Game

Phil Spencer defends Halo’s future amid cuts and criticism


Master Chief watched his ship to see what had happened.

Picture: 343 sectors / Microsoft

Things haven’t been going well with Xbox lately. Microsoft is facing stiff resistance in its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard. It barely released any major exclusive blockbusters last year. And it just cut over 10,000 jobs last week, including many senior developers in endless halo studio 343 Industries. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has managed to stay optimistic and damage control on each of these points and beyond. in a new interview with IGN.

“Every year is very important,” he said. “I don’t see this year as more or less important. I feel good about our motivation. Obviously, we’re going through some very painful adjustments right now, but I think it’s necessary, but it really helps us and the teams achieve long-term success.”

This week has captured both the danger and the promise facing Xbox right now. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced net income down 12 percent for the most recent fiscal quarter compared with the previous year. Xbox gaming hardware and software have dropped by similar percentages, and Microsoft has said nothing about the number of new subscribers its Game Pass service has achieved since passing the 25 million mark exactly a year. prior to.

Then on Wednesday, Microsoft provided a slick and streamlined look at its upcoming games in developer live stream copied straight from the Nintendo playbook. Forza . sports car racing seems to have been quietly delayed to the second half of the year, but looks like a nice and impressive racing sim performance. Arkane’s co-op sandbox vampire shooter failure has a release date of May 2. Real-time strategy spin-off minecraft legends will attack in April. And to wrap things up with Tango Gameworks, the producer The evil in meshading Hi-Fi Rush on Game Pass, a colorful rhythm action game from the left field became the undisputed first hit game of 2023.

The hero of Hi-Fi Rush jumps across the city's colorful skyline.

Screenshots: Game Tango / Bethesda

“2022 was too light on games,” Spencer confessed in his IGN interview. 2023 shouldn’t be thanks to Redfall and Starfield, Bethesda’s much-anticipated answer to the question, “What if Skyrim but space?” But both of those games were technically supposed to come out last year. Meanwhile, Hi-Fi Rush, like Obsidian’s penitent earlier, is shaping up to be a critically-acclaimed Game Pass release but may still be too small to move the needle on Xbox’s larger fortunes.

Spencer remained dubious when asked how successful these games would be or their impact on Game Pass, whose development is said to have stalled on consoles. “I think creative diversity is going to widen for us as we have different ways for people to pay for the games they are playing and subscribing will definitely help there,” he said. speak.

Hi-Fi Rush, failure, star schooland a new one Scrolls online expansion coming in June also all from Bethesdawhich Microsoft completed its acquisition in 2021. Microsoft’s older first-party game studios have either remained relatively quiet in recent years as they work on their next big projects, or, in case of 343 Industries, which recently faced a surprising number of layoffs.

Following news of the cuts last week, rumors and speculation began swirling around how 343 Industries — released a well-received Halo Infinite single-player campaign in 2021, but struggled with Seasonal updates to the multiplayer component in the months since — have been removed. the studios put out a brief statement weekend says Halo was here to survive and it will continue to grow it.

Switch from Starfield waiting for the game's new release date.

Picture: Bethesda / Microsoft

Spencer doubled that in an interview with IGN, but provided little detail on the reasons behind the layoffs or their plans for the franchise in the future. “What we’re doing now is we want to make sure that the leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan they need to build,” he said. “And Halo will remain vitally important to what Xbox is doing, and the 343 is critically important to its success Halo.”

Where endless halooffered before “10 year” plan consistent with that, however, remains unclear. “They have a number of other things, some rumored, some announced, that they will work,” Spencer said. And about the future of the series as a whole, he simply said, “I hope that we will continue to support and develop Halo as long as Xbox is a platform for people to play.” It’s hard to imagine Nintendo talking about mario with a similar sounding lack of conviction.

It’s possible that Microsoft’s continued struggle with some of its internal projects is part of the reason it’s focused on seeking help from outside the company. For now, that means trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion and resisting an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission in the process. Microsoft originally promised the deal to get call of duty, Diablo, World of Warcraftand crushed candy should be completed before the end of summer 2023. That deadline will come very quickly, even if the company continues to offer compromises, such as Report to Sony optional to continue to pay to have Activision games on the competitor’s Game Pass subscription service, PS Plus.

Spencer said IGN he remains optimistic about closing the deal, despite claiming he knew nothing about the logistics of doing so when he started a year ago. “A year ago, to me, I knew nothing about the process of doing an acquisition like this,” he said. “The fact that I have more insight, more knowledge about what it means to work with different management boards, I am more confident now than I was a year ago, simply based on information I have and the discussions we have had. had.”

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