ZombiePie

I would honestly give Microsoft the past two generations for having the best controller designs in the industry for the Elite Controllers alone, but I can't/won't because their asking price is completely bonkers. Those things have probably the best ergonomics in the history of the hobby but paying over $100 for a controller that doesn't have hall effect sticks is a complete robbery.

Partial glimmer of hope is that Richard Leadbetter still is a majority stakeholder in DF, and several editors at VGC have pointed out that while that site operates in association with Gamer Network/ZiffDavis, they are actually entirely independent:

Played this and this definitely falls into the same category I put a lot of these indie exploration games that have physics and platforming together. If you just got at it on your own terms, you can have a good time. If you try to get everything, you're going to hate yourself and the game.

With a moderate budget, there's always room for B-tier fighting games. Also, the lifespan of these games stiff makes them enticing business propositions. Whenever a game announces it gets netcode rollback, there's an immediate re-injection of interest. Despite stiff competition, all signs point to Sega working on another Virtua Fighter.

There's another element to the current state of DOA that can't be ignored. Team Ninja has seen a ton of turnover and likely has moved on from fighting games. Since Nioh, it just seems like ARPGs are their current crease and they possibly don't have the warm bodies or staff to go back and have a go at righting the ship, and possibly, no one is interested in doing that in the first place.

1. Little Kitty Big City

2. Botany Manor

The DLC situation for Dead or Alive 5 Last Round and Dead or Alive 6 absolutely did this franchise zero favors, especially when it came to its critics. 6's DLC basically split the community up and made it immediately unviable for most tournament circuits.

@sombre: @caleb1916: Over in this thread@dtoast indicated that a large update is coming and the people in charge of this update are confident about it. When it drops, he'll let everyone know.

As seen in the above image, in a public statement, Phoenix Labs made an announcement that it was laying off employees and cancelling all of its game projects in progress. gamedeveloper.com is reporting that the layoffs might approach over 100 impacted employees after scanning LinkedIn, and their estimate was corroborated by other sources like GameInformer and PC Gamer. It is important to note that Phoenix Labs laid off 9% of its workforce last year, or ~300 employees. Phoenix Labs' has continually been struggling to make ends meet ever since it spun off from its previous owner, Garena. Shortly after the company regained its independence, as Garena purchased the studio in 2020, it stated to be working on as many as 10 video game projects while actively maintaining servers and content releases for Dauntless, a game they claimed at the time reached 30 million players. Of their additional projects, Fae Farm was the only one that the studio had even remotely close to a shippable state. Now, all of those ten game projects that are not Fae Farm or Dauntless are cancelled, with one of Phoenix Labs' games that was set to be released in June, also cancelled.

Moving forward, it appears that the studio will entirely dedicate its remaining resources and workers into supporting the online communities for Dauntless and Fae Farm. These recent cuts are, as the studio admits in its press release, a last ditch effort to keep things running. However, gamedeveloper.com interviewed two fired employees from Phoenix Labs' and both offered a second reason for the cuts constantly afflicting the studio:

On LinkedIn, former principal engineer Kris Morness said the layoffs were ordered Phoenix Labs owner Forte. The blockchain platform apparently acquired Phoenix Labs "over a year ago" in an unpublicized transaction. He corroborated a post from former UX lead Noah Watkins that said the studio's next game was just a few weeks away from being announced.

Even if a Blockchain owner is to blame, what we appear to have is a small to mid-tier studio that expanded and expanded far too quickly, and had unrealistic goals regarding what they would be able to develop and ship post-Pandemic. Even then, that error is entirely in the hands of Phoenix Labs' management and my heart entirely goes out to those that have since lost their jobs or have seen their hard work get shunted into oblivion due to this news.

On May 7th, 2024, Microsoft announced it was shuttering Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, and Roundhouse Games. All of these studios were divisions of Bethesda studios and the layoffs impacted hundreds of employees. Our very own Grubb has reported that other internal game projects at Xbox Game Studios have also been struggling with Grubb stating that the reboot of Perfect Dark being described as being in bad shape. The studio behind that reboot, The Initiative, was first announced being led by industry veterans like Darrell Gallagher, who previously led Crystal Dynamics, Christian Cantamessa, the lead writer for Red Dead Redemption, and Brian Westergaard, the senior producer being 2018's God of War.

This week, things with the Xbox division got even more confusing with the announcement that Activision, a Microsoft-owned subsidiary, would be opening a new studio in Poland with strong AAA aspirations and "exclusively focused on creating a new narrative-based and genre-defining AAA franchise." This new studio is named Elsewhere Entertainment and will be based in Warsaw. To try and drum up excitement, Activision and Microsoft reps have announced the studio will feature "storytelling experts" from The Last of Us, Uncharted, The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Destiny, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and Far Cry. To return to my point about newly formed studio outfits sponsored by Microsoft, The Initiative, proves that star power doesn't necessarily lead to great final products that see the light of day.

As if the Xbox's identity wasn't already murky enough, there are also several reports that the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella is largely reigning in the creative freedom the traditional leaders at the Xbox division and expressing a strong desire to see more Xbox titles on Switch and PS5. Regardless, the idea that any division of Microsoft would be sponsoring a new studio tasked with making a new AAA IP, is simply tone deaf. Then again, maybe you consider this good news because it is a sign that someone with budgetary power at Microsoft doesn't just want the Xbox division to make Call of Duty.

Yeah, I can ping @dtoast, but when you say "frequent" what time gap are you suggesting?