PUBG publisher Krafton is sad it didn’t buy Tango Gameworks from Microsoft, as the company wants to make a profit. CEO Changhan Kim admitted: “We don’t think Hi-Fi Rush 2 is going to make us any money.”
Kim told Game Developer that Krafton came to save the studio after Xbox announced its closure because it cares about legacy and allowing creativity to flourish in the video game industry, despite Tango Gameworks, developer of The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo in addition to Hi-Fi Rush, not having had “great success” with its games.
“We wanted to preserve their legacy,” Kim said. “Even though they didn’t have huge success with their games, we saw a lot of creatives that were worth emulating. That’s why we wanted to partner with that organization.”
He continued: “We are trying to expand our portfolio and Tango Gameworks is part of that [there]. We can’t acquire Tango Gameworks based on their finances or their numbers, right? We don’t think Hi-Fi Rush 2 is going to make us any money, to be honest.
“But it’s part of our effort. We have to keep trying in the spirit of taking on challenges. Tango Gameworks is creative. They want to try something new, and we want to do that more often. [Making] Video games is really a hit or miss industry, and that’s taking risks. But having more project setups is actually a way to mitigate risk, because either one could work.”
Kim said that Tango Gamework’s previous games “may not have even broken even” and that the deal to acquire the studio was “not too expensive, but not cheap either.” Final figures cannot be shared until the deal is finalized, but “the dollar amount wasn’t really important to Microsoft,” he said.
Krafton announced its intention to acquire Tango Gameworks on August 13, three months after Microsoft announced its closure, along with other studios and layoffs. However, only the Hi-Fi Rush intellectual property was brought along with Tango Gameworks.
Kim said this was because they knew the Hi-Fi rush was the priority for fans and they didn’t want to add too much to the deal and overcomplicate things, which would make things slow and add to the stress of already “anxious” employees.
“Because Hi-Fi Rush fans really want to see sequels, we negotiated with Tango Gameworks’ parent company to acquire that IP as well,” he said. “We wanted to make sure the deal was done quickly to fill that gap in [employees’ careers].”
Kim added: “If we were to acquire all the IPs, I think it would make the deal too complicated. Krafton is a pretty big company, but Microsoft is very complicated. We wanted to help the team continue developing their games, but especially Hi-Fi Rush. When I think about our fans, I think they are mostly interested in Hi-Fi Rush sequels.”
Hi-Fi Rush certainly seemed like a breakout hit for Tango Gameworks, breaking away from its horror game roots as a colorful rhythm-action game. “Hi-Fi Rush marches to the beat of its own drum with stunning animation, engaging characters, and stylish rhythm action that’s anything but monotonous,” said IGN in our 9/10 review .
Microsoft itself said that the game was also a success, despite the fact that they let the game fall into the shadows without any marketing. Microsoft CEO Aaron Greenberg stated that the game was “a breakout hit for [Xbox] And [its] players across all key metrics and expectations.” He said Microsoft “couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks has delivered” when it reached two million players after a month and received widespread praise from critics.
But just over a year later, the studio was shuttered. “So this is how it ends,” Tango Gameworks creative director and Hi-Fi rush director John Johanas wrote on X/Twitter. “Unfortunately I don’t really have the words. But anyway, thank you to everyone who supported us.”
However, Krafton kept the studio alive, bringing over about 50 of the 100 staff members. It is unclear why the remaining 50 or so staff members did not join Krafton, but it is possible that they had already found work elsewhere, as the studio’s closure had been announced three months earlier.
Kim made it clear that Krafton had no plans to reduce its workforce and even suggested that expansion was in the pipeline.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He talks about The Witcher all day long.
