"The closure of Tango Gameworks by Microsoft came as a shock to Xbox fans, and really the whole industry waiting to pick apart Microsoft's questionable decision making, particularly in light of Hi-Fi Rush's critical acclaim."
"Questionable?" Maybe if you only value games by critic appeal rather than gamer appeal.
But MS isn't run by idiots, despite the gaming media's intentional obtuseness.
They obviously had reasons and just as obviously are politely keeping them to themselves.
It might be the studio's burn rate. (Very likely.)
It might have to do with the sales numbers of their recent games. (They haven't shown up on best seller lists, have they? Maybe even their Game Pass engagement numbers weren't terribly good, either?)
Or it might've be a cultural difference between the studio and the needs of XBOX. Maybe they weren't willing to be "team players"?
But one thing that never gets mentioned in gaming (unlike movies and TV) is the difference between critic appeal and commercial appeal. The gaming media typically acts as if *their* preferences and biases are somehow natural law and any disagreement is somebody else's failing. (The by-now obvious XBOX tax and the constant FUDing of the platform for BOX's refusal to play by old, outdated rules or to quit the console business to leave the old entrenched players unchallenged. To say nothing of the culture war catfights.)
Out in the real world, gamers vote their wallets by *their* tastes and companies vote their operations by the results. Because at the end of the day it is all about money; how it gets spent and what it brings back. Critics sit comfortably outside the resulting give and take, ignoring inconvenient facts like an acclaimed GOTY failing to crack 2M in sales while games making north of $600M, to say nothing of billions, get deprecated.
Gaming is a business.
And in business it is results that determine success and survival; the results might be in acclaim, popularity, or revenue. But at the end of the day acclaim alone doesn't pay the salaries, pensions, or overhead of a studio for the years it takes to roll out a game that might not justify itself in the market of dollars or eyeballs.
And in the case of Tango the most noticeable narrative is the one willfully ignored: MS freely let Bungie and Toys for Bob go independent for the price of existing IP but for Tango they "paid" with IP to be rid of the studio. One move is not like the others.
Yet nobody in the gaming media bothers to wonder or report why.
Either nobody knows (unlikely) or the true story doesn't fit the monoculture narrative of "MS is run by idiots." Just like the XBOX cloud gaming campaign gets intentionally misrepresented.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
Or the publicly verified facts in an industry in transition from unsustainable practices to an unavoidable survival strategy.
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