John Johanas, the director of Hi-Fi Rush, one of the most awarded games of 2023, hinted at his surprise with a self-explanatory image.
This May is proving to be somewhat controversial. The month started with a feud between Sony and the Helldivers 2 community. Now, it continues with the closure of Xbox’s four studios. Among them is Tango Gameworks, a small team that surprisingly came up with Hi-Fi Rush after several ups and downs.
Now, after the closure of the Japanese studio, Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, has come up with the idea that smaller, prestigious games should be developed instead – he said all this about the most-awarded game of Xbox 2023!
While John Johanas’ game was considered one of the big misses at last year’s GOTY 2023, the action-rhythm game created by Yuji Nakamura won the best sound, sound design and animation awards at other award ceremonies – most recently just a month ago. The coup of disconnecting the Japanese team was, therefore, surprising. Even more so this comment from Matt Booty just 24 hours later.
As mentioned, the American executive spoke to The Verge after Tuesday’s announcement, and naturally, questions revolved around the strangeness of closing such a prominent studio. However, Booty hinted that while the decision was tough, the whole decision was made as “we need smaller games that give us prestige and awards.” It’s as if Hi-Fi Rush itself wasn’t exactly like that…
Following Booty’s words, John Johanas himself expressed his surprise on Twitter, accompanying The Verge’s publication with a self-explanatory snapshot of Hi-Fi Rush.
Moreover, it is not enough that the game unexpectedly turned out to be such a success. It has also been confirmed that the Japanese team is working on a sequel for a future release.
Not just Hi-Fi Rush was going to get a sequel
The closure of the four studios left many people frustrated. As a result of the surprise, several American media “dug out information from under the rocks” to try to shed light on what happened. In this regard, The Verge and Bloomberg also noted that Xbox is still discussing not only the arrival of Call of Duty on Game Pass. They also wrote about the fact that Arkane Austin, who created Redfall, was working on a prototype of an immersive simulator in the style of Dishonored. The latter will be presented to Microsoft’s board of directors for development approval.
https://t.co/Cz2fW01QVc pic.twitter.com/ADV4ZTpIuP
— johnjohanas (@johnjohanas) May 9, 2024
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