Just Cause developer Avalanche has confirmed plans to enter a collective bargaining agreement with Swedish unions.
Third-Party Game Developers Are Reportedly Questioning Potential Xbox Releases
26.03.2024 - 08:39 / gamingbolt.com / Chris Dring
Xbox might be facing some push back from third-party developers. According to Chris Dring of GamesIndustry.biz, developers he spoke to during the recent Game Developers Conference indicated that Xbox’s general place in the market right now spells trouble for Microsoft.
Going by the market, it appears that sales of Xbox consoles, especially in markets outside of North America, seem to be falling. This has led many third-party developers to start questioning whether it’s even worth the extra time that is often needed to port their games for Xbox Series X/S.
“Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer,” said Dring during a recent episode of the GamesIndustry.biz podcast, which you can check out below. “The other thing I heard—I heard it from a very prominent company and one not so prominent—was Xbox’s performance in Europe is just flatlining.”
“The phrase one major company who released a big game last year said [was], ‘I don’t know why we bothered supporting it’,” said Dring.
Some of this questioning also seems to rise from Microsoft’s mandate that games released on Xbox Series X and Series S need to have feature parity. This includes features that would be much harder to bring over, such as Baldur’s Gate 3‘s problems with split-screen co-op for the platform in late 2023.
“We mentioned on a previous podcast that we’d heard retailers in Europe are considering or had already been cutting back their Xbox stock on their shelves—hardware, games, that kind of thing—and now you’ve got third-party publishers going, ‘we’re putting in a lot of effort trying to create a Series S version and an X version of a game when, to be honest with you, for us the market is PC and PS5’,” said Dring.
While exact numbers are difficult to come by, it is worth noting that Microsoft is currently in third place when looking at the current console market. Back in June 2023, Microsoft even said to the US Federal Trade Commission that it “lost the console wars”.
The website gametalkz.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
Top Authors
Popular Topics
gamingbolt.com
12.04.2024 / 23:31
Gio Corsi Joins Nintendo’s Third-Party Management Team
Gio Corsi has joined Nintendo, the industry veteran recently revealed via his personal Twitter page. Corsi has joined the company’s AAA Third-Party Portfolio Management team, and though his specific position within the team isn’t clear, he says he will be helping “great teams bring their amazing games to this legendary platform.”
gematsu.com
12.04.2024 / 15:37
Gio Corsi joins Nintendo of America’s AAA third-party games portfolio management team
Gio Corsi, the former head of commercial at Iron Galaxy Studios, chief product officer of IllFonic, and head of global second party games at Sony Interactive Entertainment, has joined Nintendo of America as part of its AAA third-party games portfolio management team, he announced.
thegamer.com
05.04.2024 / 12:55
Astro Bot And Other "Smaller" First-Party Games Will Launch On PS5 This Year, Says Insider
A reliable gaming insider has claimed that PlayStation plans to release a new Astro Bot game this year alongside several other "smaller" first-party titles.
gamingbolt.com
03.04.2024 / 20:05
Sony Has “Some Smaller First-Party Games” Planned for 2024, Including Astro Bot – Rumour
Sony said earlier this year that it wouldn’t be releasing any new instalments in existing major franchises until at least April 2025, and though that certainly sparked some concern in the PlayStation fanbase, it seems the company does have other, smaller things in store to make up for the lack of its typical flagship releases.
rockpapershotgun.com
03.04.2024 / 11:11
Dead Cells custodians Evil Empire are reportedly working on a new Prince of Persia roguelike, out this year
Evil Empire, the studio responsible for the previous five or so years of updates to Motion Twin’s roguelite metroidvania game Dead Cells, are set to release a new roguelite set in the Prince of Persia universe “later this year.”
videogameschronicle.com
02.04.2024 / 09:57
Warcraft boss is open to licensing to third party studios, but it has to be ‘the right partner’
The general manager of the Warcraft series says Blizzard isn’t against the idea of licensing out the Warcraft IP to third-party developers.
gamerant.com
31.03.2024 / 20:45
Final Fantasy 14 Players on Xbox Are Reportedly Getting Banned
Following the launch of Final Fantasy 14 on Xbox Series X/S consoles, a player reported receiving a ban from Xbox's services for using a common term from the critically acclaimed MMORPG. After the appeal to their temporary ban was initially denied, the Final Fantasy 14 player contacted other users for their aid with the situation.
videogameschronicle.com
28.03.2024 / 19:35
Two thirds of CD Projekt developers are now working on The Witcher 4, reaching its target staff size
Two thirds of CD Projekt are now working on the next game in the Witcher series, codenamed Polaris.
videogameschronicle.com
27.03.2024 / 16:11
Bandai Namco releases three free Steam games developed by new recruits
Bandai Namco has released three new games on Steam, all of which are completely free.
gamerant.com
26.03.2024 / 02:35
More Xbox Games Are Reportedly Going Multi-Platform
Many more Xbox games are planned to go multi-platform, according to a new report that emerged from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024. Microsoft's ongoing multi-platform push is understood to be coinciding with some third-party publishers losing faith in the Xbox ecosystem.
gameranx.com
25.03.2024 / 22:27
Third-Party Publishers Reportedly Uncertain Why They Support Xbox
Microsoft Xbox fans were in for quite a fright not too long ago. A slew of rumors hit the web suggesting that Xbox was bowing out. There wouldn’t be new consoles, and first-party titles would launch on competitor platforms, and it really painted a doom-and-gloom picture. Now, a new report suggests there are even more disheartening comments made from third-party publishers.