed about what gaming is, how the business runs, who the players are, and what our aspiration is as Team Xbox is just a good thing for the industry itself.

     

    • Like 5

  9. Hogwarts Legacy

    in Games

    Posted

    58 minutes ago, Bird Bird Bird said:

     

    Have you seen the physical size ? Based on all comparisons, it seems pretty huge for long handheld use. 


    its not as heavy as it looks, you can also use a kickstand case and wireless controller. 

    • Like 1

  15. The PC Gaming Thread

    in News, Rumours and Discussions

    Posted

    On 1/20/2023 at 11:38 PM, PhantomShade said:

     

    How do you guys deal with this ABSOLUTE UNIT ?

    Even normal switch is pretty big so never actually realized the scale of this big boy

    Only portables i've played are GBA micro and the PSP 3000, never knew these things are so massive today, no wonder they sell a carry case


    Its not as heavy as it looks imo, i just use the kickstand to put it on the table and use a controller 

  19. Like a Dragon: Ishin Kiwami

    in Games

    Posted

    22 minutes ago, hazard12345 said:

    This has to be the best collection in terms of variety of side activities, i have seen in the Like a dragon series so far


    Y0 is still the gold standard for side quests/ mini games in the entire series 

  21. The Xbox Series X|S thread

    in News, Rumours and Discussions

    Posted

    https://www.pcworld.com/article/1479735/microsoft-execs-partied-with-sting-hours-before-announcing-layoffs.html
     

     

    The Wall Street Journal broke the news of the Tuesday night concert, which was reportedly an “intimate” gathering of 50 or so people. Gordon “Sting” Matthew Thomas Summer is one of the most recognizable rock musicians in the world, whose private appearances generally cost around $500,000 according to AAE Music. It’s not known if Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who personally signed the blog post announcing the mass layoff, attended the concert, though he was present in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

  22. Halo Infinite

    in Games

    Posted · Edited by Snake

    Summary:

    343 seems to have lost around 1/3 of its workforce (internal + contractors)

    2023 plans seem unchanged by this major reshape: focus was and still is on MP for this year (Forge MM, new Seasons/BP, New maps and probably Tatanka)

    Before Bonnie Ross quitting, Joseph Staten with a small team was preparing to ship multiple contained Campaign DLC to expand its narrative over the months or even years. This plan was stopped when Pierre Hintze and the new key roles came in after Ross as they've seen too much complexity in creating new contents for Campaign + was not enough profitable for them to sustain, so they decided to completely halt them in favor on focusing on MP only for the time being (this may have led to Staten deciding to leave too)

    Halo Infinite largely missed its financial and overall goals and led to Microsoft decision to halt 343 "active development" transforming (or regress?) them into "franchise coordinators"

    This means that other than supporting Halo Infinite MP (which is already largely externalized to Certain Affinity, Spearsoft and others), their role will be limited to make sure different external studios will create further Halo projects (direct sequels to Infinite story or spin-offs of different genre) respecting all the established lore and fundamentals for the IP

    Slipspace Engine is still in place along with its internal engineers, but it will be opened up to learn and use also to all external studios working with the IP (if they want)

    In this sense, 343 together with Microsoft Game Publishing started contacting (and contracting) with external studios to create "future Halo experiences" together since 2020, also with the aim to reduce/optimize costs/budget

     

    Source: https://www.resetera.com/threads/rumor-343-is-now-stopping-active-development-and-become-franchise-coordinator-of-halo-halo-infinite-campaign-dlcs-scrapped-focus-on-mp-support.677638/

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