Maybe money talks.
If you pay attention there is a pretty standard script they always use for this stuff, like clockwork. And their promises never mean anything. Their interest always waxes and wanes and they are quick to reduce investment if things don’t go their way fast enough.
Yea. It is really frustrating when I’ve taken time and effort to learn how to properly use and implement a new office suite add-on (or other program), then 2 years later they nix it. It makes a person not want to go the route of depending on a new MS product outside of their old core stables.
The question mark in the thread title can be changed to " and inXile!"
… fuck …
Inxile and Obsidian bought by Microsoft. Uh.
edit: I will be honest. HOT take!
I think they got them pretty cheap. And even then, I wonder if buying them was a good idea!
Inxile last games have been Wasteland 2, Bard’s Tale IV and Torment Tides of Numerera, and from what I understand, none of them was especially successful. The last one had a very mixed when not negative reception. It wouldn’t be strange if after three mediocre games in a row they had a foot in bankruptcy already.
In Obsidian’s case, I think their games have a higher average quality, but as the other thread was commenting, it seems PoE2 did sell pretty badly, with PoE1 being then more a hit thanks to a nostalgia factor that by nature, it can only be a one time thing.
Their biggest success story and most beloved game is Fallout New Vegas. A game that they could do thanks to being given a complete package: engine, systems, and assets, by Bethesda. I don’t think they would haven been capable of doing it by themselves. I don’t think they have the technical know-how of doing an AAA game at this point, they always have been good designers/writers, that’s it. And the level of what’s AAA game climbs up every year more and more.
Every time they have tried to make a bigger game, they had problems. At this point I don’t think they passed by so many publishers hand because all the publishers are big bad boys. Remember Alpha Protocol delays? And it was great in dialogue and reactivity, but remember the awful shooting? What the hell they were thinking.
So what I want to say, it’s that I’m a CRPG fan, but I’m not sure if business-wise, these were the best acquisitions.
In summary, I think the best they can do is help Playground with the rumored RPG they want to do.
The best scenario I can think of is that both companies are allowed more resources than they currently have, work with existing engines to make some controller-friendly RPGs with deeper writing like KOTOR2. That’s the best case scenario for me as a consumer of said companies.
I usually love Obsidian’s writing, but I can’t stand RealTime with Pause combat, so the Path of Exile games are something I couldn’t really get into. I haven’t gotten around to Wasteland 2 yet, but I did enjoy what little I played of Bard’s Tale IV so far. I only stopped playing the latter because it runs horribly on my computer. It’s not a good looking game, and yet it runs slower than Crysis ran when it came out on the machine I used to have back then.
Edit: Oops, I meant Pillars of Eternity, of course, not Path of Exile. Brain fart.
There are plenty of examples of Obsidian doing beautiful games with great performance and tech on their own - Dungeon Siege 3, the Pillars games, etc. Honestly, inheriting Bethesda’s engine for New Vegas was more sabotage than help, given the myriad problems it has.
POE = Pillars of Eternity, in this context, not Path of Exile :P
Wow, I wasn’t expecting Inxile to be acquried at all. Talk about a nice retirement gift for Fargo. Probably a wise move since their Torment and Bard’s Tale sequels seemed like they underperformed.
Edit scratch that. Retirement has been officially delayed out of 2020.
Video from Obsidian about the acquisition:
Excited for the money that goes along with the golden handcuffs, I assume.
Haha!
Here’s Inxile’s “we’re pleased to be joining the Microsoft family” video.
It was good while it lasted.
Well, this is the new Microsoft, maybe this will be good for those companies. I don’t have a great deal of faith in it, but… hopefully. At the very least it should mean they don’t live hand to mouth any more.
It might be good for the companies. It won’t be good for me as someone who enjoyed their games but who in no way trusts the Microsoft Store to reliably deliver paid content (or free content, but that’s less of a risk).
Yeah, even if they still make CRPGs, they’ll be in the MS store. But if it means PoE3, I’ll deal with that.
Maybe now we’ll get Alpha Protocol 2.
If Microsoft uses these studios to make smaller games, with niche audiences, but much larger than indie titles, that would give them a pretty solid advantage over Playstation. That would actually be a really interesting tactic.