Xbox's The Initiative: having trouble keeping employees

[the-pi-guy]

Insiders describe 'fast and furious' exits from Xbox's Perfect Dark studio | VGC

Xbox's The Initiative studio has seen a "fast and furious" wave of senior departures in the past 12 months, VGC has learned.

As much as half of the core development team known to be working on the upcoming Perfect Dark reboot quit the company during the last year, or around 34 people, analysis of employee LinkedIn profiles has revealed.

Interviews with multiple former senior developers cited a lack of creative autonomy and slow development progress as the reason for their departures, and described the wave of exits as "fast and furious" with project momentum said to be "heavily affected".

The Initiative's management told VGC it's confident in the team it has in place, and new talent joining, and pointed to industry-wide staffing challenges during the pandemic.

[Legend]

Took my brain way too long to comprehend that this wasn't about a Fast and Furious game...

[kitler53]

saw the same article and was just coming here  to post it in that other thread where you (or was is someone else?) asked if the game was in development hell.

rumor  suggests: 

Spoiler for Hidden:

Yes!

[BananaKing]

Another mismanaged xbox studio

If the Activision deal goes through, man I can see a lot of shame happening. Specially with the support studios.

I predict, eventually, a lot of layoffs and closed studios.

[kitler53]

Ms should seriously consider closing all their old studios (except turn 10) and reallocate those people into Bethesda.  

Ms needs proper management of their people and clearly that can't do it.  not all of Bethesda's studios are stellar but they are all at least competent.  

[the-pi-guy]

Another mismanaged xbox studio

If the Activision deal goes through, man I can see a lot of shame happening. Specially with the support studios.

I predict, eventually, a lot of layoffs and closed studios.

Supposedly Activision and Zenimax are managing themselves.

Would be interesting/kind of funny if Zenimax/Activision got spun off or sold by MS at some point.

[kitler53]

Supposedly Activision and Zenimax are managing themselves.

Would be interesting/kind of funny if Zenimax/Activision got spun off or sold by MS at some point.

these first part studios that don't make first party games are very uninteresting

[BananaKing]

Supposedly Activision and Zenimax are managing themselves.

Would be interesting/kind of funny if Zenimax/Activision got spun off or sold by MS at some point.

Yean supposedly. But I wont buy that. MS has a long history of fudgy up studios, its part of the PR to say they will run themselves so people don't start to worry.

What I think will happen is that MS will give a lot of these minor studios projects so they can fill gamepass with more content. I think a lot of these studios who were just support and dont have the processes and expertise to make fully fledged games by themselves will struggle, and eventually we will see a lot of them get shut down, hit with layoffs, or cancelled projects.

[kitler53]

Yean supposedly. But I wont buy that. MS has a long history of fudgy up studios, its part of the PR to say they will run themselves so people don't start to worry.

What I think will happen is that MS will give a lot of these minor studios projects so they can fill gamepass with more content. I think a lot of these studios who were just support and dont have the processes and expertise to make fully fledged games by themselves will struggle, and eventually we will see a lot of them get shut down, hit with layoffs, or cancelled projects.

who knows,..  maybe they'll surprise us by making a bad game!!