Earlier this year we heard what was actually a very familiar concept within Britain when it came to the way that Xbox were handling the growth of their company. In response to a slowing of economic growth and the realisation of an over-investment within an optimistic age- Xbox opted for 'austerity'. Not utter such a phrase to as Brit and simply watch as the 'Winter Solider' style conditioning kicks in and they relieve all the most traumatic moments of the past ten years. Suddenly they'll no longer be seeing you because their vision will be clouded with visions of a thumb headed necro-Pig-romancer. (I swear that makes sense if you're a native.) We know very well that 'austerity' is a continent lie to prelude the following- us with the haves are going to take from the have nots until our balance sheets are looking steady again. And then we're going to keep taking until we're literally stopped. Cheers.
It's that kind of philosophy which is seeing the Game Pass package get cheapened and it's prices rise within the very same announcement. It's that kind of philosophy which is going to see the further degradation of the Xbox brand when key Xbox exclusive titles are shipped off to Playstation later this year and next year in desperate search of customers. It's that kind of philosophy that made Liz Truss lose to a head of lettuce. And it was that very breed of austerity politics that had Xbox unceremoniously shut down an award winning studio simply because cuts needed to be made somewhere and the only other alternative was the executives going without that extra shot of whipped cream from atop their golden-flake lattes. Sorry Tango Gameworks, guess you should have made a successful Live Service instead!
Since then their hit game, which was the talk of the town when it came out to a surprise release, 'Hi Fi Rush' has seen something of a eulogy among it's community of loving players who seriously flocked to a unique game concept conceived in such a novel way. I even got around to playing the game and I have to say- I have absolutely no rhythm. I struggled through the entire first act trying desperately to hook on to a rhythm that the game was telling me was there simply wasn't. I did half-decently on the first level and every other level after that was me struggling against the core mechanic of the game to just have a normal hack-n-slash brawl. Dunno what's wrong with me. The game looks cool though.
It also won a few awards, and became a breath of fresh air that people needed after Xbox struggled bitterly to prove itself a worthwhile console to invest in, which is still struggles with. Now to be fair, Tango has had trouble getting it's audience over the years with a horror franchise that didn't seem to hit home despite a couple of outings, but what that enough of an axe over the studio's head to axe them the second they did get their hit? I suppose that's the kind of equation that can only be worked out in the alien-like mind of the Xbox executives as they play games with the livelihoods of those supposedly under their stable of games. All I can say for certain was that the decision to punish the successful cast an unshakable shadow over an already beleaguered developer for how healthy they truly are in the face of stiff competition. Even despite unabashedly superior spending power.
As the story goes, the creator of the Tango Gameworks, one of the legends of the horror industry, left the studio not that long ago and that alone was enough to shake faith in the entity. As though the entire worth of the studio and everything they achieved was tired entirely to one man and without him the studio is utterly worthless. Doesn't matter that those developers worked literally alongside him, that he helped to shape that studio to make those games, presumably in the hopes that they could go on themselves without his guidance- Xbox were relying solely on vapid star power to develop entire games for them. Because 'hero worship' is always supremely strong ground upon which to build a game development studio, right?
But we can hold off on the funeral for one day, at the very least- because despite the very definitive statements declaring that Tango gameworks had been wiped off the face of the earth, it seems a Valkyrie has swooped down to save them in the form of PUBG South Korean publisher Krafton. Out of absolutely nowhere the company has been acquired and now will no longer be shutdown- saving the award winning studio and bringing them out of the shadow of what appears to be a crumbling empire in the same fell swoop- what a story! Not that I really know all that much about Krafton and their style of management, mind you- but you'd have to be pretty bad in order to come off worse than the callous studio murderers Microsoft proved themselves to be.
They may be best known for owning PUBG but Krafton have themselves quite the portfolio under their belt to cement them as serious publishers who seem capable of taking advantage of the potential that Microsoft have stupidly squandered. They own Tera under their brand for one, including a bevy of mobile games with actually recognisable names- which is a huge achievement in an industry stuffed with a more oversaturated mobile market than your average English field is stuffed with weeds. They also, and this is news to me, are apparently the publishers of Subnautica- proving that this isn't a studio perpetually married to the online live service grift like so many of their South Korean contemporaries. They might be buying this single player developer to actually produce single player games! (Imagine that: Warner Bros!)
Tango Gameworks does not strike me a studio that is used up by any stretch of the imagination. They are not devoid of ideas, rough for innovation or totally trapped in the abyss. And now Microsoft are going to see them flare back to life and wince at every success they may see in the future. And you know what? Good. Seems to me that if Microsoft valued the company so very little that without one single celebrity involved they found the remains to be worthless- then they deserve the disgrace of seeing everything they cruelly threw away. And I pray Tango use this as a stepping stone to greatness because by god- this team deserves a break after all they've been through.
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