Nowhere did I say, nor imply, that it was.
As PG is indeed also affected, that should change what your guess is. What with it being different evidence than what you originally presented and thereby informing your guess differently.
Why are you bringing up GT here? It consistently sells 10-15 million copies with every game, not at all comparable to FM which topped out at 4-5 million with Forza 3 and never touched those numbers again. The difference is also that Forza is made by a revolving door of contractors, while at PD many people have been there since day 1 and have 30 years of experience with GT at this point, helping to keep the identity of GT consistent and fully intact. I don't see GT going away anytime soon, it's by far the most successful sim racer on the market.
They don't, from the official website https://www.flightsimulator.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-2024/#:~:text=To achieve this unprecedented level,significantly evolved Asobo Studio engine.:they use forzatech, in fact, motorsport is shaped to flightsim using the 10 year support model in a single game
Asobo Studio says it will maintain content support and updates on Microsoft Flight Simulator for 10 years
Company CEO says Microsoft is investing in the studio and its general infrastructurewww.madinfinite.com
just cut staff for rake better profits type of thing
its the older series of the two and FM always had the image of being "we have GT at home" or "GT from temu"
i wont extend myself much on gamepass beacuse i feel its too out of context and the layoffs are not really related to it
Funny you mention that on the day that a big supposed sony-owned PS5-exclusive game IP was announced for Xbox Series
i dont belive this is the end, but if is this the end, we have a bleak future for racing games, and like me, dont care much about sim racing
cough*GranTurismo6*cough
the only mistake of GT6 was the fact it should had been crossgen and not PS3 only
i also am with you, i think they only cut the redundant and more expensiver staff
the thing is, the line is starting to go finnaly going up for FM and i am sure that the leadership is aware of it
Why not? It changes the reason for your guess...
It's an opinion presented as a fact. Nobody outside of Microsoft knows why all these redundancies took place, and nobody outside of Microsoft Gaming knows why the decisions were taken to make these specific redundancies at these specific studios.
Because you are stating your opinion as fact. No one knows the real reason for the layoffs, you can't make an assumption and state it as fact. Could FM's performance have something to do with it? Maybe. Could the layoffs be a direct result of it? Doubtful considering how many other studios were affected.
I think it's more due to a new fiscal year starting on July 1st and they need to make cuts to justify the huge amounts of money spent on buying Bethesda and Blizzard, huge investments into AI that haven't paid off yet, and slow adoption of Windows 11. T10 doesn't exist in a vaccuum within Micros~1's hierarchy and they also laid off another 9,000 employees elsewhere in the company about the same time, and I expect more axes will be falling elsewhere in the next few days.
That and it being a bad game that repeated a lot of the mistakes of GT5 and took years to even halfway deliver on a lot of the promises made at release, but sure.
I was giving you the benefit of assuming you only meant mainline games, because that was the only sensible interpretation. You were still wrong though.
Obviously it's just my opinion, like any other posted here. The scale of layoffs are the difference, laying off 5-10% of workers in a studio is not great but understandable as some positions are considered redundant and the team can still continue working more or less normally, laying off 50% is a significant cut that impacts the ability to develop projects dramatically, not to mention the psychological effect on the remaining workers that half the people they worked with are suddenly gone. I bet the morale at the studio is not too great right now.
I'd still put Forza Horizon in the "simcade" category. Yes, it takes a lot more artistic licenses than Motorsport, but at the end of the day it's still based on a physics simulation. The Crew is, and will forever be, a chore to play first and foremost, and I honestly could never tell what they're trying to do with the underlying driving mechanics, but I suspect the -cade component to be a lot stronger than it is in Horizon. A chorecade, then?
Yet it's coming across as something you think is fact.
We've seen one studio shuttered entirely, and some that were working on games for release soon (this year or next) having had their games - the only games they're making - cancelled. These can't have been for reasons of game reviewed/sold bad, because... they're not games for sale yet.
Did I miss something? Which ones aside from Perfect Dark and Everwild? Both of these were in development hell for almost a decade and still were nothing more than concepts and ideas with no clear direction or a release target in sight, neither was gonna release for another 3-5 years and understandably MS said enough is enough. Both were rebooted 3 or more times as well, a complete mess and a justified cut.
Among others, ZeniMax (TESO) was working on an MMO from a new IP, and then there was this headliner from my post about PG being affected:
Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo both peaked at 4. Everything afterwards was downhill.
Yeah, something like Forza Horizon 5 is probably a better simulation than some of the early FMs or GTs. But it's realism heavily tempered with a filter of fun. It's like playing GT with Super Soft tyres - it's not actually realistic, but all the same driving techniques still work and it's still a hell of a good time.
Those games have turned into Mario Kart, Trackmania and Hot Wheels. There's a few still out there, but they're kinda niche. Mario Kart aside I guess, but it's special in it's own way and we've already seen countless other games try and overthrow it and fail.
No way man, GT4 was very good for it's time but the limitations of the hardware limited it's potential and it's not that great to go back to now, only 6 cars on track, poor AI, no dynamic conditions, lack of real world tracks, long loading times, poor sounds, no multiplayer, no customization or paint editor. GT7 solves pretty much all of those issues, but it needs a better SP mode similar to those classic ones and incorporate sophy AI into SP along with standing starts. If they can do that in GT8 then it will be the ultimate GT game by far.
That's generally how I feel about these franchises - both seems as if they have been chasing their ghosts (no pun intended), and with that they've been doing a pretty poor job overall.
FM3 was a huge upgrade from 2, it added cockpit view, much superior visuals, rewind, much higher quality car models
It was alright but nothing crazy
FM2 was completely different than FM3, there's no real comparing them. FM3 was pretty much a rebrand of the entire franchise, and I feel it took the franchise to its overly polished, commercialized death.
They were probably the most inspired titles in the respective series, but honestly I'd much rather play FM23 than FM4 (although I wouldn't say the same about Gran Turismo - perhaps this stems from the fact that Forza was never a very inspired series to start with).
this was far from an unpopular opinion in the FM3 and FM4 days. So even if the answer to my questions is a resounding "no", I don't think the opinion that FM4 was "the peak of Forza" was as universal back then as some people remember.
That's a memory unlocked right there, I forgot about the headlight covers in the old Forza Motorsport games. When did they get rid of them? FM6, right?
