Hi-Fi Rush
Finally, a bit of good news in this age of mass layoffs and studio closures. It baffled everyone when Microsoft announced that Tango Gameworks, developer of the exceptionally well-received Hi-Fi Rush, would be shut down. Now, it appears it’s been saved, as has the Hi-Fi IP itself.
The deal made here is between Xbox and Krafton, publisher of PUBG, of all places. The plan is to keep the team on in a “smooth transition” that is meant to keep the Hi-Fi Rush IP alive and work on future projects in that series. This will not change the availability of Hi-Fi Rush on other platforms, both Xbox and its expansion to PlayStation.
This decision still remains deeply troubling for Microsoft who said the shutdown was part of a movement to focus on bigger titles. While Hi-Fi Rush may not have been some earth-shattering sales hit, it was Xbox’s best game of that year and won more Game Awards than any other Microsoft original. To say it was a bad look to shut down Tango is an understatement.
Hi-Fi Rush
I am curious what happened here behind the scenes, where it was Krafton who went all-out to grab Tango and Hi-Fi Rush, or if Microsoft was quietly shopping the studio around to try to reverse some of that negative press and save those jobs. But still, the end result is that it’s not a Microsoft studio or IP anymore. Also, if they wanted to save it they could have just…reversed the decision to shut it down. So it seems very likely this was Krafton seeking this out as it says it’s been wanting to expand its “global footprint.”
There is no information about how much Krafton paid for Tango Gameworks, though given the size of the studio and the new-ness of the Hi-Fi Rush IP, you may imagine it’s not all that much. Though again, if it is not all that much, why did Microsoft do this in the first place? After all this time I still don’t think there’s a satisfying answer to that.
Still, this is just great news. The studio is clearly talented and deserves to develop Hi-Fi Rush further with new games or new ideas for the franchise. It will no doubt take a long time to see that to fruition as they were all ready to depart a few days ago, but hopefully development on an actual title will spin up imminently.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.