Microsoft Shuts Down Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks and More Bethesda Softworks Studios

[polonyc2]

Microsoft has closed a number of Bethesda studios, including Redfall maker Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda, IGN can confirm...Alpha Dog Studios, maker of mobile game Mighty Doom, will also close...Roundhouse Games will be absorbed by The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios...Microsoft did not say how many staff will lose their jobs, but significant layoffs are inevitable

On Redfall, the disastrous vampire co-op game will now not receive promised updates as Microsoft has ended all development on the game...Microsoft said Redfall will remain online to play, and it will provide a "make-good" offer for those who bought the Hero DLC

Arkane Lyon, which is working on Marvel's Blade, survives the cull, as does Bethesda Game Studios (Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Starfield), and Machine Games (Indiana Jones and The Great Circle)...Doom developer id Software is also unaffected...

https://www.ign.com/articles/micros...orks-and-more-in-devastating-cuts-at-bethesda

 

[JavaLava]

People will hate on Microsoft for this (some of it warranted), but Bethesda been bloated for a long time with almost no game output in any reasonable timeframes. Time to clean up that mess and get them producing games. ES6 is still a while away and Fallout supposedly more. After the success of the TV show and all the interest in Fallout...waiting to end of the decade for something new is just a landmine of how to kill a franchise (Fallout 76 and any remaster is not going to cut it).

 

[Brackle]

After Redfall and how bad it was. This makes total sense.

 

[Lakados]

The Bethesda office they shut down was almost entirely dedicated to Marketing, and their methods have not only proven to be extremely expensive but also completely ineffective.
The Larian guys said it best “Marketing is dead”
https://cypherspit.com/larians-publishing-director-declares-marketing-is-dead/

 

[Lakados]

After Redfall and how bad it was. This makes total sense.

They gonna get sued, they still haven’t delivered the custom characters and items that were promised as part of the Deluxe editions.

 

[Brackle]

They gonna get sued, they still haven’t delivered the custom characters and items that were promised as part of the Deluxe editions.

I mean nowadays when you sue a multi-billion dollar company they don't care if they sued. They drag it out as much as possible. Then get fined 10 millions dollars which is nothing to them, then everyone gets $6.42 each for the settlement.

Apple, Microsoft, Tesla etc etc. They all knowingly break the laws and pay the small ass fines later lol

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

Alpha Dog Studios, maker of mobile game Mighty Doom, will also close

Is this a gacha-style game? Nothing of value was lost, then.

I think Arkane Lyon is the one responsible for the Dishonored series, so I'm happy they're surviving. I loved the Dishonored series.

The Bethesda office they shut down was almost entirely dedicated to Marketing, and their methods have not only proven to be extremely expensive but also completely ineffective.
The Larian guys said it best “Marketing is dead”
https://cypherspit.com/larians-publishing-director-declares-marketing-is-dead/

That's fair, but I'm kind of tired of hearing about "Larian says this" or "Larian says that." They are talented for sure (I have many of their games and am playing BG3 with some RL friends), but I feel like so much of their success rests on simple survivorship bias. Release the equivalent game at two different moments and sometimes you have a hit and other times it just fizzes out into a cult classic. They definitely lucked into a huge hit this time, but they're kind of using it as a license to just say anything that pops into their head. I'm sure at least some of it has merit, but the quantity of fields that they're suddenly experts in due to releasing one hit is kind of making me roll my eyes.

 

[RanceJustice]

Losing Arkane and Tango are unfortunate. Arkane (did they merge Lyon and Austin?) , prior to being ordered to make the disaster that was Redfall, was known for single player immersive sims like the Dishonored series, Prey, and Deathloop aso its really unfortunate they're being made to suffer for being told to make one of the worst designed by committee games that was outside their element in the first place. They should have been absorbed into one of the others like Bethesda or Machine Games and allowed to do what they do best. Equal or perhaps even worse is Tango Gameworks being upended - a rare Japanese studio in MS's stable, The Evil Within series was a nice follow up to those who enjoyed Shinji Mikami's work on Resident Evil 4 back in the day and wanted more horror action, but the real unfortunate bit is that their recent project Hi-Fi Rush came out of nowhere and was a surprise hit! HFR had an innovative premise, great mechanics, and most interesting of all its monetization was old school - it was just a good game for a reasonable price! Beating the game even unlocked special story content / mini-expansion secrets only available on the NG+ mode, which is a nice upgrade from "same old game, but just harder" NG+. I had hoped there may have been an expansion or something in the works or perhaps a sequel, but it doesn't seem that's likely at this point.

Microsoft consolidating yet another studio under the helm of mega properties isn't going to lead to great outcomes...but I guess that was never really the point; it seems about "FALLOUT HAVING A MOMENT THANKS TO THE TV SERIES WE NEED TO PUSH THE NEXT BIG THING" on their headliner franchises to make the quarterly reports go up with "NEW FALLOUT / ELDER SCROLLS ETC...GAME IN THE WORKS" style reports. This, despite Starfield showing that the technical and design limitations of Bethesda's studios and that the player base won't continually put up with garbage so long as its a "Bethesda game" that has the right branding on it. MS and these studios need to take careful stock of where they want these franchises to go and its going to be a risk and take investment, which is part of the reason they need to have other studios like Tengo Project making successful lower profile titles in case their next big attempt comes out a flaccid derivative Starfield again or is something like Fallout 76 that takes years to go from garbage to playable (to say nothing for how even the big successful titles relied heavily on "modders will expand/fix/overhaul it". Microsoft is more than willing to flush money down the toilet chasing fads and other stupid decisions, but they're pinching pennies and trying to trim anything that isn't a big name project, when even their "big name" projects are on tenuous footing?

 

[Lakados]

That's fair, but I'm kind of tired of hearing about "Larian says this" or "Larian says that." They are talented for sure (I have many of their games and am playing BG3 with some RL friends), but I feel like so much of their success rests on simple survivorship bias. Release the equivalent game at two different moments and sometimes you have a hit and other times it just fizzes out into a cult classic. They definitely lucked into a huge hit this time, but they're kind of using it as a license to just say anything that pops into their head. I'm sure at least some of it has merit, but the quantity of fields that they're suddenly experts in due to releasing one hit is kind of making me roll my eyes.

I get that, I just used it as an example of an industry leader backing my point, the methods for Advertising video games haven't changed much in the past 10 years, print articles, TV spots, web ads, and cinema clips. Things they are paying large amounts for, if you look at a video game budget, you will see that the advertising is almost on par with development in many cases. Which is stupid, and that model deserves to die and the people who have been pushing that model need to be re-educated on the reality of their chosen field.
There are far cheaper, and far more effective methods available to them and they have for the most part gone ignored by the big players who have been sticking to what they know.

 

[Marees]

Impatient Microsoft's quest for short-term $$$ is doing long-term damage to Windows, Surface, Xbox, and beyond​

Microsoft has made a range of baffling decisions and awful mis-steps recently. You can trace everything back to insatiable desire for money.

Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates once offered a variation of a quote attributed to dozens of others, which follows something like this: "People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten." Microsoft doesn't seem to be learning from these lessons.


https://www.windowscentral.com/micr...erm-damage-to-windows-surface-xbox-and-beyond

 

[LukeTbk]

The company doing nuclear fusion work, quantum computer and openAI is all about short term profit an underestimating the future is a really strange position...

what's often less talked about is how much further ahead Microsoft would be if Satya Nadella

They would be 4 billions company if they tried and failed longer to compete in mobile or they did not focus enough on Hololens instead of their github-azure obsession of running the computing world, feel complete non-sense.

The idea they underspent on the Xbox will all those game studio acquisition.... really doubt budget was an issue, they failed at it with a bad timing-decision in 2013 to focus on a complete living room experience, decision made we can imagine before streaming-everyone has a good enough smartTV changed the game, while Sony-Nintendo executed quite well.

Or on phones, buying Nokia, the Windows 8 giant effort to use desktop position to help mobile (at the cost of the desktop experience even), they were in big trouble and under a lot of government surveillance when mobile caught on, they were behind and faced one of the best product humanity made in the iPhone, they failed.

 

[sfsuphysics]

The company doing nuclear fusion work, quantum computer and openAI is all about short term profit an underestimating the future is a really strange position...

Are they doing work in nuclear fusion? I heard they basically gave a company "working on fusion", Helion(?), a bunch of money to be supplied with XX kWh of fusion energy by (some date). Basically they're helping fund the company, but they themselves are not doing any work on anything related. Or am I wrong?

 

[LukeTbk]

Are they doing work in nuclear fusion? I heard they basically gave a company "working on fusion", Helion(?), a bunch of money to be supplied with XX kWh of fusion energy by (some date). Basically they're helping fund the company, but they themselves are not doing any work on anything related. Or am I wrong?

Betting on fusion, by investing in it, doing R&D yourself, is all a bit of the same, those giants company tend to be the only looking very far ahead (most of other companies just try to survive).
https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RW1fApf

Look at the crazy stuff google just announced the couple of last week, how long were they working on those.

I read an article no so long ago from someone that hated Microsoft a lot, yet currently working type Typescript used, LLVM, Github, WSL2, Azure on Visual Code all on Windows, beloved like Apple or Amazon is obviously nice, building a business so good that people that hate you still use 6 of your products every day.... that not a bad way to go.

 

[Marees]

The company doing nuclear fusion work, quantum computer and openAI is all about short term profit an underestimating the future is a really strange position...

what's often less talked about is how much further ahead Microsoft would be if Satya Nadella

They would be 4 billions company if they tried and failed longer to compete in mobile or they did not focus enough on Hololens instead of their github-azure obsession of running the computing world, feel complete non-sense.

The idea they underspent on the Xbox will all those game studio acquisition.... really doubt budget was an issue.

I think Microsoft is tactically sharp.
but strategically poor

They don't seem to have the conviction necessary to patiently execute on strategy
Example Nadella regretted closing windows phone & losing a portal for mobile AI
Or in this case closing the studio behind award winning & 'successful' (in Microsoft's own words) game hi-fi rush because next game will be released after 5 years

 

[Lakados]

Microsoft isn’t alone here, there are a couple of things going on. The whole gaming industry is in an uproar, devs who were specialized in Unity are basically useless now as is a lot of the talent who was ultra specialized on in house engines.
Studios are buying up licenses for Unreal and trading in whole departments for 2 AI workstations and 3 people to man them.
When the industry decided that $90 was the baseline of a new game we all said F-that. And instead of buying the same amount of games each year and spending more, we spent the same and bought fewer titles.

The entertainment industry as a whole is a mess, the big investors who usually fund games and movies aren’t spending like they used to. Many developers and publishers have had the money rug pulled out from under them.

The industry will recover but it’s going to be a lot leaner, there are countless examples out there of games ballooning development and marketing costs and this is the reckoning we all called back in 2023.

 

[DukenukemX]

The company doing nuclear fusion work, quantum computer and openAI is all about short term profit an underestimating the future is a really strange position...

OpenAI was more or less bought. Microsoft hasn't done anything with nuclear fusion other then sign an agreement to purchase electricity from a nuclear fusion generator when it becomes available.

The idea they underspent on the Xbox will all those game studio acquisition.... really doubt budget was an issue, they failed at it with a bad timing-decision in 2013 to focus on a complete living room experience, decision made we can imagine before streaming-everyone has a good enough smartTV changed the game, while Sony-Nintendo executed quite well.

Microsoft's problem is they want to not focus on their product, but instead want to expand it's influence. More often than not, Microsoft just throws money at the problem. The death of the Xbox started when Microsoft wanted to push always online and the Kinect. At some point Microsoft forgot they need good games and eventually the exclusives they have would lose value among gamers. At no point has Microsoft acquired a studio that didn't immediately stop producing good games. Look at Rare which was famous for their games during the 90's, only to become Kinect Shovel-ware creators for the Xbox 360 and onward. Microsoft loves to focus on short term profits, which is something you don't see many Japanese companies doing. It's also easy to say that Nintendo executed quite well, until you forget about things like the WiiU and Virtual Boy.


View: https://youtu.be/OeHjN4oWVfk?si=J7EViqpXNfSr8Dan

 

[raz-0]

Microsoft isn’t alone here, there are a couple of things going on. The whole gaming industry is in an uproar, devs who were specialized in Unity are basically useless now as is a lot of the talent who was ultra specialized on in house engines.
Studios are buying up licenses for Unreal and trading in whole departments for 2 AI workstations and 3 people to man them.
When the industry decided that $90 was the baseline of a new game we all said F-that. And instead of buying the same amount of games each year and spending more, we spent the same and bought fewer titles.

The entertainment industry as a whole is a mess, the big investors who usually fund games and movies aren’t spending like they used to. Many developers and publishers have had the money rug pulled out from under them.

The industry will recover but it’s going to be a lot leaner, there are countless examples out there of games ballooning development and marketing costs and this is the reckoning we all called back in 2023.

I agree about the industry being shaken up, I think you miss a lot though.

One thing that seems to largely be ignored is that game development has always been feast or famine. A game releases, and the layoffs would start to bring staffing down to a maintenance crew. Live service games impacted this process some, and others tried to avoid it by growth and having too many titles in development. We saw aberrant growth with the covid lockdowns, and the industry as a whole has to get back to the right size, so it's going to be worse than usual this go round.

Making it all worse was the fact that big budget games succumb to the same pressures that has big budget hollywood cranking out soggy lump of pg-13 beigeness part 5: the remake. And that risk aversion only gets worse as the cost to borrow money goes up. It's not about big investors. The "big investors" has always been borrowed money. Period.

Also, I don't get people complaining about Tango Gameworks being shut down. It was a 60 person studio that produced a indie style AA-ish game that was a flop. The two main guys left. MS trying to rebuild it would likely have been much more awful than just letting it die.

 

[Lakados]

I agree about the industry being shaken up, I think you miss a lot though.

One thing that seems to largely be ignored is that game development has always been feast or famine. A game releases, and the layoffs would start to bring staffing down to a maintenance crew. Live service games impacted this process some, and others tried to avoid it by growth and having too many titles in development. We saw aberrant growth with the covid lockdowns, and the industry as a whole has to get back to the right size, so it's going to be worse than usual this go round.

Making it all worse was the fact that big budget games succumb to the same pressures that has big budget hollywood cranking out soggy lump of pg-13 beigeness part 5: the remake. And that risk aversion only gets worse as the cost to borrow money goes up. It's not about big investors. The "big investors" has always been borrowed money. Period.

Also, I don't get people complaining about Tango Gameworks being shut down. It was a 60 person studio that produced a indie style AA-ish game that was a flop. The two main guys left. MS trying to rebuild it would likely have been much more awful than just letting it die.

Yeah, game dev cycle.
We’re falling behind schedule so let’s bring in programmers. The new programmers have sped up production but they make a lot of mistakes. Let’s bring in more programmers to help fix the mistakes. New programmers make almost as many mistakes as they find, but now there’s no budget lets to expand the testing department.
We’re now 50% over budget but we’re launching on time, the original team can patch the bugs post launch.
Lay off the extras.
Rinse and repeat.

 

[Delicieuxz]

None of those studios were really producing anything great. Some solid IPs in them, but not great quality output. I hope that Microsoft also did a bit of cleaning house of Bethesda's TES development studio, as there are lots of legacy developers in there who are just not near the cutting-edge of skill, and lots of sub-average developers in general, IMO. Microsoft seems to have taken notice of this, and forced changes on the studio they never would've done under Zenimax, or if left to their own management. If Microsoft reorganises Bethesda Softworks internally, hires some more-skilled people and puts them in positions of responsibility, and condenses the talent in Bethesda Game Studios into fewer, but higher-skilled teams, that's a good thing, and maybe I'll finally get to play a fun Bethesda game after being repeatedly disappointed since after Morrowind.

 

[LukeTbk]

Example Nadella regretted closing windows phone & losing a portal for mobile AI

Even without a portal they could still win it (if they power OpenAI and OpenAI win the iPhone battle), sinking resource of what look a lost cause since say 2014 just for a possible 12 years later, they lost that war because they were very badly run (in part by the US government) when it was time to act and because Apple is so extremely good at this.

Microsoft's problem is they want to not focus on their product, but instead want to expand it's influence.

Which is not something we would qualify as just focusing on short term gain, that gain of influence strategy are long time play, Linked, GitHub, Skype, were not making profit the year they were acquired


The,
Microsoft's problem is they want to not focus on their product, Microsoft loves to focus on short term profits,

sound in complete contradiction with:
Microsoft's problem is they want to not focus on their product, but instead want to expand it's influence

Influence != profit, but a way to get future profit, while focussing on the product to be released (or already in the field) perfect way to boost short term profits.

Linked now is a really nice business, how long did it took ? For how many years it was bleeding money and hard to understand ? Buying GitHub for 7.5 billions, how long it took for that giant price tag to make sense ?

How buying Github for 7.5 billions match the idea they are all about short term profits ? Skype for 8.5 billion ? How long would it took (if it ever did) to turn a profit on that ?

For the Xbox One, was the issue them focussing way too much on the first quarter at launch profit or them being too future oriented trying to create a living room entry for Microsoft for future business (their movie-tv studio having synergies with their game IP and being played on the Xbox), new way people would play Xbox game in the future with their voice and body involved, the idea that Xbox failure is due to too much focus on the next 3 months profits sound really strange, we could make the exact opposite argument. Buying giant studio at giant price tag to have their exclusive in 3-4-7 years, those are long play, not short term profit, if things goes well it still take more than a decade to turn a profit.

 

[LukeTbk]

OpenAI was more or less bought. Microsoft hasn't done anything with nuclear fusion other then sign an agreement to purchase electricity from a nuclear fusion generator when it becomes available.

Maybe but their nuclear fission project is not short term profit either.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/25/mic...energy-expert-to-help-power-data-centers.html
https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/.../Principal-Program-Manager-Nuclear-Technology

Cancer research is probably not for next quarter profit:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-ex-vivo/

The notion that those giant, floating in giant pile of money, are all about the next quarter is ridiculous to its face, outside the CCP, not many organisation on earth would have longer horizon, taking concrete step toward them than those modern tech giants, working on stuff they do not know if they are even possible and if they work if they have any commercial usage, let alone the next 18 months. How many time google release something that sound like it must have been in the work and will not have made a profit its first 10 years...

It probably look a bit like Bell Labs for moments.
https://patents.justia.com/company/microsoft
Holographic storage, Superconductor-semiconductor fabrication, Gating a semiconductor layer into a quantum spin hall insulator state

People can talk about too much or not enough focus on the upcoming this year and in the field product, but talk that they are all about that seem Internet hyperboles.

 

[DukenukemX]

Which is not something we would qualify as just focusing on short term gain, that gain of influence strategy are long time play, Linked, GitHub, Skype, were not making profit the year they were acquired

Influence is long term, but also not a product people want. When Microsoft thought it was time to cash in on that long term influence, they had destroyed the Xbox brand. It's like Internet Explorer and Windows Mobile where these projects had long term goals of influence, but were also left for dead and was too focused on immediate profits. Microsoft had long wanted Windows in every device imaginable, but it was their short term driven profits that left them out of the mobile market. Everyone thinks Apple was first with the iPhone, but it was really Microsoft with Windows Mobile. For the 8 years it existed, nothing much changed, and the same can be said for Internet Explorer. Skype fell apart long ago and so many other services have taken their place. Github bans so many projects that Gitlab took their place.

Influence != profit, but a way to get future profit, while focussing on the product to be released (or already in the field) perfect way to boost short term profits.

Influence is Microsoft's way of corning a market. Microsoft likes monopolies, and more often than not they tend to fail at this. Look at Game Pass where they did offer it cheap with a good selection of games. It's now stagnated in subscriptions and there's plans to raise the fee. There was a long term goal, but it was ruined by the need for short term profits. This is ultimately the problem with Microsoft.

For the Xbox One, was the issue them focussing way too much on the first quarter at launch profit or them being too future oriented trying to create a living room entry for Microsoft for future business (their movie-tv studio having synergies with their game IP and being played on the Xbox), new way people would play Xbox game in the future with their voice and body involved, the idea that Xbox failure is due to too much focus on the next 3 months profits sound really strange, we could make the exact opposite argument. Buying giant studio at giant price tag to have their exclusive in 3-4-7 years, those are long play, not short term profit, if things goes well it still take more than a decade to turn a profit.

The Xbox One failed because while Microsoft had long term goals like with Kinect and ingratiating TV, but it was ruined with short term goals like the charging for the Kinect and always online. The Kinect wasn't free as Xbox One did cost more than the PS4, as Microsoft forced Xbox One buyers to also pay for it. The always online was again Microsoft trying to make a quick buck by preventing resale. The Kinect might have worked if it wasn't shoved down peoples throats. At the time, Microsoft may have been 100% behind the Xbox, but they weren't behind Windows gaming. They left the entire PC gaming market to an ex employee Gabe Newell who took over a market that Microsoft had no interest in because they were focused on the immediate goal of the Xbox. Microsoft had long term goals, but they are often in tunnel vision because they want a monopoly in a market, because at some point Microsoft does want short term profits. How could Microsoft not see FireFox and then Chrome take their market when they left Internet Explorer alone? How could they let Apple take the credit for the smart phone market when they had Windows Mobile and CE for nearly a decade? Even after they released Windows Phone, they charged money for it because again short term profits. Google is just giving away Android because they have long term goals, and those goals are to maintain their search engine dominance. Google keeps delaying Manifest V3 for the 123rd time because they know the ramifications of not allowing people to block ads. Meanwhile Microsoft with Windows can't decide to put ads in File Explorer, the start menu, or just have a pop that shows up at the bottom right of the screen. It just seems like there's a group of people who do have long term goals at Microsoft, but they also have Mr Krabs at the meetings and he reminds people that he likes money.

 

[LukeTbk]

Github bans so many projects that Gitlab took their place.

Are they not like 80% of the market, what important enterprise did they ever ban ?

I think you are trying to fit stuff a narrative, the idea that Internet explorer was ever driving too much for the next months profits.

The always online was as much a long term vision than a short one, monopoly and building them are obvious and trivially long term goal with long profits and not at all short term profit. Windows phone never got close to make any profit to start with, no decision was ever made to make profit next quarter on them.

Part of why they were so disorganizased around mobile, was because the company was quite disorganizased at the time and under a bit of control-surveillance by the government with M&A not easy for a while.

Look at Game Pass where they did offer it cheap with a good selection of games. It's now stagnated in subscriptions and there's plans to raise the fee. There was a long term goal, but it was ruined by the need for short term profits.

THey offered it cheaps for how many years, what do you mean by short term profits ? Has Xbox pass turn a profit yet even, it launched 7 years ago, something cannot be a super long strategy of building a place, rising price 8 years later to turn a profit and be called a short term profits plan by a short term profit minded company. It can just be a bad plan or an ok one that fail without being short sighted.

Same goes for building for decade a large userbase that give $0 to microsoft, do not pay for the OS upgrade, let system run after 30 days expiring, very small licensing fee deals, free outlook account and so on to one day moneytise it, when that day come with aggressive Office 365 push or third party ads they think it will be a new source of revenue forever, that does not make it some turning a quick profit strategy.

 

[M76]

I believe MS's problem is running ahead like headless chicken without understanding or even wanting to understand what their users want. I'm using 365 enterprise and the experience changes all the time. You can't reliably use a service or software if it is in a constant state of flux. With some extremely dumb design changes like moving half of the toolbar to the bottom in outlook 365. The backlash must have been enormous for that as that is the only change they outright reverted after a few months.

And this is true for windows development as well. Since 10 every major update has changes that fundamentally affects workflows and the user experience and not for the better. It's one thing that W11 is lacking in features compared to previous versions, but you can't even rely on the features it has to stay consistent.

And this attitude is clear in their gaming endeavors as well. They seem to have no long term strategy, they have no clear plans for the studios they bought up. Same for games pass, it reminds me of the shareware games era, a bunch of trash games with a few gems occasionally making it into the cut. With the competitions subscription services at least you get a clear idea what type of catalogue you are getting and can expect a consistent quality from the games. Even at its lowest price games pass was the least attractive service to me, it's like buying access to a flea market.

 

[DukenukemX]

Are they not like 80% of the market, what important enterprise did they ever ban ?

I'm not sure the popularity of Github vs Gitlad, but whenever something isn't kosher then it's banned. MaNGOS a WoW server was banned on Github, so then it ends up on Gitlad. Yuzu was banned as well as forks, so they end up on Gitlab. Native ports of Mario 64 were banned from Gitlhub, and the new recent Zelda ports are expected to be next. None of these have assets from the games, but if companies want them taken down, it's going down.

I think you are trying to fit stuff a narrative, the idea that Internet explorer was ever driving too much for the next months profits.

If Microsoft isn't putting money into these projects, then Microsoft is pocketing money. It's the same reason why Intel is now behind because they decided to stop investing in innovations for several years.

The always online was as much a long term vision than a short one, monopoly and building them are obvious and trivially long term goal with long profits and not at all short term profit.

Wasn't much of a long term goal if it didn't outlast the Annoying Orange. Sony didn't do it, because Sony has a long term goal to destroy Microsoft. Didn't take them very long.

View: https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=jobgV3T9pTi0yKu-

Windows phone never got close to make any profit to start with, no decision was ever made to make profit next quarter on them.

The fact that Microsoft charged money for Windows Phone OS when nobody else in the world was charging for any OS, should tell you Microsofts long term goals.

THey offered it cheaps for how many years, what do you mean by short term profits ? Has Xbox pass turn a profit yet even, it launched 7 years ago, something cannot be a super long strategy of building a place, rising price 8 years later to turn a profit and be called a short term profits plan by a short term profit minded company. It can just be a bad plan or an ok one that fail without being short sighted.

Short sighted is more like it. The Xbox 360 was probably their best performing console and made them money. The Xbox 360 generated billions of dollars in revenue for Microsoft. So it's not like they never made money. The original Xbox and Xbox One probably costed Microsoft money.

Same goes for building for decade a large userbase that give $0 to microsoft, do not pay for the OS upgrade, let system run after 30 days expiring, very small licensing fee deals, free outlook account and so on to one day moneytise it, when that day come with aggressive Office 365 push or third party ads they think it will be a new source of revenue forever, that does not make it some turning a quick profit strategy.

The problem is that so many other services that Microsoft provides for free, is also provided for free by other companies, and done better. Most of Microsoft's failures is because Microsoft wanted to turn to a quick profit and see how much they can get away with. I almost guarantee you that the $70 games are killing the AAA gaming industry, but they don't care because numbers always go up. Alan Wake 2 $60 did terribly but Palworld $30 is doing great, and both owned by Microsoft. Microsoft cancels a studio who made a really good game Hi-Fi Rush, which didn't sell well because Microsoft never promoted it. Anyone with any sense would keep that studio around and just promote their games better. It all looks long term goals, until Microsoft cashes their chips early only to find they lost money.