During an interview with Variety’s Strictly Business podcast, Matt Booty, president of Xbox’s Game Content and Studios division, hinted that the closure of Tango Gameworks is linked to Shinji Mikami’s farewell.
“I won’t go into the details of what led to that decisionespecially out of respect for the people who are there and worked to make Hi-Fi RUSH, a great title that did really well for us,” Booty said.
“However, I believe it is necessary to consider a framework that looks to the future as well as the past of a given game, and there are many factors that contribute to this: what leadership do you have, also and above all in creative termsand if the team is the same one that created successes previously.”
“We have to look at all these elements together and ask ourselves whether or not the studio was in a position to do well. If there were factors or situations in the past that led to success, It doesn’t mean that they were all still in their places.”
Were there other options?
The closure of Tango Gameworks was announced last month It left many fans dumbfounded precisely because of the success of Hi-Fi RUSH, which it is no coincidence that Microsoft then decided to bring it to other platforms as well.
Matt Booty, however, suggested that that wasn’t the only option evaluated by Microsoft. “With many of our studies we try to evaluate all possibilities,” she explained. “For example, recently Toys For Bob (…) became an independent team again and we announced that we had a publishing deal with them.”
“Or I think back to a study called Twisted Pixel in Texas, which we acquired. Then there was a change in lenses and there was no longer a perfect match, but that team is still thriving today: We wanted to set him up for success.”
“So yes, we absolutely evaluate possible commercial options to keep a practice open or to have it change hands, and that’s just one of the things we think about, in general. Sometimes these ideas come to fruition, sometimes they don’t.”
