Arkane Lyon Director Calls Out Xbox Studio Closures: 'It's a F*cking Gut Stab'

Glad he has the courage to publicly say what he said. I hope there is no retaliation for it.

Good for him for standing up for himself and his team. This is an incompetent move from Microsoft, and it has honestly ruined their reputation even more. And sure, some of the studios may have had their flaws in recent games, but they also have a strong history with creating memorable and great games.

Microsoft is the new embracer now

Tango are already dead without mikami and the other two arent big deal but arkane is. Microsoft make a big mistake.

Prediction Phil will be gone by this time next year, i don't think believe this was on him i feel this came from the parent MS but Phil really hasn't done anything has he for Xbox? Gamepass is cool but it biting them hard now and while i love BC and being able to play say Fallout 3 at 60fps its hardly an enticing selling point. He kept Xbox on live support that's it and he's doing a terrible job at it. The fact Halo has a bloody good chance of coming to PS5 really show low Xbox has fallen. Still shocked at Tango though, they deserved so much better.

@get2sammyb The fact he had the balls to speak out gets him so much respect from me. Really hope this doesn't cost him.

Between him and Ybarra’s recent tweets, those are a couple of fine Sony job applications.

And people were encouraging Microsoft's greedy a** to acquire all those publishers. Microsoft is were studios go to die

Good for him, he most likely will be released but this was just terrible from the biggest software company in the world.

From the business perspective it's crazy that MS iced their Blade game in one day, first no studio and now if the director was still in now he is out. Other devs with a business history with MS like the Ori dev and the darling of the moment Larian talking about the situation, this is a big big mess. Disney and other companies won't like that. If some vocal "people" over the internet thought Sony trying to put a log-in to something they own was going to keep "third party away" they weren't ready for this.

All that money spent on buying up the monopoly board and now they have to close multiple studios to claw back money to keep the share holders happy. That money would have been better spent on supporting the studios etc. Its a sad time for the games industry and I fear it will only get worse.

@GymratAmarillo Arkane lyon who Dinga Bakaba is the studio head didnt shut and Blade is still in development it was Arkane Austin that was shut

@trev666 I see. Didn't know there was 2 arkanes, good info.

@Kraven they each made some great games but they dont sell and with the cost nowdays to make AAA games you cant make a AAA game for hundreds of millions and sell under a million copies and stay in business.

I dont like it because prey and Evil within 2 are two of my favourite games of all time but each game was a commercial failure selling less than a million copies

Good for him, but he’ll probably get fired or reassigned.

@GymratAmarillo Yeah Austin said prey and redfall and death loop. Lyon does dishonored, arx fatalis. Both were started by the same guy though, when he lived in either country

Unlike the staid,corporate Matt Booty email that thanks them for their time,how sad too bad,& no doubt "Gamer Phil" is undoubtedly practising for his constipated pained face & "it's been a tough day" P.R. damage control tweet/interview video, this shows genuine emotion of a studio boss wearing the consequences of decisions made above his pay grade.😕

Maybe he might be giving zero fudges & waiting for a similar fate/consequences,but if not,then the same "angry gamers",that were blowing up over account linking a few days ago,(despite doing so on multiple other games),will vote with their wallets supporting a monopolistic trillion dollar company buying up all the major AAA publishers perhaps isn't such a "win for gamers",after all?🤔🙄

Welp… Microsoft might even s*** more than current Sony when it comes to greedy only businesses. Unlimited power.

That leaves only Nintendo left out of the three console makers that’s normally managed, and the only one run with a smile in this entertainment business.

When Sony close studios, is it mentioned in numerous articles on Purexbox?

If you give your studio into claws of any company it is your fault.

I of course stand behind him, because truth must be said and I don't see any problem in free speech, especially for innocently fired employees.

@GeeForce very different circumstances, educate yourself

Good on him for speaking up

@Friendly Nintendo has never been friendly. They were cut throat and slimy as the rest from day one and abused monopoly power in the US in the 80s. Yamauchi was infamous. They got a lenient break with iwata, but that's past. They may be currently less evil than Microsoft and Sony but they're not any friendlier really

I don't think any of the big 3 are particularly likable unfortunately. I miss Sega consoles 😞

@DennisReynolds Gamepass is the biggest for reason for devaluing games so the only thing he has done is bad for gaming.

He made it so people have will keep waiting for games to go on Gamepass for free. And Phil is a bigger two-faced liar then two-face himself. Its funny you try to shield him but when its someone at Sony you go full blast.

Wearing a t-shirt and actlike you care with a release doesnt absolve him from everything. Or stop blasting everything one company does while protecting your hero.

Personally find the loss of Tango the most dramatic, since it's the only Japanese studio, which gave Bethesda's general bland, seemingly high-brow yet derivative offerings some well needed flavour.

However, I am looking forward to the blade and Indy games. Maybe they're better suited for licensed fluff, since most of their own IPs are snoozefests.

@NEStalgia well, for one, they’re the only one not doubling down on live service games, and are giving indie devs the spotlight they deserve. And are imo the only one really open for innovation.

They even released the game everybody 1-2 Switch even though it was a bad game, but mainly because it was finished and a lot of people worked on it for multiple years.

I trust they invest my money in a better way than Sony or Microsoft.

I agree about Nintendo in the 90’s, though. Good they got served during the wii U day’s, it made them humble again (and that’s a very, very good thing). I hope they stay that way

Unleashing his inner Johnny Silverhand. Good man.

It's Microsoft, what did you expect?
Some people are still delusional that they are a positive influence in the market when they are the worst thing to happen to it.
This is not the end of it. MS doesn't know how to manage studios.

In other words its like in the iconic 1993 menace 2 society movie.bill duke told tyrin turner aka kane.you know you fuc😀 up.thats what hes telling Microsoft.haha.word up son

I really hope Sony steps in and buys tango. Small creative games like hi-fi rush are exactly what ps5 needs among the usual gow, spiderman, horizon blockbusters.

'Darwinist jungle', I like this guy and kudos to him for speaking up.

what an absolute clown show the gaming industry has been for the past 5 years now.
Both the Sony and Microsoft Fanbases were all championing these Mega coporations to purchase every dev they could get their hands on, and what did we get ?

Lay offs, studios closed, games cancelled. all promises and no games.

I hope this will be a lesson for any other upcoming dev, to stay private and be far far away making deals with these bigger publishers. They are all rotten to the core.

Even worse Microsoft just made 22 billion+ in profit and you are telling me they couldnt keep these studios ?

they could have at least sold off arkane and tango if they didnt want them.

@ArcadeHeroes To be fair, Bethesda was basically bankrupt when MS bought them and probably was going to shudder/liquidate anyway. They were on a downward spiral, losing money, and their founder/leader was dying. If MS hadn't bought them, they'd likely have gone bankrupt and/or split and sold up and some studios would have been closed/lost anyway.

To me, the closure Arkane Austin probably isn't different than it would have been otherwise. But the problem to me is MS once again proving that the advantages they sold themselves on of being able to afford variety content of all sizes and not focus on AAAAAAA like the big publishers was smoke and mirrors, and they change their direction constantly. People that did believe in the product vision they marketed liked that idea of a stable of mixed content supported by the overall platform. If it's just another blockbuster chasing sales maximum threshold publisher, what's the point?

@Matej Whoops, yeah, I put that one in the wrong list. Rumor says Austin was working on.....a Marvel game....of all things. Which is probably what really got them cut even more than Redfall, seems like most publishers except Sony and Bethesda's Indiana Jones game are cutting all Disney licenses and just dropping the whole studio making it.

@Friendly IMO only of course but people are giving Nintendo too much credit and a free pass. Nintendo always watches what the others do, even though they say they don't, and then does it later. If you played ACNH and didn't see how deeply they're playing with a live service future, you weren't watching closely enough. Though granted their take on live service will be much more like mobile gaming. That entire game was little more than a mobile style live service prototype experiment. And was a smash hit. All that's left as add the monetization. I expect Switch 2 will do that.

I do agree that they are (were?) the only one open to innovation, but I think a lot of that was under Iwata's watch. He was a legend and a visionary. Furukawa might as well be a Sony guy. If Switch 2 is a straight up and down "more powerful Switch" we're looking at a different Nintendo than the interesting one we knew under Iwata.

Remember the Switch was Iwata's console, he was literally still working on Switch, and that launch era of games on his death bed. It's not that recent games like Princess Peach don't still show that Nintendo creativity spark. But during this generation we've seen a Nintendo that's relied largely on selling it's back catalog again and again like Sony, selling third party (Fortnite! Minecraft!), and many (though not all) of their games starting to fall into a sort of cookie cutter formula.

I don't want to say I don't like Nintendo or have given up on Nintendo, or that they don't experiment more than most others (ToTK , I really can't actually get myself to play it I just dislike that whole gluing of things mechanic, but you can't deny it's super experimental. If only it had a different controller than thumbsticks.) But I don't see current Nintendo's games playing it less safe than Sony's Marvel Marvel Marvel push or MS's new "big IP only" push very often. Back in 2017 I basically didn't need PS or XB, Switch was all I needed, but the rose colored glasses faded I think. They have "a bolt of brilliance" (heh) every now and then though. But it's not the Nintendo we had in the 3DS era. Switch may "highlight indies" but in a lot of ways it feels like a weird mobile storefront more than anything.

I hope Double Fine gets out before they get shuttered. I love that studio but their games aren't huge sellers

Let's be honest, he's wrong the sole purpose of a corporation is to be profitable. They have to answer to their shareholders. Sucks to see people lose their jobs though.

@Dodoo How are you gonna buy a company that no longer will exist?

@NEStalgia “ Whoops, yeah, I put that one in the wrong list. Rumor says Austin was working on.....a Marvel game....of all things”

Arkane Lyon is working on Blade… That make no sense for Austin to also be working a marvel game?

@AverageGamer IDK, it was just the rumor I'd read. I mean I wouldn't doubt it, we hadn't heard what else they'd been working on, and a few years ago very studio on earth doing nothing but Marvel was the trend. Why not have both Arkanes doing Marvel? And Machine doing Indiana Jones, maybe Disney licenses are cheaper in bulk lol.

No idea if it's true or not, but it would make some sense if it was true. Otherwise we don't know what their project may have been since Redfall other than the DLC, which can't possibly be the only thing they worked on all this time. And is still amazing they'd kill the studio just before releasing said DLC anyweay.

@Friendly nintendo is so overrated it’s beyond ridiculous at this point

@nomither6 name a more trustworthy console manufacturer

@NEStalgia not sure if i agree or not. Yes, Nintendo plays some stuff safe, and they rerelease stuff, but that’s because they can. Paper Mario Thousand Year door will be a new game to 95%+ of the potential buyers. Same with other rereleases. It gives them time to finish games for their next console, whatever it may be. Rereleases are there instead of the drought during the wii U era. And they know that it’ll sell, now or as an evergreen title, especially if their next system is backwards compatible.

To me they’re still the company with the new and innovative ideas, in between the rereleases. There’s princess peach, pikmin 4, Mario Wonder and tears of the kingdom all new games with loads of new ideas and all within a year. There’s also a place for wario ware and bayonetta origins in the same year, a Mario movie and the opening of a few game parks.

They’re moving their entertainment business in a different direction than the others. To me that’s innovation.

Also, i expect the switch 2 to be a similar concept as the switch 1, because Nintendo always releases their consoles and handhelds in pairs. Nes/snes. Gb/gba. N64/gamecube. Wii/wii U. Ds/3DS. So to me that’s proof that if there’s no new type of gaming system it doesn’t mean that it’s because Iwata isn’t leading the company anymore and that Nintendo has lost its way.

@Friendly none of them are

@nomither6 agreed.

But at least Nintendo’s not closing studios left and right (because bound by Japanese law) and not doubling down on live service games, NFT’s, and all that sort of crap.

Not to mention that the only legit way to play it before now would be to spend at least three figures for an old GC copy from eBay.

@anon_pel222 like Sony havent been closing studios