Former Arkane President: Microsoft Closing Arkane Austin Was 'Not a Good Decision' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 January 2025 / 5,449 Views
Raphael Colantonio, the former Arkane president and founder, speaking with PC Gamer said Microsoft shutting down Arkane Austin was "not a good decision."
"I think if you look a little bit, it's obvious that Arkane Austin was a very special group of people that have made some cool things and that could pull it off again," said Colantonio. "I think it was a decision that just came down to, 'We need to cut something.' Was it to please the investors, the stock market? They're playing a different game."
He added, "The only thing that I stand by is saying that the specific choice of killing Arkane Austin, that was not a good decision."
Colantonio said that he doesn't think recreating the magic of Arkane Austin is possible as it could take forever to do so.
"Recreating a very special group like that is, I would dare to say, impossible," he said. "It takes forever. When you have that magic of Harvey [Smith] and Ricardo [Bare] etc that all come together, it's a specific moment in time and space that just worked out this way, that took forever to reach.
"Those people together can really make magic. It's not like, 'Doesn't matter, we'll just rehire.' No, try it. That's what big groups do all the time. They try to just hire massively and overpay people to create those magic groups. It doesn't work like this. So to me, that was stupid. But what do I know?"
Microsoft earlier this year announced it would be shutting down Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi RUSH and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks, and Mighty DOOM developer Alpha Dog Studios.
Tango Gameworks would be saved as the studio and the Hi-Fi Rush IP was acquired by publisher Krafton in August.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Agreed. Despite over half the studio leaving during Redfall's development, you still had Harvey Smith there who could've brought in new developers and made something THEY wanted to make. Not a game that Bethesda forced them to make.
Definitely a bad decision. Who cares if Redfall flopped, it never should have been in development in the first place, the decision to make it was from the era where Zenimax was struggling to survive and hoped GaaS could save them. Arkane have proven themselves masters of the singleplayer immersive sim genre time and time again, Arkane Austin easily could have been put to work on a new Prey or a new Dishonored or a new IP immersive sim while Arkane Lyon is busy with Marvel's Blade.
Calling it not a good decision is an understatement.
Current MS management and bad decisions is all they're capable of.
Biggest disgrace from Microsoft,
Forcing studios into their own oblivion.
Fcking dickheads
Xbox saw that experienced dev’s were leaving Austin, was told that many talented deaths were leaving Arkane….but still decided to release the awful Redfall, which went further to damage Xbox and Phil Spencer’s reputation.
This is way beyond stupid, it’s ludicrous.
Spencer has done so much damage to Xbox. Far more than the good he has done with the 1X & gamepass…..
They closed it down for underperforming, just like Sony did with Firewall. They move the staff and IPs to another studio to take over the work. You don't need the same OG studio to deliver great products.
This was a bad closing. Zenimax and studio heads at Arkane put them in a bad situation . At least Tango lives on.
Agreed
it took them six months to come around, though I struggle to believe they genuinely believe this. They already have Activision selling 20mil copies of CoD every year, what good does Arcane do for them?
The higher ups at Microsoft are no different today than they were six months ago.
No point keeping a studio that bleeds money even if cod makes all that money.
so many people can run Microsoft better than they can right? sure
Well make mediocre games after dishonoured and this is what you get
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