Tango Gameworks

It be, it's, it's that way.

Like the Plague Tale peeps, um, uh, like I said, like the Plague Tale peeps, uh, like Tango Gameworks, uh, Double Fine.

Double Fine.

Now, oof, I'm, I'm glad, I'm glad Double Fine, I'm glad Double Fine and Undead Labs found, you know, uh, found independence, and you know, they're back to making, you know, making the weird games that we all, that we all know, love, and weird.

Yeah

... to be like, "Hey, we are going to, we are going to get a lot of these studios under our umbrella, and we are going to let them do cool stuff." Because then yeah, you get some of these studios like Tango Gameworks coming out with Hi-Fi Rush.

You get Double Fine doing what Double Fine does.

You get Obsidian coming out with things like Pentiment and Avowed and Grounded and, you know, all of these.

And like I understand the hesitancy definitely, but I don't know that Bethesda has done a lot to remove the identity of the studios that were under their umbrella.

I think because there was other ones I think right there was Arcane was part of it or Tango Gameworks as well and granted Xbox not Bethesda at Xbox X those guys a while ago I do think that Bethesda let them have their own kind of identity and what they were doing now granted I do think that they had the Bethesda's had their values that they were imposing on me the studios below but.

As far as creative identity goes, I don't know that they impose that much.

I suppose we'll learn more as things unfold.

Like, you know, so they had this kind of news about all the Xbox layoffs and there's no point in kind of reviewing all of it.

But, you know, the classic ones are closing the Ark in Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, laying off people from Activision and Bethesda, laying off people from Compulsion Games and etc., They have canceled studios, canceled projects, canceled so many things in name of streamlining to make Xbox a lot more of a condensed operation that is making money and et cetera, which is crazy after 20 years of existence or so that they're finally about to make money, right? So all this stuff about like, you know, restructuring, layout studio, project cancellation, and like, you know, all the things that have been happening.

So what does like, you know, people at the head of the game and this company, Microsoft and Xbox, what they think of it? Like for them, this is like turning what they're really believing in the structuring as a very, like, you know, like a streamline.

It's a good to see.

The Initiative closed.

Tango Gameworks sold.

Alpha Dog, I guess, let go is how they're terming it.

Toys for Bob let go.

you're talking about the robot arm kid.

Tango? Tango Studios? Oh, Tango Gameworks.

Tango Gameworks, that's it.

Look

at me go! Good job.

All right, I will kick this off, uh, with my first pick here, which is Hi-Fi Rush.

Um, this is a game from, uh, Tango Gameworks, a studio that used to be affiliated with Xbox until Xbox went full Xbox on them.

And, uh, but this was released a few years ago, uh, straight to Game Pass, and became a pretty big hit.

I mean, what I remember is that there's this guy Chai, and he's got a robot arm, and he's fighting an evil corporation.

These legal expenses combined with declining hardware sales caused Xbox gaming revenue to slide 7% overall across fiscal year 2026.

This resulted in massive corporate corrections, forcing Microsoft to lay off over 4,000 gaming staff, close majority legacy studios like Arcane Austin and Tango Gameworks, and aggressively raise the price of Xbox Game Pass.

The structural comparison proves why Microsoft completely abandoned the traditional console wars.

The raw console data shows that they lost significant ground compared to the Xbox One era.

Shinji Mikami will be inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.

Mikami, renowned for creating the Resident Evil series and founder of Tango Gameworks, will be recognised for his decades of influence on the survival horror genre.

The official ceremony will be taking place in the upcoming AIAS Industry Awards.

I can't say it's not

It's funny to me that we will see them drop studios who are still making very creative games that are just not selling well and then turn around and pick up the tab for Kojima.

We had Compulsion and Double Fine and Tango Gameworks and stuff.

We had a lot of studios that were doing very creative, very interesting games that in their own right are all solid games, but they're not the cachet that a Kojima brings to the table.

And I think that that speaks a lot about them looking to stop trying to appease the masses and go for the hardcores.