Bitcast 292 : Discussing the Evolving Gaming Industry

I'm 100% with Hoeg on this one. The amount of anger I've seen everywhere on the closer of these studious is insane. You'd think Microsoft shutdown all of Xbox with their reaction. It's honestly the reason why I dropped A LOT of podcasts over the past few months. You guys are genuinely one of a kind, and I dread the day you decide to stop. I'm an audio listener and the amounts of times you guys make me laugh is insane. I'm sure if I were to watch it instead I would laugh more because of Travis shenanigans. Thank you very much for the weekly shows xD

There's a case to be made for all the studios being closed. My issue with Tango is that part of the industry is growth. Imagine if Sony closed Naughty Dog after Uncharted 1, or Guerrilla Games after Killzone Shadow Fall? Tango showed that they were capable of making a successful game. And while their other projects, The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo, didn't succeed as well, those were under the Zenimax umbrella. Being under Microsoft, why not keep the studio around and focus on growing and nurturing Tango so their next game can be bigger and better? And with some games going to other platforms, the play may have been for the sequel to launch multiplatform to help with revenue. Unless you're Call of Duty, studios aren't always going to break sales records. The ones that do find critical success are where you focus resources to help them grow and hopefully find better success. I know Microsoft as a corporation is always trying to make a profit, but I feel they're in the wrong industry if they aren't willing to nurture the teams instead of closing them, especially if they aren't hurting for money.

I think the problem here with Hoegs argument is hes only looking at it from an objective pov. Yes from a business pov you can understand why these decisions were made. But at the same time you should also be able to understand why people would be upset about it. Maybe some people are out there blowing it out of porpotion. But its definitely a situation we should be able to empathise with.

IDK how you guys close on Skull and Bones and don't mention Anthem while you're at it. I've been doing gamepass for about 1.5 years now. I started when I realized there were like 4 games I wanted all hitting gamepass within a few months of each other in late 2022 - starting with Midnight Fight Express and capping off with High on Life. My original goal was to play all those games for $30 in 3 months and get out. After I finished and/or bounced off all those games, I found there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to play but had never gotten around to for one reason or another. So I played through stuff like the newer Hitman, Mirror's Edge 1/2, Jedi Fallen Order, and then I discovered the Yakuza series and that kept me busy for an entire year. In that time, I was also able to play Starfield for about 75 hours and checked out Forza Motorsport - which I still keep installed and do the new races every week. So now, I keep gamepass for Forza and am going to give it until the end of this year to see what that xbox first party lineup looks like. I have Jedi Fallen Order which just game to gamepass via EA play now that it's a year old (I'm enjoying that one though unfortunately it runs terribly on my PC). I am checking out a few indie games here and there to tide me over (Little Kitty Big City among them), but I am really hoping for something like a Gears of War collection so that I can go through that entire series (for some reason only Gears 1 is on gamepass right now). I also haven't played a COD campaign since Infinite Warfare and am not interested in making an Activision/Blizzard account, so if COD started coming to gamepass I would probably check the campaigns for the last few games out. I suspect if MS can get all those games on gamepass and start delivering a big first party game that I'm interested in trying at least twice a year then I will be a subscriber for a long time.

I'm going to have to hard disagree with Hoeg on this one. What happened is a slap in the face to developers who work hard and win awards just to get sacked. I feel like we should voice our opinions on the matter. Maybe it would cause a welcome change in the future, maybe not, but at least we can try.

I am still dying over Mopthoter's day 😂😂😂😂

The #MakeBitCastAThreeHourPodcast *crew*?! Am I not alone?! Do I have brethren?! 🤣

Watch Xbox make only a portion of the new Call of Duty experience free on Game Pass and require a separate purchase to access some features...

Its not that Microsoft was looking at xbox not making 1 quarter. Its that Xbox hasn' t been making a profit for 10 years. 70 billion here and 70 billion there, and soon you are talking about real money..

It's just insane the amount of useless outrage has been going on surrounding Xbox and MS. It's a shame how so many cannot or are refusing to have more than one thought and opinion on the matter and too much "All or nothing" and "black/white" thinking. We can all be upset and disappointed by the recent studio closes and job cuts, but it's like people have 20% of the what's going on while reacting and responding with 80% emotions, and fair enough, but then they take that emotion and spin it into believing they know everything that's going on and and that opinion and feelings are facts.