Microsoft closing Arkane Austin was “stupid”, says founder: recreating “a very special group” like that would be “impossible”

Today in "person you already like says something you already agree with, but it’s still good to hear them say it" news, Arkane founder and im-simmy RPG studio WolfEye head Raphael Colantonio has spoken on Microsoft’s decision to shutter Prey (2017) studio Arkane Austin - alongside a handful of others - back in May.

Colantonio, who founded Arkane in 1999 and departed in 2017 to form Weird West studio WolfEye, recently chatted to Jeremy Peel for PC Gamer about Arkane’s closure, saying:

I think if you look a little bit, it's obvious that Arkane Austin was a very special group of people that have made some cool things and that could pull it off again. I think it was a decision that just came down to, 'We need to cut something.' Was it to please the investors, the stock market? They're playing a different game.

"The rules that they play, we might not understand them. It's a different thing. It's hard to know why they did what they did,” said Colantonio. "The only thing that I stand by is saying that the specific choice of killing Arkane Austin, that was not a good decision."

He continued:

"Recreating a very special group like that is, I would dare to say, impossible. It takes forever. When you have that magic of Harvey [Smith] and Ricardo [Bare] etc that all come together, it's a specific moment in time and space that just worked out this way, that took forever to reach. Those people together can really make magic. It's not like, 'Doesn't matter, we'll just rehire.' No, try it. That's what big groups do all the time. They try to just hire massively and overpay people to create those magic groups. It doesn't work like this. So to me, that was stupid. But what do I know?"

Arkane Lyon - the original 1999 French studio from which Arkane Austin spun off in 2006 - are currently at work on Marvel’s Blade - the last we saw of it was some concept art last December. WolfEye’s next project is an “evolution of Prey and Dishonored”, and it sounds great. We’re currently expecting a ‘limited private alpha test’ next year. In August, we learned that Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango - shuttered by Xbox at the same time as Arkane Austin - had been rescued, in a manner of speaking, by Plunkbatters Krafton.

Here’s some emotive opining (writing?) wot I done about Prey.