Microsoft has just announced that it’s shutting down two game development studios: Arkane Austin, responsible for Redfall, and Tango Gameworks, known for The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo. These studios were previously owned by Bethesda. The decision to close them comes shortly after Microsoft acquired Bethesda a few months ago.
It’s also worth noting that Microsoft has shut down the development of Redfall. As the company stated, Redfall’s previous update will be and its last one. The game and its servers will remain online, at least for now.
Redfall was a HUGE disappointment. And, once again, the big publishers have lied to all gamers. A few months ago, Microsoft and Bethesda were claiming that they’d support Redfall, and that they were working on major updates for it. And, apart from only one major update, we haven’t gotten anything else for it. That’s why you should never, EVER, believe the PR statements of all big publishers.
Arkane Austin has been responsible for games such as Redfall and PREY. And while I really enjoyed PREY, I found Redfall to be boring as hell. The studio had a lot of talent, but it was forced to work on games that were simply chasing trends.
On the other hand, Tango Gameworks is the team that gave us The Evil Within franchise, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush. What’s really ironic here is that all of these are great single-player games. However, all of them have not met commercial success, something that most likely made MS close the studio.
It’s a shame really, but the writing was on the wall. Both of these studios failed to release games that could make a profit. I mean, we’ve seen other publishers closing studios that produced successful titles. So, I’m not that shocked about the closure of Arkane Austin. But Tango Gameworks? Man, that studio provided some really good games.
And that is that. And now it will be interesting to see what will happen to Rocksteady. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has failed, both critically and commercially. So, how long will it take Warner Bros to shut it down?
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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