I wrote last week about how shocked I am that Death Stranding was ever made. In an era where development times and costs have ballooned, publishers seem more risk averse than ever when it comes to their biggest budget titles. While we have been lucky to have a lot of fantastic games in the last several years, it’s rare to play something that truly feels unlike anything else unless you are playing an indie game.
Death Stranding was able to be made because an iconic game developer had the sway and marketing power to make it happen. Almost no other developer could pull something like that off.
However, there was one other avenue where hope seemed to exist for cool and different things to happen in the AAA space, and that was through Xbox Game Pass. With a subscription model that gave gamers the freedom to try new things without financial risk, and with Microsoft receiving a steady revenue stream that made it so games didn’t all have to be successful in traditional ways, it seemed like the best avenue in the industry for big risks to be taken.
There may have been no better example of this than with Hi-Fi RUSH’s release in early 2023. While Hi-Fi RUSH began development before Microsoft acquired Tango Gamework’s publisher, Bethesda, the existence of Game Pass seemed to give the game a kind of security that it wouldn’t have had otherwise. After all, Microsoft bypassed the traditional marketing model with it, and shadow dropped it during one of its Developer Direct showcases. This happens on occasion with indie games, but even then, it’s quite rare. Something like this was just about completely unheard of in the AAA ecosystem, and there is a reason for that. Relying on a game to succeed mostly through word of mouth and maybe an ad on the front of the Xbox home page is not usually a big recipe for success. Marketing is important!
This made it that much more stunning and infuriating when Microsoft announced that it was closing down Tango Gameworks earlier this week. To me, this hurt more than any of the other bad industry news that we’ve gotten this year. This is because it didn’t only feel like the end of one studio. It also felt like the end of just about all risk taking in the AAA budget gaming space.
What is Success?
Despite the nontraditional release, the Game Pass model seemed to succeed for Hi-Fi RUSH. Tango Gameworks put out a tweet proudly declaring that it had three million players, which most of us assumed meant it was a number that the developers and publishers had hoped for. This was backed up by a tweet from the VP of Marketing at Xbox, Aaron Greenberg, who tweeted, “Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release,” when rumors swirled that the game didn’t perform as well as Microsoft had hoped.
Outside of the Game Pass model, it’s not too hard to tell if a game succeeded. If it is near the top of the charts on the month it released, it probably made some money. With Game Pass relying on “engagement”, and likely deep diving into metrics related to new subscriptions and subscription retention from people who played the game, it is now almost impossible for the average gamer, and maybe even most developers, to know if a game is truly successful.
If a brand new IP can have over three million people play it despite no marketing being behind it before release, go on to win multiple awards, have an 87 on Metacritic, and the studio still gets cut, then something is very wrong. If that is not success, then what is in this new landscape?
Success Can Take Time And Risks are… Risky
While the founder of Tango Gameworks left the company last year and possibly took some developers with him, there are also reports that Tango was preparing to pitch a sequel to Hi-Fi RUSH to Microsoft in the near future. I think most of the people who played the original were excited about this possibility. Even if the first game didn’t quite hit the metrics that Microsoft had hoped for, Hi-Fi RUSH had a lot of potential to have much more success with a second game. With the mix of word of mouth building from the first release, perhaps some actual marketing, and a recent multiplatform release, all the ingredients were there for this franchise to grow.
Time and time again, we see that when a good franchise is given time for it to reach more hands, it becomes even more successful when the inevitable sequel comes around. With all the risks that Hi-Fi RUSH took both from a game and marketing perspective, it isn’t shocking that it didn’t reach as many people as executives might have hoped. But patience often pays off when you put out a quality product. Unfortunately, patience is in short supply in the tech industry right now, with a mix of factors causing massive layoffs all over, and gaming being no exception. It was assumed that Game Pass might be a way around a lot of these short term type of business decisions, but that does not appear to be the case going forward.
Fears for Ninja Theory And The Future of AAA
The Tango Gameworks news is especially discouraging mere weeks before the release of the latest game from Ninja Theory, Hellblade 2. This is a game that seems impossible to exist without something like Game Pass in the modern landscape. It took around five years to develop, and it is still only going to run about eight hours. If this were to release in a traditional way, it would assuredly be a financial flop given the amount of time and budget that has clearly gone into it.
When a press release comes out in a few months hyping the amount of “engagement” that Hellblade 2 has had, it will only be met with cynicism going forward. Ninja Theory and Hellblade 2 appear to be heading for a clear, no-win situation.
Because the fact is, if all that Hi-Fi Rush accomplished was not enough, then seemingly nothing will be enough going forward with risky ventures. If we want something big, new, and bold from AAA developers, it will only be if the absolute biggest icons in the industry decide they want to make it happen in the future, and there aren’t exactly a lot of guys with the mix of talent and star power of Hideo Kojima out there.
My hope with Xbox Game Pass was that there would be lots of bold concepts like Hi-Fi RUSH and Hellblade 2 to complement the standard franchises like Halo and Gears. But the closure of Tango Gameworks may not have just killed off that studio in particular, but our best hope of any big risks in the AAA industry in general. That is why this news feels like the most tragic of any studio closure or layoffs to date. It marks a shift in this industry that many of us have seen but were hoping could still be avoided. Those hopes are now on life support.
(Thank goodness for indie games).
Big Nerd Gaming 
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