I have a strong sense of doubt that it was Krome who kept Game Room from being great, more like Microsoft not getting the right deals. Feel bad for the Krome guys though, but this could lead to bigger and better things.

I liked Ty the Tasmanian Tiger.

400 employees? Holy sh*t. Why?

awww as an australian, it's quite depressing for me to here our largest developer is going to be shut down. :'( 
 
but yeah game room. i'll miss the quick looks but that thing, not so much. 

I guess Jeff couldn't fund them by himself.

Damn, another Australian studio. As an Australian myself, this totally sucks balls, but in the bright side, whenever bigger studios close down it tends to lead to more smaller studios opening up hence leading to more potential up n' comers. At least we still have good talents such as 2k Australia, Blue Tongue Studios and that Team Bondi studio making L.A Noire which seems incredibly promising. I'm totally aware I'm missing out some others but DUDE, this news is sad.  

 Yeah, the only downside is that there won't be anymore game room quick looks :( 
 
Hopefully another regular video series will take its place!    

Jeff's quicklooks must make them ashamed I mean, I'm sure they'd prefer for everyone to just forget about game room and let it die off quietly and not acknowledge their failure. It's kind of like playstation home in its utter failure and yet inexplicable continued support seemingly only to save face for the company.

yeesh... 400 employees must have been a lot of overhead.

this is very concerning for myself. as an aspiring game developer still studying at university and hoping to end up at one of the Brisbane companies (where the majority of the game companies are based in Australia), to hear that Krome (not too far from where I live in fact, for their Brisbane studio) is imploding is very worrying.

As someone who has been connected to Melbourne House (Beam Software/Krome Melbourne) since the early 90s as a journalist and friend I can say that this is truely and utterly heart breaking.  Australia, particularly Melbourne House, has had a longstanding history in game development stretching back to the early home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 and so it's really sad to see our industry suffering as much as it is now.  There are many factors, not least is which is our dollar reaching parity with the USD which means that contractually we're just not cheap enough for big studios to employ via outsourcing, but whatever they are the Australian games industry is nothing like it was a mere 4 years ago.  Krome isn't the last of the studios to close, but it's definitely the largest.
 
Pour one on the ground for our fallen homies...

sucks for all the people who lost their jobs.... at least we can think game room as "those moments in gaming history" now.

Oh no, but I wanted a new Strid..er, I mean Blade Kitten game.

Can't they just get another studio to pick up where game room left off? It's more like an app for the 360, not an actual game...

This doesn't exactly mean that Game Room will shut down. WHo knows how successful it actually was. There could also be a huge back catalog of games already done. Not to mention porting efforts can be moved to another small team.

What's happening to Blade Kitten?!  *^O.O^*

its  not over yet, another publisher will surely take over the immensly popular game room franchise.... you never know - R.I.P Game Room quick looks, you have provided me with a bundle of laughs and a history lesson.... farewell :P

I can't imagine that the Krome guys and gals did not see this coming. It's always sad to see it happen and I hope they all land on their feet.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? What have they put out that was good? Shouldn't poorly performing businesses fail?

" Game Room failed mainly due to lack of marketing. Also, bad pricing structure. In concept, it's badass. "

" I bought Yars' Revenge and I don't regret a thing.  Good luck Krome guys! "

Game Room would have been amazing and relavent if they would have treated it like the Zune Pass; with Xbox Live Gold all of the games in Game Room are free to play, and you get to keep one or two a month.

As funny as it might sound to say that it should be remembered for what it could have been instead of what it was, the potential of gameroom was great, but due to a lack of long term effort from Microsoft (like so many other great ideas they had) it all just fell apart. 
 
Keep in mind though, Krome shutting down doesn't mean gameroom is done in. As far as I can tell, the rights to gameroom were and are still with Microsoft Game Studio, and if they decide to expand it into their Windows Phone 7 efforts, bring on board companies such as capcom, sega and Taito, then something good might come out on the service... 
 
Of course, thats a lot of ifs, and everything we've seen from Microsoft Game Studios lately has been disappointing... so things might just be better off if it dies here only to be resurrected later by a different company with the influence and connections to make it work.

They would have done better if they brought out another Ty The Tasmanian Tiger game, ore come up with some new IP's instead of bring out Transformers games.  I had Ty on the PS2 it was a good plateformer for younger gamers.  Good luck to the guys that get laid off, hope they find something else in this horrible economy.     

@EpicSteve said:

" Game Room failed mainly due to lack of marketing. Also, bad pricing structure. In concept, it's badass. "

Also crappy games, 
With so many awesome arcade games, The fact they only put out 30-40 year old games was just stupid

If this means the demise of Game Room QLs, then consider me sad. 
(Studios shutting down: also sad.)

Yeah, you should play those Dreamcast games on a PlayStation 3 instead!

I bet Jeff's dollars spent on Gameroon kept these guys going an extra month or so.

" If this means no more Game Room updates, I will have one less Quick Look to watch per week! Nooooo! "

Good.  Game Room is a glorified overpriced emulator.  Not sure why anyone would pay real-life money to download a 60-meg Intelivision rom, unless you're an Achievement Whore and can't bear to be without your G-points.

It's hard for me to feel sorry based off of how crummy Game Room actually is.  I like the virtual arcade concept but the game library makes it a virtual version of like the worst arcade to ever exist. 
 
Every awesome arcade game that I remember and is available for play on the 360 isn't playable in Game Room.

Game Room was garbage but its always sad to hear about people losing their jobs like this.

R.I.P Krome.

Actually kind of bummed by this. I have actually enjoyed the Game Room quick looks. For both the humor of Ryan hating Jeff for bringing him on the videos, and seeing old games I've never heard of before. Just like Brad and Jeff said, it's like a Museum for classic games, only it had the wrong classic games.

I'll miss the giantbomb quick looks and that's about it.

No more Game Room Quick Looks?! But what will I do for entertainment now?!?!

Agreed that intellivison & some atari 2600 games sunk this for many people. I liked the idea but with it being xbox title I wouldn't be surprised if they went to sega/data east or other developers to keep it going with arcade titles & digital pinball.