3 weeks ago
4
Bethesda SoftworksThe former president of game developer Arkane has come out to condemn Microsoft’s closure of Arkane Austin earlier this year, saying that it “was not a good decision.”
Microsoft acquired Arkane parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in 2021, which also brought studios like Bethesda Softworks and subsidiaries like id Software (Doom), Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush), and MachineGames (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) under the Xbox umbrella. However, Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin along with Tango, Mighty Doom’s Alpha Dog Studios, and internal development studio Roundhouse Games earlier this year.
Raphael Colantonio, who founded Arkane in 1999 but left in 2017, said in an interview with PC Gamer that Microsoft closing down the Austin branch of the studio (the Lyon office is still up and running) was a shame due to the talent that had to be cut.
“I think if you look a little bit, it’s obvious that Arkane Austin was a very special group of people that have made some cool things and that could pull it off again,” he said. “I think it was a decision that just came down to, ‘We need to cut something.’ Was it to please the investors, the stock market? They’re playing a different game.”
Colantonio’s last project with Arkane was Prey, a horror immersive sim that encapsulates everything great about Arkane’s game design traditions, but its sales underperformed. Arkane Austin moved on to Redfall, which ended up as a disaster for Xbox both critically and financially when it released in 2023. Once Arkane Austin shuttered, development on Redfall ended and Microsoft offered refunds.
Colantonio founded Wolfeye Studios in 2019, and is currently working on an untitled action RPG that looks like a cross between Fallout and Arkane’s Dishonored series. So while he wasn’t there to see the closure in person, he knows that something like it will never happen again.
“Recreating a very special group like that is, I would dare to say, impossible. It takes forever. When you have that magic of Harvey [Smith] and Ricardo [Bare] etc. that all come together, it’s a specific moment in time and space that just worked out this way, that took forever to reach. Those people together can really make magic. It’s not like, ‘Doesn’t matter, we’ll just rehire.’ No, try it. That’s what big groups do all the time. They try to just hire massively and overpay people to create those magic groups. It doesn’t work like this. So to me, that was stupid. But what do I know?”
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Colantonio added that he stood by his comments. “I voice my opinion when asked and I have empathy for my friends and former employees who were still working at Arkane Austin.”
Arkane Lyon is one of many studios right now working on a Marvel game project: Marvel’s Blade, which is still early in development.
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
Microsoft closes the Bethesda studios behind Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, and more
Microsoft has just announced massive job cuts and studio closures for the Bethesda portion of its gaming business. They impact the teams that made excellent games like Hi-Fi Rush.
IGN revealed these studios' closures had happened and shared an internal email about them written by Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios. The four studios impacted are Redfall's Arkane Austin, Mighty Doom's Alpha Dog Studios, internal development studio Roundhouse Games, and Hi-Fi Rush's Tango Gameworks.
Read more
Microsoft finally closes its $69B Activision Blizzard acquisition
It's done: Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The $69 billion deal means that some of gaming's biggest franchises, including Call of Duty, are now Xbox properties.
First announced in January 2022, the blockbuster deal has faced tons of scrutiny from regulators like the CMA and FTC, with there being worry that it'd be unfair to competition in various parts of the game industry. Ultimately, Microsoft proved that wasn't the case, defeating the FTC in court and finally getting the CMA to retract its objection to the deal earlier today. When the CMA did that, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Digital Trends "The CMA’s official approval is great news for our future with Microsoft, and we look forward to becoming part of the Xbox Team.”
Read more
Major Redfall patch adds 60 fps performance mode, a stealth overhaul, and more
Xbox exclusive Redfall just got a major patch. The update adds a long-awaited 60 frames per second (fps) mode to the game, as well as a heap of quality of life upgrades and an overhaul to stealth gameplay.
Among lots of other problems, the dame infamously only ran at 30 fps at launch on Xbox Series X and S. While Arkane Studios promised a performance mode patch was in the works prior to release, it didn't arrive until today.
On October 6, Arkane Studios and Bethesda dropped Update 2 for Redfall. The most notable addition is Performance Mode, which lets players prioritize frame rate over resolution to finally get the game to run at 60 fps on consoles. Simply navigate to the Video tab within Redfall's settings menu to activate it. The patch notes for this update claim it brings improved stability on PC, in addition to solutions to memory-based crashes and AMD GPU-related graphics corruption. The update also contains some new gameplay tweaks to hopefully make the experience better.
Redfall will now encourage stealth more, as Arkane added the ability to sneak up on and do stealth takedowns on enemies and made it clearer which weapons are silenced in menus. It also added more options for players to fine-tune aim assets and dead zones while aiming, increased the number of enemies wandering the game's open world, and added unique ping colors for each player in a multiplayer squad. You can check out the full list of patch notes to see the additional tweaks and bug fixes made.
Redfall had a notoriously rocky launch this year, so it was hard for anyone outside of Microsoft to truly know whether or not improvements to the game would actually be delivered. Bethesda's Pete Hines had previously claimed it wouldn't abandon the game, and this update is our first real indication that it's true. While this isn't a Phantom Liberty-level rework for Redfall, it certainly seems like the game is now in the best condition it's been in since launch.
Redfall is available now for PC, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
Read more
English (US) ·