Comment on "You can’t just throw new people at that problem": Bethesda devs doubt future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will have the same "quality level", after losing seasoned staff to Xbox cuts

Vespair@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  If you make lots of money and save a lot, and your roommate is unemployed and spends tons of money, your apartment might be profitable, but yes ur roommate still needs to balance their budget.

  Allegedly, Minecraft has been subsidizing the entire Microsoft games division. If that's actually the case, the question becomes: why? If the game studios aren't profitable except one, isn't it greedy to expect Minecraft's studio to keep paying for them?

  Don't get me wrong: I do think there's a greed problem here on Microsoft's part, but it isn't trying to get unprofitable subsidiaries to become profitable. It's the fact that Microsoft bought half the games industry hoping to get massive pricing power by owning many of the best game franchises of all time so they could get us all to rent their library through xbox game pass. The fact that it's failing is unfortunately good on the balance of things.

  In that sense, the greed worth attacking isn't the hard times of layoffs when they fail, it's the attempt to leverage game libraries to get us hooked on game subscriptions. That they failed and are now in a bad way is horrible for devs in the short term, bad for gamers in the short term, but ultimately is better for everyone when game subscription stays a niche.

  Microsoft already started jamming the price up, if we ended up with a few megacorps renting libraries out to us that's exactly where things were headed.

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  • darkangelazuarl@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Maybe Microsoft shouldn’t have bought all those game studios that “weren’t profitable”. These game studios aren’t just property IPs they are the devs that make the games. Bethesda and any other studio Microsoft owns is dead.

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  • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Bethesda was profitable too, at minimum until MS purchased them.

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