alt Hacker NewsI think some of these game studios got so content with Microsoft constantly paying that they forgot to make games that would actually sell.
South of Midnight took 7 years to make and cost $100 million to make... yet sold hardly any copies and I'm not even sure who they were trying to make it for.
Meanwhile you have studios like Sandfall and Warhorse pumping out games on a fraction of the budget that ship millions (and imho, make better games).
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There's no sourcing for that South of Midnight number. You should treat it as fictional.
Millions of people played South of Midnight even if sales didn't reflect it. Xbox Game Pass has done a lot to make Xbox sales figures hard to compare.
> I think some of these game studios got so content with Microsoft constantly paying that they forgot to make games that would actually sell.
I mean, if you're assuming that Microsoft had a fully hands-off approach to managing these companies after buying them, then sure. It's not clear to me that you can make a compelling claim about whether the issues were from the bottom or the top just by looking at the final outputs.
Compulsion Games was also a strange acquisition / team to decide to put $100M + 7 years of trust into. They had two games by that point, neither with amazing reviews.