5 in September were put up on Steam.
It would be sad to not buy their games anymore, but I’ve learned to never trust a Microsoft-run storefront. Company can’t be relied upon.
This is better than all those people losing jobs, but it’s a little like sending your grandpa off to a home after he falls again when he’s alone. Still gonna lose him, but at least now you’ve got six extra very sad and traumatizing months beforehand.
You guys are such Debbie downers. Personally, I’m looking forward to playing more InXile and Obsidian both on Xbox and PC (being first party, some or most will likely be cross play) and also for free on the game pass when I’m subscribed.
MS know they have something good going with game pass and are quite happy to get an audience for their games through it. And if that means a bigger audience for the output of those companies, that’s a good thing too.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the next projects will be.
Well, that’s two years of InXile and three years of Obsidian that we likely wouldn’t have had.
Yeah, let’s be clear - I would rather a different company with a more consistently positive track record and either a willingness to publish on Steam or a functional (if underwhelming) proprietary store have rescued them, because for me there is no practical difference between them being Xbox/Microsoft Store exclusive and them not existing. But there is still a difference for people who are willing to engage with those platforms, and they were probably not going to be surviving as independent companies regardless. So it could be worse.
Microsoft has killed almost as many studios as EA.
Microsoft’s history with gaming has been a shitshow. They always come out and announce, this time we mean it. And then a year later they give up completely again.
I’m more than happy to be proven wrong, but I’m not going to be optimistic about it. It’s certainly better than the studios closing, since at least people who’s work I enjoy are getting a paycheck for a while.
MS has a long storied history of proclaiming they super super care about PC gaming, cross our hearts, then either not following through or completely fucking it up. Some dude compiled a history through 2014, so it misses the whole windows 10 Windows Store/UWP debacle.
If you read through it, you will see that every single one is a lie, didn’t happen, or was a terrible idea that everybody hated in the first place.
But hey, now we have the new Microsoft. No billg, no shark grin Steve Ballmer. Satya promises to do it right. We’ll see.
Edit: Oh hey, and here’s a link from today.
Maybe they will just sit on the IP and collect revenue from Steam?
The most important news for me is that Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky’s RPG is still a go under 2K’s Private Division label, a God Games-style imprint.
*We look forward to publishing the upcoming RPG from Obsidian Entertainment. We’re excited to share more about the game in the near future." - A rep for Private Division.
For those who think Microsoft bought these just to shut them down:
Their future is linked to Game Pass though, and that is currently planned to expand to PCs in the not too distant future (being already a success on Xbox).
What companies are big enough to purchase these type of studios that fit that criteria though? Most of the big companies I can think of either do not have a consistent positive track record (Ubisoft has a good recent track record propelled by the Vivendi scare, but definitely not consistent) or are heavily tied to a specific platform (like Sony and PS4, Activision and Battle.net, etc…).
Unless I am just missing something I can’t think of anyone that fits the critera that can successfully absorb a mildly successful indie and be able to give them the resources to be grow.
I can’t think of a studio that Ubisoft’s bought and run into the ground (not that that means there are none), which if I’m right would automatically put them ahead of Microsoft or EA. And almost anyone that wouldn’t force console exclusivity (so, no Sony or Nintendo probably) would be preferable to Microsoft even with a proprietary store/client because nobody else’s store is as ridiculously technically fucked as the Microsoft Store.
But also I feel like you’re overestimating how large a company would need to be to buy a midsize RPG dev - I’d think Paradox, Bethesda, THQ Nordic, or Square Enix could probably have swung something like that, in principle. (Though obviously I haven’t got their books so whether they’d have the spare cash right this second is more questionable).
Anyway, didn’t happen, so it’s kinda moot.
No matter who bought them, fans would still fret over the loss of independence. Those worries aren’t entirely unfounded. No publisher/owner is going to let their acquisition lose money if they think that’s how the work is going.
In Microsoft’s case, you have the added issues of a bad track record in this arena, as well as the general problem of a giant company making strategic decisions that may not serve the interests of a studio that specialized in mid-tier PC RPGs. We’ll see how it goes.
Yeah, I think the skepticism and worry is justified, although alleviated by the fact that otherwise these studios might not have had a future. Microsoft has a long history of dropping the ball in gaming.
Thankfully, I really haven’t cared for much of what Obsidian or inXile have produced, so this one I can just watch from the sidelines.
The absolute ideal scenario as far as I am concerned (and if anyone from MS reads this, steal this scenario pls):
Obsidian and InXile get support enough to staff up as needed for a proper AAA RPG in the New Vegas style;
Obsidian and inXile get to pitch their own games with new IP, MS accepts the best one, greenlights it and fully supports the development and marketing;
MS does not cancel nor disband the studios before the games are done;
Games come out and are hopefully good, and with good marketing, sell well, on both Xbox Two and Windows Store, which at that point in time will be completely unfucked and great application that gamers will actually want to use.
This being MS I do not actually expect any of this, but hey, open mind, benefit of the doubt and all that
I enjoyed this Kotaku article about Microsoft’s new priorities.
Truth is, as Team Xbox has been signaling for quite some time now, and as we’ve gathered from our own conversations with both people in and outside of the company, Microsoft is no longer interested in competing directly with Sony. That’s a battle it lost as soon as Xbox executives started outlining its original, odd plans for Xbox One in 2013. The PS4 has outperformed the Xbox One so resoundingly, Microsoft stopped providing hardware sales figures.
Instead of licking its wounds and trying to fight Sony yet again next generation, the Xbox division under Phil Spencer has taken a drastically different approach. What Microsoft wants most today is studios that will help boost its impressive Game Pass subscription service, its upcoming streaming platform, and its continued stabs at PC gaming. Developing big Xbox exclusives is no longer a priority for Microsoft, and in fact, the company decided in 2016 that it would release future games on both Xbox and PC.
I don’t understand the argument. Why wouldn’t driving Xbone/PC exclusives help compete with Sony? Microsoft controls both of those platforms.
I think you’re misreading that. You’re interpreting it as “Microsoft won’t compete with Sony”. The intent was clearly “Microsoft won’t try to complete with Sony by just mirroring Sony, instead they’ll try to compete by doing something different”. Which is a fair enough analysis. None of the developers that Microsoft bought this year look like they’d be given a Naughty Dog budget to work with, and the expectations have to be different as well.
So they’re still exclusives, just smaller ones. I don’t see that as a huge strategic shift, but OK.
The point is that they’re exclusives… for Game Pass. This is Satya’s vision, a Services company. That’s what MS wants now- they want that steady stream of $10/month from millions of users, instead of you just buying one game at $60 a couple times per year. Just like they’ve mostly shifted from selling Office outright, they really want you on the Office 365 monthly/yearly program, keeping you locked in. And they’re also getting more than just MS devs for first-day release into GP now. Seems like a smart strategy to differentiate themselves from Sony and Nintendo.