this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Basically: The thing everyone worried about and quite frankly knew would happen when Microsoft started buying every studios they could get their hands on... happened.
Embrace. Expand. Extinguish. It never went away. Careless incompetence. The shareholders way.
Shareholders: "Wow, Microsoft is really expanding by buying up those studios, promising great output for them in the future!". Line goes up.
Microsoft then does nothing except investing all of their money into AI.
Shareholders: "Wow, Microsoft is really streamlining their organisation by dumping all of those useless dead weight studios. Excellent management". Line goes up.
I absolutely hate how on the nose this is. sigh
TIL that this is a valid use of "on the nose" (definition 1). I was genuinely confused, I'm only familar with definition 2 there, "unimaginative; overliteral; lacking nuance; unsophisticated".
TIL about the second definition
We are the lucky ten thousand.
"Wow, I hate how on the nose this is". Line goes up.
"predictable investment"
Yeah. I would look at Microsoft's aquisition of studios as those studios exiting the space in the long term. Gaming is thriving but it's not the big studios, it's the myriad of indies and smaller games that are where the innovation and interest is. The monolithic AAA gaming space is in a crisis of it's own making - driven by shareholder demands and the view of games as nothing more than franchises to milk every year.
What I'm worried about is some of those greedy fuckhead parasites would start courting big indie studios and AA games and ruining a part of that scene
I assume that Microsoft is trying to appeal to two different groups of shareholders. The first sees Microsoft buying up studios and assumes that the studios will be able to put out better games cheaper (by firing support staff like HR). The second group sees Microsoft cutting low performing workers and assumes that Microsoft will be able to get more profits by cutting lots of cost without losing much income. If they time it right, they can get the second group to start buying just as the first group starts selling.
Im not even sure the extinguish part is intentional here. I think they are just genuinely this incompetent, but Greys Law applies here imo.
What we gotta do is start going after the people selling the studios and companies and pillars of society. Make selling off unprofitable or even downright dangerous again and we'll see companies that compete to grow instead of compete to sell inferiority while intentionally poisoning competence.
See also: the US government
Yep. They don't understand games so they buy studios that DO understand games, and then turn them into divisions of Microsoft instead of game studios and are surprised that they no longer can make games.
Except, game dev companies are not competitors for MS (meaning XBOX), but essential for their survival. What's the point of extinguishing your source of supply?
They're probably banking on the fact that devs love making games, and when a bunch get laid off, some of them will inevitably go start some new studio that Microsoft can swoop in and buy again in 5-10 years, wring another game out of, then toss aside like trash again.
It's the EA strategy. Wait for a studio to get public recognition, buy it out and milk it until the devs break for the exits, start a new indie studio, rinse the blood off and repeat. Frankly every "Creative Industry" since they invented the Victrola has operated the same way, and it's only a hair's breadth different from how noble patronage worked (and arguably more exploitative). And every time anyone tried to build a more co-operative style system, they burn it to the ground with market manipulation and regulatory capture.
That seems like a bad business model to me.
It's been working so far
Only 'working' to make a few rich cunts even richer, which is not what I'd call working.
But you know what I mean right?
Yeah. Working as intended. :|
Still seems like a long way around to make videogames, but I guess that's not their primary business at this point.