According to entertainment lawyer Simon Pulman on LinkedIn, both South of Midnight and The Outer Worlds 2 had budgets of around $100 million each, including development and marketing costs.
Pulman also claimed South of Midnight sold roughly 500,000 copies, while The Outer Worlds 2 sold around 1 million copies.
How in the hell did South of Midnight cost that much money, At this point, one thinks it is money laundering there is no other way.
Gen 9 teams closed by the ""EVIL"" XBOX:
- Arkane Studios Austin
- Alpha Dog Games
- Roundhouse
- Tango Gameworks
- The Initiative
By Sony/PS:
- Bluepoint
- Dark Outlaw
- Firewalk
- London Studio
- Neon Koi Games B
- Pixelopus
- Japan Studio
- Manchester Studio
Microsoft literally bailed Doube Fine out from closing much earlier.
They launched a Kickstarter asking for about $400,000 for a Broken Age. It raised over $3.3 million. The game STILL went over budget.
They even MADE THEIR OWN CROWD FUNDING SITE just to fund Psychonauts 2.
“South of Midnight” was created by a team of over 100 people who worked on it for 7 years. Developer Compulsion Studios hired the notorious woke narrative consulting firm Sweet Baby Inc to write the story, and gamers totally rejected it.
It cost $100 million to make and peaked at 1438 concurrent players on Steam. The studio crowed that it had reached a million players, but it was offered for free to the 37 million subscribers of Microsoft Game Pass, which means about 98% of players didn’t even want this when it was being given away.
How could anyone justify giving this studio another $100 million to make another game?
This is gonna sound harsh but all these layoffs need to happen not just at Xbox but at all other AAA game studios
The budgets are too big, too many meaningless jobs, too much reliance on streaming services, games take too long to make, and an overall abandonment of what made gaming great in the first place which is just making fun games for players and not their peers
Things are always worse before they get better so I for welcome the reset that’s happening
tava vendo aqui que a Compulsion Games lançou 3 jogos em 17 ANOS de existência, e nenhum hit
eu gostei de South of Midnight, mas só ele foram uns 6 anos em desenvolvimento com (aparente) alto valor de produção, pra entregar um AA
os caras não se ajudam tbm
🚨 Xbox Confirma Fechamento do Compulsion Games Após Revelação de Nova IP
A Microsoft e o Xbox anunciaram o fechamento do Compulsion Games, estúdio por trás de South of Midnight, pouco mais de dois meses depois de revelar que estava trabalhando em uma nova IP descrita como fascinante, intrigante e totalmente nova. A decisão ocorre em meio a relatos de demissões em massa previstas para julho na divisão Xbox e à declaração da CEO Asha Sharma de que a marca está sobrecarregada e passará por um 'reset' nos próximos 100 dias.
Fundado em 2005, o Compulsion Games ficou conhecido por We Happy Few (2018) e, mais recentemente, pelo aclamado South of Midnight, lançado em 2025 como parte da linha First Party da Xbox Game Studios e vencedor de um Peabody Award. Com cerca de 90 desenvolvedores atualmente vinculados ao estúdio, segundo seu LinkedIn, o encerramento se soma ao histórico recente de fechamentos da Xbox, incluindo The Initiative e os cancelamentos de projetos como Everwild e Perfect Dark, gerando preocupação na comunidade sobre o futuro dos estúdios first party.
https://t.co/pbQf5ptemB
#Xbox
#CompulsionGames #XboxGameStudios
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Xbox
"We've invested a lot for the last 25 years. We have to turn this into a sustainable business. The challenge we have is, we've not been monetizing that entertainment. In fact, we've been subsidizing that entertainment."