Interesting to see Capcom talk about this concept. As someone who has worked in a project style industry for years, there are risks to both concepts (auteur vs. team), but I am generally much more critical of the auteur side. The business becomes far too reliant on one person and their ideas can become stale, or they simply leave the company. On the other hand, purely team-based developed can often lead to analysis paralysis. It gets worse the larger a team becomes (a critical point in why modern "AAA" development is extending out 6-7 years). Regardless, if I had to choose I much prefer a team concept approach, ASSUMING you can control scope & team creep. It builds knowledge and it spreads risk. Just be wary of decision-making. It takes a lot of project discipline to keep large teams on track, especially when people refuse to make decisions. automaton-media.com/en/news/…

Games industry leakers and enthusiast websites:

Final Fantasy Revelation will launch across all major platforms, including Xbox, at the same time.

I'm of the opinion that a time of crisis is the forcing function that reforms a business, or causes it to implode. General Electric fell apart at the end of the 2010s, shed a bunch of non-core business, sold weaker subsidiaries, and focused on what they do best. GE today is a completely reformed and successful business. It can be done. However, it's difficult and just as possible that the recovery never materializes.

My uncle's cousin's brother's former roommate who worked at MSFT told me that Fable had a budget of 12 bananas and a folding chair.

Game budgets (for in-house projects) are mostly good faith estimates. The salaried employees were paid to be there already, whether they were working on project A or project B. Budgets obviously cover additional expenses, contracts, etc., but if the game is primarily made in-house, it's basically an estimate of already spent money. The budget can also be used as a guide for the capitalized expenses, but it heavily depends on when a company starts capitalizing versus what they consider straight expense. What is truly important in a video game company is the consistent base cost being paid over the long term. Oddly enough, in a game that is 100% outsourced (writing contracts), you could actually run a real budget and measure the game against the expense.

Games Fray reports that #Nintendo is unlikely to come away with anything notable in the case against Palworld / Pocketpair. IMO, Nintendo brought more attention to themselves than they might have expected. Their absurd patent practices saw renewed focus from regulators & courts. They may have actually done more harm to themselves than if they had otherwise stayed quiet. gamesfray.com/ahead-of-octob…

Just so you all know, every company on the planet that contains business units that perform financially better than others acts as a subsidy to the weaker BUs. What if a company starts a new product? What if a certain business is run at a loss? How do you think any of this works?

Again, I'm not saying this is happening. I don't see MSFT giving up that kind of control over #XBOX, at least not yet. It also puts Xbox at arms length from relying directly on MSFT funds, something they need right now. What happens if Xbox continues to remain flat in profitability, or worse, over the years? That's when the possibility opens up.

To be clear, when I say that Xbox Studios is one of Xbox's biggest problem, it's not about demanding those studios sell millions upon millions of units. It's the COST component. Obviously unique first party content is important to a platform system, but the reality is that first party content can't cost far more than the revenue it creates. Base cost is a severe problem across the industry, and it's clear to me that Xbox Studios group became too expensive for what they were generating. And let me be clear, it's not entirely their fault. The market has become grossly saturated since the late 2010s, and many "good" games disappear into the void. Maybe they could stomach that cost longer if several more titles did OK. However, as I said yesterday, after repeat misses, a pattern starts to emerge. A business can't keep spending money on the same thing, waiting for hits to magically materialize. **Additionally, higher cost means far less tolerance for market failures.** Cost needs to come down. That's the only lever left to pull.

Gothic 1 Remake moves 500,000 units in the first week. I've been tempted to check it out, but simply don't have the capacity right now. Same with many other games.

Outside of the items that are based on "trust me bro" reporting, I would say this is a good summary of how everything came down at relatively the same time for #Xbox. Much of what you see here is present in the publicly available data. You don't need an "insider" to confirm much of this. - Consistently underperforming games from Xbox Game Studios, despite the hits they did have. (Personally, I see this as the biggest problem by far, not only for Xbox but the entire industry.) - Too many costly projects spun up and then cancelled, especially as everything compressed after COVID. - ABK was doing its thing, then #CallofDuty had a down year at the same time everything else started falling apart. (I expect MW4 to be a rebound.) - The absurd blunder of charging $30 for Game Pass Ultimate due to CoD, instead of making its own tier, or putting the idea on hold. - MSFT's hardware strategy, reportedly, didn't secure long term memory deals. Every single unit is stupid expensive right now. This backs up what I've been talking about for about the past year in terms of the supply chain. - Expect different versions, or additional tiers, of Game Pass. Sharma also said this herself. windowscentral.com/gaming/xb…

Ninja Gaiden 4 is an amazingly satisfying experience. I don't want to debate what NG game is the best one, but I've had a blast playing 4. I hope this isn't the end of the series. I'd love to see at least once more full game with Ryu as the main character.

MB stepped in to correct the record, since it was apparently too difficult for anyone to actually report it correctly. The same thing is happening with other parts of his interview. x.com/i/status/2065255604361…