Link: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/xbox-lays-off-268-more-employees-merges-obsidian-into-bethesda-and-puts-activision-in-charge-of-halo/

At least we will get another Fallout from the hands of Obsidian right? Right?

"I wonder what will happen if we put all of our eggs in the same basket?" - Famous basket-dropper.

From what I've heard, Bethesda and Obsidian have always been great places to work. I hope Microsoft isn't ruining that for the devs. Hopefully the increasing union presence in Microsoft will bring worker interests back into consideration.

Fallout with ads from Obsidian.

There's no saving these IPs now.

Activision in charge of Halo? That's a deathblow if ever I heard one.

Activision is also overseeing Age of Empires as well... Couldn't let Sony outshine you in "who can shoot themselves in the foot hardest" could you?

Post bungie halo has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion, the series has survived the last 16 years on reputation alone.

at least double fine got out... well i don't want to say "before" microsoft started gutting everything but at least they got out

also daily reminder that the xbucks you spend on xbox fund genocide

I imagine Bethesda hasn't been fun to work for for a good 10 years now.

Microsoft Is the worst thing that ever happened to computers

Companies that make "boring" games are often great workplaces, while those that make bestsellers (such as CD project red, rockstar, etc) are shitholes putting workers through hell and constant crunch.

It literally doesnt matter. Halo died with Bungie and Bungie died with Halo.

Halo infinite was pretty huge though, wasn't it? Granted one being the only stand out isn't saying much.

CODification here it comes. Couldn't be worse than the current state of Halo though?

Really? Isnt it just Todd going around demanding things? Id never want to work under that narcissitic dick.

Guys, let's bring Skyrim to (insert random platform). - Todd

I can only go off of what I've heard directly from Bethesda devs, who from what I've seen generally have the attitude of ''he is a great boss who has been given too much to handle as the studio got bigger." You're probably referring to the 'seagulling' post which, afaik, was a 4chan post without a source.

Halo Black Ops

Lmao

"Guys, I know you are making the next Elder Scrolls right now, but I have this really cool space game I want you all to work on instead! It wont be shit I promise!"

Seen many things, him in interviews and Q&As, and have no idea what you are talking about with 4chan. Guy is full of himself.

this guy 100% lost to todd in high school chess 😂 all over the thread hating on him and shit

bethesda has only ever had layoffs twice in their history, i think one was before morrowind and the other was after asha took over xbox

Well Halo has no where to go but up at this point so why not.

It was an assumption based on the only similar staff perspective I have heard of, my apologies.

Makes sense, they were in dire straits before Morrowind, and well, Microsoft is Microsoft.

With all the bullshit you're spouting off I'm surprised you haven't pulled the "Todd hates Obsidian/New Vegas" card yet.

On the bright side, Activision is quite capable of making the exact same game over and over again and consistently. Their knowledge of beating the dead horse is borderline necromancy. Can't say the same for 343.

Well, hate it love it, at least they're trying something instead of making the same ip over and over again. I thought people whine about AAA being sequel prequel sidequel

Word is that NOBODY wanted to make starfield other than Todd Howard. Apparently once whispers of being bought happened, he wanted that game out because he knew Microsoft would never allow them waste time on something that isn't elder scrolls or fallout.

Bruh, we haven't had a real Fallout game in 11 years!

Even as an RTS fan I can admit the genre is basically dead anyway.

It was.....ok. it had a good reception but no staying power because it was ok at best. They stopped working on updates too, i think a year into the 10 year project or whatever it was supposed to be.

Deck chairs on the Titanic.

I honestly believe that Xbox will stop existing as a company in a few years.

While I can’t say that you’re wrong, Age of Empires 2 has a solid and extremely loyal community, and they just released a new expansion that everyone is super happy with (especially compared to the last two.)

So is Halo Studios/343 just.....dead now? Seems like they're dead if they don't have Halo. Kind of in their name.

Halo became what it is now because they tried to turn it into CoD, so it couldn't be better either

Ehhhhh, if we could see into the multiverse ball, maybe. I'd fucking hate to see a timeline where Apple was the dominant consumer-grade OS producer through the 90s and 2000s.

As I remember, back in the 90s, the CEO of Activision hated video games.

So of course that zombie of a company is still fucking up gaming.

Activision doesn't only publish Call of Duty though. They publish all kinds of games: Sekiro, the Tony Hawk games, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, etc.

Way more potential than what 343 had. I mean, 343 was purposefully NOT hiring former Bungie-era Halo employees. The important ones, like Marcus Lehto, Marty ODonnell, heck they only brought Joe Staten to get Infinite "back on track" and then promptly kicked him to the curb too. 343 definitely deserved this earlier, I am gonna be honest.

They made awful games so who cares. I don't think even Activision could have made it more like a Call of Duty clone than 343 did.

I think the plan is to have them do publishing and IP management, like what happened with LucasArts.

The games you mentioned ring in my head as mid-2000s highlights, with nothing more than blatant money grabs published in the last decade. Not very indicative of a healthy studio imo. They may have once been capable of turning out good games, but that was roughly in the era 343 was turning out good games too good Halo games were being released as well

Yeah, Asha Sharma seems to be set up as an example of the glass cliff. She's clearly trying to bail out a sinking ship rather than revitalize a stale brand. Giving Halo to Activision shows a misunderstanding of what Halo players want, but the other things she's doing are things that probably could have helped five or more years ago, but are just too late now. We're probably heading toward a repeat of the 1983 crash. Xbox and PlayStation might still be around after, but they'll be in the position that Atari and Sega were after the crash, with their remaining market share evaporating the instant a new competitor arrives.

Meanwhile, so long as Nintendo just keeps doing what they've been doing they should be fine. I could see them phasing out game key cards as an option for devs if the digital only backlash on the next generation is bad enough, but they might not have to given that the publishers that have been using them are the ones most likely to implode.

Notch no longer being involved in it is also a plus

There's also an argument that smaller evolutionary releases every year or two are better for consumers too.

Infinite was a solid base that they just didn't do anything with. The campaign felt incomplete and the multiplayer took years to get to the number of features that Halo 3 launched with, but the bones were good. If it had launched in a more complete state and the new campaigns were actually developed, it probably would have been great. However, Microsoft's stubborn insistence on only using contractors and only for six months at a time made the whole concept untenable. For that matter, it's driving the entire company into the ground.

Tbf if you were to give Halo back to Bungie they too would fuck it up nowadays.

More remakes to come

Sekiro is the exception to that, but that's more on FromSoft than it is on Activision, to the extent that it actually hadn't registered in my mind that Activision was involved with that game at all.

Yeah exactly FromSoft is turning out bangers, and somehow Activision is involved? Maybe just to the extent that they aren't involved so can't fuck anything up?

My point is that Activision isn't a studio. It's a publisher. I read Activision said they are forming a new studio for Halo.

I mean, I didn't bring up all of Activisions classic games like Pitfall, just the most recent games they have published since those are most relevant to the topic.

"the era 343 was turning out good games too"

Ok but that never really happened. Ensemble made Halo Wars and Creative Assembly made the sequel which were decent IMO (the first being better IMO). Every other game with the Halo brand under 343 was garbage. Forget about Spartan Strike and Spartan Assault? 343s first game was Halo CE Anniversary, which was horrendously bad, so I suppose it is poetic in a way that Halo Studios, which only survived long enough to drop a single game, would die with yet another rehash of Halo CE.

Except for maybe Fireteam Raven, only because I never had the chance to play it, 343 never had an "era of making good games." Halo 2A was pretty good but it launched in the very broken MCC which took them years to fix.

4,5, and Infinite were the absolute low points of Halo, with Infinite being the best of the three only because of the art direction. But they are all far below Bungie-era Halo games.