by
William D’Angelo
, posted 3 hours ago / 510 Views
The founder and former president of Arkane Studios Raphaël Colantonio, who left in 2019, took to social media weighing on the huge Microsoft and Xbox layoffs.
“Why is no-one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough cough (Gamepass),” said Colantonio (spotted by VideoGamesChronicle).
He added, “I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by MS’s ‘infinite money’, but at some point reality has to hit. I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.”
A user stated that Game Pass wasn’t designed to be profitable in the short or medium term and Colantonio agrees.
“But it’s a long game that involves throwing a tsunami at the entire ecosystem of the industry,” he stated. “Only the gamers like it because the offer is too good to be true, but eventually even gamers will hate it when they realize the effects on the games.”
The layoffs at Xbox have seen Perfect Dark, Everwild, and the ZeniMax Online Studios MMORPG cancelled, as well as The Initiative shutdown. Candy Crush developer King is laying off about 200 employees and as many as 100 people at Blizzard working on Warcraft Rumble have been let go. Many other studios at Xbox also saw at least a handful of people let go.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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