Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler (Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and No Rest for the Wicked) has commented on the recent turbulence at Xbox. The Ori games were previously published by Xbox Game Studios, but Moon Studios remained independent and started work on No Rest for the Wicked shortly after the second Ori game was released.
In his informed opinion, Mahler has claimed that Xbox’s troubles began years ago when it decided to focus on legacy IP instead of cultivating the next generation of games and developers.
It looks like bad news for the studios that fall under Xbox’s first-party developer umbrella. As part of its “reset” under new Xbox boss Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s gaming division is reportedly planning to cut costs by laying off staff and closing studios like Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory. While those studios might spin off from Microsoft and strike out on their own, one developer with a long history of working with Xbox says that he’s not surprised by the recent turbulence occurring at the company.
“Xbox has struggled for a long time to identify, empower, and protect the key creative people and teams who could have kept the brand at the top,” Mahler wrote. “Even when we were making Ori with Xbox, it was clear that the main focus was still Halo, Gears, and Forza–even though gamer excitement around Halo and Gears had already cooled heavily after Bungie and Epic moved on from those franchises. The newer installments simply didn’t reproduce the same cultural impact those series once had.”
As Mahler put it, franchises like Ori could have helped kickstart a new era for Xbox, one that would include younger generations of gamers who could have grown into lifetime fans of the brand. And while it is true that Microsoft owns an impressive selection of video game franchises and intellectual properties, Mahler added that great games are made by people who love the medium and who know what it is that their audiences want.
Mahler added that, were he in charge, he’d “slim down” Xbox and work to “bring back the passion for gaming.” He said that Xbox leans heavily on nostalgia, not the people who make games.
“Xbox should be one of the strongest publishers in the world,” Mahler wrote. “With the brands Microsoft owns, that should honestly be fairly straightforward. But nostalgia alone is not enough. Nostalgia can get people to look in your direction, but after that, you still have to deliver the goods. You still have to make products that get players genuinely excited. Products that make gamers literally salivate. And to do that, Xbox has to bet on the right people. They need to find the Miyamotos, Tezukas, and Sakurais within their own ecosystem–the people who actually speak the same language gamers do–and then support them, protect them, and trust them.”
Mahler concluded that Xbox was more than capable of shipping better games than its competition, and it just needs the right people in charge of steering the ship. “It still looks like Xbox is sitting on an absolute goldmine,” he wrote. “They just need to put the right people in charge of mining that gold.”
It looks like bad news for the studios that fall under Xbox’s first-party developer umbrella. As part of its “reset” under new Xbox boss Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s gaming division is reportedly planning to cut costs by laying off staff and closing studios like Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory. While those studios might spin off from Microsoft and strike out on their own, one developer with a long history of working with Xbox says that he’s not surprised by the recent turbulence occurring at the company.
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