Silent Hill creator and director of upcoming horror title Slitterhead Keiichiro Toyama has commented on Microsoft’s shock closure of Tango Gameworks in Might 2024.
Talking to VGC, Toyama used the instance of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware as a “profitable” studio as, whereas Darkish Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are completely different video games, all of them characteristic the studio’s signature gameplay loop.
In distinction, Tango Gameworks, which was based in 2010 by horror sport visionary and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, jumped round genres, going from a equally third-person survival horror franchise The Evil Inside to rhythm-based motion sport Hello-Fi Rush, by way of the spooky however not strictly horror, first-person, open-world motion platformer Ghostwire: Tokyo.
Hello-Fi Rush is a smaller scale sport in comparison with earlier Tango Gameworks titles, one absent of the darkish themes the studio was beforehand identified for. However Microsoft claimed it was successful, reaching two million gamers in a month and receiving excessive reward from critics. A yr after launch, nevertheless, Microsoft shocked the online game world by shutting Tango Gameworks down.
“I don’t really feel it’s my place to provide them recommendation, however I believe going again to what I stated earlier concerning the steadiness of routine and preserving the fashion of your video games is related,” Toyama stated of the closure.
“You take a look at an instance like FromSoftware: they maintain making completely different video games however sure kinds and points of their video games keep the identical. That’s an apparent instance of how a studio is profitable. Not altering every thing each time is perhaps the important thing to life and surviving.”
Tango Gameworks’ closure got here alongside different lay-offs at Microsoft, together with the shutting down of Redfall developer Arkane Austin, amid cuts affecting 1,900 workers.
Microsoft’s gaming executives have remained obscure to date on the precise causes for the closures, however Xbox boss Phil Spencer later mentioned it with IGN.
“I’ve to run a sustainable enterprise inside the corporate and develop, and meaning generally I’ve to make exhausting choices that frankly aren’t choices I like, however choices that any individual must go make,” he stated.
In the meantime, FromSoftware’s Elden Ring has bought an unimaginable 25 million copies, with DLC Shadow of the Erdtree bought 5 million in simply three days.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll discuss The Witcher all day.