{"id":382909,"date":"2026-11-03T02:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T10:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=382909"},"modified":"2026-11-03T02:48:01","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T10:48:01","slug":"south-of-midnight-director-now-questions-xbox-funding-he-probably-would-not-have-approved-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/south-of-midnight-director-now-questions-xbox-funding-he-probably-would-not-have-approved-it\/","title":{"rendered":"South of Midnight director now questions Xbox funding: he probably would not have approved it"},"content":{"rendered":"

South of Midnight<\/a> co-director David Sears said in a MinnMax interview that, if the call had been his, he probably wouldn’t have signed off on Xbox<\/a> funding South of Midnight. Sears said Microsoft’s older Xbox strategy already looked unsustainable<\/strong>, even as Compulsion Games was benefiting from it. The money felt almost endless, spread across too many projects, including some with no clear commercial upside, and he said he warned people internally that once the “floodgates” shut, the damage to teams and studios could be brutal.<\/p>\n

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Those comments land differently now, with Microsoft operating in a much tighter climate marked by layoffs, studio closures, and divestments. Brian Fargo, who runs inXile Entertainment, has said projects now need an “investable business case”<\/strong> instead of being covered by broad portfolio spending. If you keep an eye on Xbox’s publishing strategy, that’s the pressure point here: what happens to distinctive mid-sized games in the Game Pass<\/a> era. South of Midnight passed 1 million players in a month. Even so, that number by itself doesn’t really tell you whether the game produced the kind of return current Xbox leadership is looking for.<\/p>\n\n

Sears still had good things to say about Microsoft. He said the company has been more humane than earlier eras of the games business, and that it let Compulsion Games make South of Midnight the way the studio intended. Even then, that’s a tougher creative risk to defend than something on the scale of Call of Duty<\/a>. The MinnMax interview is up now, and South of Midnight is available on Xbox and Game Pass.<\/p>\n

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South of Midnight co-director David Sears said in a MinnMax interview that, if the call had been his, he probably wouldn’t have signed off on Xbox funding South of Midnight. Sears said Microsoft’s older Xbox strategy already looked unsustainable, even as Compulsion Games was benefiting from it. The money felt almost endless, spread across too … Continue reading “South of Midnight director now questions Xbox funding: he probably would not have approved it”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9351,"featured_media":382908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[6823],"class_list":["post-382909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","content-category-games"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t