Two projects that were not yet approved
He added that the closure of Arkane Austin was not linked to the failure of Redfall, which is very difficult to swallow. For his part, Schreier indicates that before this announcement, in addition to the support of Redfall and DLCs that were on the way, the studio also sought to return to its sources with a new type game immersive sim.
The journalist even indicates that this team was looking to pitch a new episode of the series Dishonoredwhile Arkane Lyon is busy with Marvel's Blade. And this studio wasn't the only one with a good idea in mind. Tango Gameworks was also looking to present its ideas for a sequel to Hi-Fi Rushaccording to Bloomberg sources.
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“Too many studios to manage”
Except that these new games required resources, and especially human resources. They therefore wish to recruit new people, and it would be because of this wish that Xbox would have decided to close these studiosnot being able to enlarge them and not wanting to risk approving these projects and then canceling them. Especially since Booty felt that these were long developments in perspective (go and see what he thinks of other Bethesda games), and that it was better to cut it short now as long as they are not in production.
Jill Braff, who is the head of ZeniMax Studios, reportedly declared that it was already “ too difficult to take care of nine studios around the world with a limited core team and a constantly growing line-up. » One could argue that it was probably up to Xbox to deal with this problem now that ZeniMax is part of the house. And if the company has too many studios, not constantly buying more is an idea. The situation is not far from reminiscent of that of Embracer, which made the same mistakes and which is paying the price today.
Now the priority at ZeniMax/Bethesda is to refocus on the licenses that work and are the most popular, which also means less variety.