Why you think this will be bad? I don't know, maybe a new Fallout by Obsidian will show up.
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Bethesda made it pretty clear they never wanted another dev on Fallout and made hard work to get enough people to work on it itself only.
So no, Fallout will never come from anyone but them until they're dead.
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Well, Fallout 76 failed pretty badly, so maybe they will focus on TES and their new IP and give another shot to Obsidian. It does make sense to me, since they have a good relationship with Microsoft.
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We all know how this works sadly.
Look at Bethesda....
Look at Blizzard....
RIP
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Bye bye, Linux versions of their future games. ;-(
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Everyone is acting as if Msoft is EA ..sheesh,now at least obsidian will have some financial support for some good proper RPG's.The only sad part we'll never see good and proper Fallout and Vampire games which is shame,big shame.
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This. I don't get why people complain, Obsidian with proper budget and money for additional crew might be the best thing ever...
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People also forget how buggy the games were. Same goes for Armored Warfare that was initially develeloped by Obsidian and the load of bugs that took absolutely ages to fix making a lot of people leave the game.
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Yep, I'm with all three of you. I don't get the concern. This may actually be the best thing that's happened to Obsidian. MS is very shop-friendly and has deep pockets. Their marketing is crap, which is why everyone is still afraid of them, but, by and large, they're the good guys these days.They're backing good shops & games, and putting out a lot of their own good products.
I'd be way more afraid if Apple had bought Obsidian. 😜
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The concern is that Microsoft doesn't have a good record when it comes to PC gaming. The wording of Microsoft's own announcement of the acquisition is also of concern:
We’re focused on implementing new Microsoft technologies, delivering content for new platforms and services like Xbox Game Pass, and creating exclusive games that turn players into loyal Xbox fans.
Microsoft doesn't care about PC gamers, their priority is creating loyal Xbox fanboys. This means UWP + Windows Store & XBone exclusives. The chances of Obsidian games on GOG, Steam and other consoles are very slim.
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It is a shame that the folks in Obsidian failed to learn what killed the studio Black Isle... Or what destroyed Rare... Or name a fucking studio that EA owned... The publisher that owned them. It is better to be independent than to be tied to a company that will eventually destroy all that has been made.
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Yes, I agree with robilar5500...you're painting with waaayyy too broad of a brush. Not all acquisitions are crushing or even hand-cuffs. Mojang has flourished under Microsoft, as have lots of other indie shops. Some of them have become bigger shops because they had MS's backing (I mean, Turn 10 studios is a powerhouse now, and it's all because of the MS partnership).
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Guys don't fool yourself. Mobile apps in Planescape universe and Wasteland battle royale incoming.
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Tides of Numenara and Wasteland 2 were developed by inXile, not Obisdian.
And Planescape is owned by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro who haven't touched the property since they acquired it from TSR.
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Did you even read the article? They bought inXile.
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I... uh... completely missed that.
Who needs articles when you can read just half the headline.
Still, Planescape is Hasbro and Numenara is Monte Cook.
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Nevermind, they will use the Nameless One character in a different setting or smth like that in a mobile game with lootboxes. Mobile games market is twice larger than PC, and growing, while it takes 5 years and a lot of money to develop an AAA story driven game, provided you have a good credit history, whlle the franchises we're speaking about don't. Microsoft is here to earn money, not to give us the-RPG-of-a-dream.
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I mostly agree with you. Mostly. Thing is that if they go this route they're obviously banking on using the 'core' brand to market and sell their higher-margin product. So, for instance, Diablo is Big, ergo Activision wants to try to use that Bigness to sell Diablo Mobile for Big Bux. Odds are it will work for them, in the short term. Long term is harder to guess at because two problems: 1) Look at Star Wars. A couple of shit movies and suddenly the merchandise (where the real money is made) isn't flying off shelves. So it's very possible the mobile games won't make shit if the goodwill they built for their brands is destroyed. 2) inXile and Obsidian's games aren't Big. Not by a longshot. They're terrible mobile material in that regard.
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Maybe you're right, maybe not, or maybe Microsoft will come up with a new soltution. The franchises aren't big, but they are a cult for a certain group of 30-40 y.o. gamers, which are the most payable. Another thing is - nobody tried to create a mighty franchises of the Wasteland etc., because Obsidian and inXile didn't have this much money for marketing. Nowadays when false nostalgia is so popular you can make a huge brand from anything old with enough money. So, this whole story has another conclusion for me: I never believed in crowdfunding, and I never believed in ability of indie studios to manage themselves effectively on large projects, right from the start 5 years ago when everone where hyped about the Wasteland Kickstarter company, and this is how it ends. I was right.
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And now that there is financial backing...you might get the kind of game you were hoping for, or at least something close to it. It can't be worse than the nothing that has come of it so far. ;)
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See my 1st and 3rd posts in the thread, we won't get the RPG of a dream.
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Most of the original talent behind Obsidian (including notably Chris Avelone) left the company a long time ago. And Chris departed under very negative circumstances. Microsoft just bought a skin suit.
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Chris was always very talented (and is) gamewriter. So DL2 will be a good piece of action RPG.
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Well, there were speculations of poor sales regarding PoE2, back calculating from Fig dividends. Plus the alleged mismanagement by Feargus, it might be better that they were acquired. Microsoft isn’t particularly known for micro managing, and they also will probably not let management bullshit fly if what Avellone said about Feargus is true.
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Nvm, looks like I've found this. A good read. Some passages are brilliant:
The denizens of the Codex, meanwhile, are poring over company documents to understand how Avellone could have been de-ownered, as eagerly as if they were perusing scrolls of lore in RPGs.
Mmm, corruption, corruption never changes:
Feargus did try and have both his young children added as employees at the studio during my last year there, but the other owners fought back and made it clear that (1) not only was it illegal b/c of the age requirements
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Wife was already on payroll supposedly doing nothing too.
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It gets better. They had to let some good people go as times got tough but kept the front desk receptionist, who just so happened to be Feargus Urquhart's sister. Avellone had to fight for the studio to repay some employees who had sacrificed their paychecks when finances were at their lowest. Obsidian recovered but Urquhart maintained that they never promised that they would pay them back. Urquhart de-ownered Avellone and redistributed his ownership stock among the other managers but tried to keep him on a lower paycheck as a writer for Tyranny, while forbidding him from working elsewhere (non-competition clause). And he tried to make him shut up about it and any other (negative) experiences he had while at the company (NDA). There's much more but that's some of the worst of it.
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Yes, I've read this. Chris turned out to be a vengeful guy, but the community loves him nevertheless, and he used it. :)
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They apparently told Paradox that Chris Avelone was still writing when he had left the studio early on in Tyranny's development. So yeah. Mismanagement is a polite way of putting it.
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InXile has been dependent upon crowdfunding for their last few games, so not needing to worry about funding should be a relief to them - and to us.
Obsidian has been hopping from publisher to publisher for a while, and they too should be more than happy to know where their next paycheck is coming from.
MS has so far taken a hands-off approach to the creative side of their game studios; to me this appears to be a win
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If it would have been presented like a partnership I would agree.
But we can fear a lot of stuff here: console exclusivity, M$ decisions which interfere in development (make it more casual to gather more attention, focus on useless multiplayer mode, etc..), or studio "assassination" because games doesn't sold enough (like EA did with Visceral)...
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A ridiculously high percentage of MicroSoft-funded games were ported to PC (including Steam), and they also have PC-exclusive titles. Hell, one of those was released this year, even.
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Whoo hoo! Good to know. I think too many people assume that corporations equal bad, without any real thought or consideration.
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The percentage is never too high. But apparently you missed the Microsoft announcement where they said that they are ready to make a lot more Xbox One exclusivity in the future :/
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No, but I recalled it being "ready to get", as in, have more studios sign an exclusive contract with their third-party games.
At any rate, even if they try, in the end, they have two platforms with Win10 and Xbone (even if Xbone is practically a cheap PC with a pre-installed Win10 that auto-runs a special launcher), so it is also in their best interest to not neglect either completely.
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I didn't understood it like that but I hope you are both right (robilar5500 and you) about games also coming to Windows.
To my opinion: acquiring studios is part of a large plan to make more exclusivity (=only on XOne and not on PC). So each time I saw one of these great studios bought by Microsoft, it was like saying "good bye" to every games these studio could make on PC :'(
And also, they don't really need games on PC to sell Win10 on contrary to XOne.
The announcement was made during E3 2018 if anyone else read and cares about where it comes: Microsoft announces big, multistudio push to create more Xbox exclusives
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Considering both Obsidian and inXile are PC developers, I do not think MS would have bought them to completely change their profile. There are easier ways to get console developers than buying PC dev studios.
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It wouldn't be surprising because all their games also ended to console. I think you are far more optimistic than me.
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If you buy cRPG devs, you most likely buy them to continue making RPGs. Heck, after all, it was Microsoft who put up with Peter Molyneux years after everyone—including MS—realised that he is made up of 1/3 insane game design dreams and 2/3 lying bullshit. Yet they gave him a lot of money for years, patiently.
Similarly how Activision fished out Bungie, the guys known for creating sci-fi FPSs, and gave them half billion dollars to create a a sci-fi FPS. Which they did.
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I never said they will stop making RPG, I said there is a big risk that the XOne owners will be the only one to be able to play these RPG.
I agree that Peter Molyneux sold us a lot of bullshit. But the funny coincidence that you just make me aware of, it's that he was able to make good games before he worked for Microsoft ^^
Bungie only have a partnership with Activision but honestly in this case I wouldn't be so disappointed if they were bought by them, because they only made console exclusivity with Microsoft in the last years. And did you know Bungie made real-time strategy games exclusivity for MAC before being bought by Microsoft?
Damn exclusivities! Wherever they are....
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They bought Bungie, known for their PC-only games Marathon, Myth, Oni, to make Xbox-Halo, so...
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Yes, as others have said, Microsoft has very publicly stated that they want to help bring back the power of PC gaming. If they do console-exclusive stuff, I would hope that they just mean exclusive to XBox and not PS4. I mean, isn't that what some gamers bitch about with regard to xbox, anyway? That it doesn't have enough exclusives and PS4 does? People can't have it both ways. If people say that the platform is more valuable with more exclusive games, then they can't get upset when Microsoft listens to them, goes out, and finds ways to drive exclusive IP to their platform. The benefit will likely be that it'll be on both XBox and PC...they seem to be pushing for more cross-platform games. I know that I have two (Forza Horizon 3 and ReCore) that run on both xbox and PC, and I only had to buy one license for each -- they (MS) did a good job of holding to their promise that you are buying a game, and it will run on the platforms they support.
Where I do understand the concern is linux users...but honestly, if you choose linux as a client OS, you're basically rolling the dice for support on literally everything, so it's not fair to criticize MS for this. It's not like Sony is cranking out linux versions of PS4 games. Linux support is not going to be a high-priority target for any company because the market share simply isn't there, and supporting it is a nightmare because of all of the different versions...it's a profit vacuum, and most companies stay away for that reason.
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I never saw this statement, if you still have link under the hand for me to look their way of wording it.
And obviously the Xbox owners can only be happy with that kind of news ^^
But nobody should wish that their games will only be available on his own platform and not on others.
I've heard about Microsoft wanted more cross-platform (especially between Xbox and Playstation owners) but I didn't know they are offering your games on the other platform if you already own them in one. That's a nice gesture.
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Yeah, it's good progress. It's very far from 100% of the games, but we're seeing it more for their major IP investments. But, I think there is hope for something like this in any cases where they're investing in PC games...it would make sense that they want to bring these to XBox as well, so making these cross-platform for both Win10 and XBox makes a lot of sense.
Whether these are also offered on Steam is probably a crap shoot. But, they do release some things on Steam (the aforementioned ReCore being one, as well as Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and you see others like Lovers In a Dangerous Spacetime, etc.). Frankly, as long as I can still play it on PC, I don't mind getting some things through the MS Store. Clearly, I'm really active on SG and Steam and it's my default service for organizing and playing my games, but I'm ok with getting some stuff on another store. Heck, if it's installed natively into Windows, then I can just talk to Cortana to have her fire up my game as I walk through the room and go to grab a beer or something. 😀
edit: totally forgot to answer the part about supporting my statement about MS wanting to reinvest in PC gaming. There have actually been a lot of articles about this over the past year or so, and I think that the current purchases are evidence of the investment. Here are some interesting reads:
XBox Games Pass to PC
Another GamePass and oldschool games to PC article
Project XCloud
Phil Spencer wants the Microsoft Store to be a better experience
There's more, but that's what I was able to grab quickly. Now, the flipside is that Phil Spencer has been talking about bringing PC gaming back for a while (like 3-4 years), and hasn't accomplished it yet. But, it sounds like things are finally moving based upon published plans and investments (like the purchase of Obsidian) that they're making, so that's a good sign.
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ReCore and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet developers aren't owned by Microsoft so the way they manage the selling of their games with Microsoft may be more flexible. I may be wrong, but I don't think there is a will from Microsoft when these games come to Steam, but a previous agreement with the aforementioned developers to allow them to sell their game outside of Xbox after a while.
To be honest, to my opinion these articles are only about Windows store and cloud technology but not about bringing PC gaming back. But I agree it would make sense to enhance the sparse selection of games they have to offer with the development of new game for PC. And so, to get more adherents with new exclusive games (for windows store).
(Again to my opinion)There is more a will to be a competitor with other selling platforms (Origin, Steam, Uplay, etc) than to bring new games for PC gamers. New games developments are more a means to an end than a true desire to bring PC gaming back. But they will also have this XCloud project to promote their store...
I wished a clearer statement but OK, I'm becoming more optimistic about games also coming on PC (but only on windows store...) ;)
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For as much as i like Pillars and Planescape, the camera perspective is a detriment in my eyes, and im sure many mainstream rpg players, these two companies already make great RPGs, more money to make them look more "main stream" and you might actually have a company to face Bethesdas sad excuses for RPGs.
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Well, it's over for those studios. Enjoy the games you have because they are going to be going down the crapper faster than they currently are.
M$- If you can't beat them, buy them.
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I'm no fan of Microsoft as a company, but they own quite a few studios many of which still put out good games. Age of Empires, Forza, Minecraft, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice & Quantum Break to name a few. While it's not great news, it's not exactly a death warrant either.
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While I agree that it isn't bad news, your list confuses me. They killed the AoE studio, Mojang hasn't really developed anything new and the takeover of Ninja Theory was far too recent, to judge Microsoft. So that leaves Forza and Remedy Entertainment.
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And Microsoft doesn't own Remedy, but they did bankroll Quantum Break and Alan Wake.
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Yeah, it's hardly an extensive list, just a few that came to mind. Ensemble Studios (AOE) was acquired in 2001 and disbanded in 2009, so it's not like they just bought it and killed it off. While Mojang hasn't released anything major, Minecraft is still in development. I agree that you could come up with more relevant examples though.
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All you're saying is that only 1 out of 5 is actually in the crapper. Also, that one studio is a studio that survived for 8 years, making games that weren't popular with the mainstream for half a decade by then.
Mojang has never and will most likely not make another game for a long time. Minecraft's a cashcow and that was their plan before they were acquired by Microsoft. Looking at Scrolls, Mojang probably can't even make another good game. They got lucky with Minecraft and they most likely will die after that game dies. Won't be Microsoft's fault if they become defunct.
So overall, MSoft's track record is solid compared to others. Sure, they're not perfect, but neither are these companies.
People like making up these fairytales that these companies were amazing, but they weren't. Obsidian was making bad business decisions and they couldn't adapt.
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Sorry, that makes little sense. It would, if I had argued that Microsoft is terrible and only brings death. But that's not the case.
Instead he argued that "they own quite a few studios many of which still put out good games". And we have come to the conclusion that this is only (confirmed) true for one of those studios.
So actually you should have directed your reply to him, about only one of five being relevant examples.
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No, not really.
From what I read from your comment, I thought you meant that this isn't necessarily bad news, but the point about the companies doing well was also not correct, to which you added the reasons why you didn't think so.
So as a reply, I said how I'd consider that incorrect because they are actually doing pretty well and the only two issues you have are explained by one company being a one-trick pony and the other being a company that only made similar games that were in an unpopular genre.
So yeah, that was directed at you. Perhaps you meant something different, but that's what I read out.
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No idea why you still struggle to understand the context. The claim was "they own quite a few studios many of which still put out good games". I considered his listed examples as not sufficient to support this claim and argued in each case why. In that context I didn't have to provide proof that the opposite is true, only that his isn't true. And that I did quite successfully, he even agreed himself.
In reply you argued that one studio kept making games for some years and that nobody expects Mojang to make any further (great) games, as if any of that would make the initial claim more true.
Or to explain my confusion in some other scenario: Imagine he said that all land on Earth would be fertile. I'd then wonder about tundra and desert regions, to which you would reply in return "You are wrong, nobody expects rain in the desert!". So ... ;-D
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Ensemble died because everyone and their mother left the company to start their very own development studio, ever since the late 90s. By the time Microsoft decided to just buy them off, there were already like half a dozen small studios stemming from it, then another few once they really closed shop.
It seems to me that Ensemble was very adept at killing itself, if all their designers wanted to be the head designers of their own company.
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Lionhead - Fable, Black and White, The Movies
Press Play - Max and the Curse of Brotherhood, Kalimba
Rare - turned them Kinect games studio during 360 era after Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero and Viva Pinata
Ensemble Studios - Age of Empires
Edit: FASA - Crimson skies
Digital anvil - Freelancer
OK, it's not EA level, but not too good, either.
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Freelancer is the one exception where they did good.
If MS didn't intervene you'd have, well... Star Citizen. A black hole of money fuelled by a planet of sad hopefulness to be dashed somewhere along the line..
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I'm obviously ill-informed, naive and haven't got a clue about how this stuff works, but why would Microsoft even need companies specializing in the genre that's not exactly mainstream? I somehow doubt that it's creative potential they are after. Also that was probably a rhetorical question.
2018 is a really shitty year for both of my favourite genres. First Daedalic and Telltale, and now this.
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They probably want variety in their library and most likely to spruce up their own store. The creative aspect is undoubtedly there, but it's as low of a priority as it probably can be.
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Because not everyone is like Activision—Blizzard and want nothing but the money. MS is a company and they want money, but just like UbiSoft, they also help games that cannot be monetised to oblivion with microtransactions and lootboxes (unlike pretty much the entire portfolio of Activision—Blizzard in the past half decade). They have published pinball games, MahJongg games, non-car racing games, card games, and strategy games even in the past years, so not everything is a goddamn cover-based shooter or a sandbox fuckaroundery on the entire market.
As long as you have realistic expectations and realistic budget on such games, they can earn a decent penny too. UbiSoft and even EA know that as well, to a lesser degree.
Not to mention that MS is making the money on office software and tries to edge its way into the cloud hosting/computing market. That should make enough moolah to keep the gaming section relatively free of ridiculous expectations and increasingly desperate and non-veiled money-extortion practises (like, again, Activision—Blizzard).
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Totally agree on all points, with one small detail correction: MS isn't edging into the cloud market...they're now the leader. As of last quarter, they were #1 in cloud profit over Amazon, even if they're not #1 in market share (which kind of makes that even more impressive, since Amazon still hold that title...Google is an up-and-comer, but they're a faaaaaarrrrr distant 3rd place). It's largely because they have a cloud management suite that's pretty good built right into Azure, and Amazon customers have to (mostly) go with 3rd party tools to get the same functionality, and these usually cost 2X-3X more. It's driving a lot of business MS's way. They've been playing this one pretty smartly.
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Unlike Telltale, they are fortunately still here, yeah. And there were no official statements, but this spring (or early summer, I'm not sure) a representative of the company gave an interview to a German adventure games site and stated that Daedalic were done with classic point-and-click adventures; his words were never disproved (and The Devil's Men was cancelled).
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If true, that sucks!! That means no sequel to Dead Synchronicity.:(
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That's such a pity, it was a very compelling game, would have loved to get more of that world / story
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Worry not! Dead Synchronicity is being developed by Fictiorama Studios (Spain), Daedalic are only a publisher in this case. Can't find the link now, but they recently reported that the development of the game is going on.
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But... but... what else do these guys publish but p&c adventures?
That sounds like a case of shooting yourself in the foot/head if true.
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Obsidian wasn't really a surprise move anymore. And I actually expect Microsoft to handle those studios better than most other publishers would. Their primary interest is to sell hardware with great exclusives, to sell even more games. While EA & others would be more interested in making games that enable them to maximize profit. Unless those studios lose money, Microsoft will probably leave them a maximum of creative freedom.
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Tbh a good news. They can focus more on making games than worrying about if they can eat at night.
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Exactly. Having a power-house like MS to financially back them is probably a dream come true for them.
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People love complaining. There is no negative news here. The alternative would be to see these studios slowly decay.
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Thanks for the heads up. Here's Brian Fargo's message on this buyout of inXile.
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I guess it was unavoidable, Pillars of Eternity II sales were too low. Its not EA that bought them, so i think they should be alright.
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Doesn't sound that bad tbh. Microsoft is at least not squishing and killing studios like EA does. Unless they will go with the MS Store only approach in the future, there is no guaranteed / expectable downside.
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I love these dummies just repeating the "EA bad, praise Geraldo" bullshit.
Seriously though, Obsidian isn't that great of a company. They make awesome games and they're good at their craft, but they suck at business. To run a business, especially a business that deals in entertainment, they need to learn to adapt. They never did that. Instead, they took a currently dead genre, took a barely successful franchise and bet all their money on its success. That's called bad business and people should know it.
Not to mention, most people who are sucking them off at the moment haven't bought most or any of their games and probably only know Fallout: New Vegas and maybe also got the Monthly with Pillars of Eternity. They don't actually want to buy their games, they don't want to support them financially and they don't care for the genre. They just want to say "Oh no, big company evil because this perfect, small, cute underdog got screwed by MS".
The fact is that this is a business. It's hard to run a business without making money. To make money, you need to adapt. If they're not competent enough to adapt, then that's what happens. Same goes for Brian Fargo and Inxile. They make good games, but not good business decisions. It was naive of him to think that they'd make enough money from Bard's Tale in 2018. They're lucky they survived this long. Look at what they've made and look how they've barely been played by anyone.
Yes, it sucks that this world isn't perfect. But this is good for them. They get bought by MS or they vanish. These giant companies aren't perfect by any means. But this ridiculous black & white narrative is pathetic to watch, considering that those that perpetuate it don't know anything about the companies, other than some basic facts.
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I think that's a very fair point. A lot of those types of games are just nostalgia-bait, but what they fail to realize is that you can only cash it in once and you can't cash in different nostalgia credits in succession. People get bored of nostalgia quite quickly, since usually it ends up with people getting burned by the fact that those games weren't that great to begin with.
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They survived as company due to Pillars of Eternity, so no, that's not really a bad business decision. EXACTLY the same for Larian (Divinity: Original Sin) and nobody is saying this stuff about them.
Also as backer of PoE and PoE II the rest doesn't even really apply to me. So yeah, I can be pretty damn dissapointed they traded kickstarter (so we could prevent just this) for a publisher to push out the games we kickstarted because said big publishers don't care about it.
Unless that suddenly changed (doubtful) this takeover is not much to be happy about unless you just want more mainstream stuff we are already flooded with in the first place.
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They survived as company due to Pillars of Eternity, so no, that's not really a bad business decision.
Yeah... survived. They also died by the same sword. They got a fluke. They got the cRPG enthusiasts hooked and managed to basically push out a game that was amazingly good. But if you need the attention of the entirety of your niche market and you need to also make an amazing game with enough marketing behind it. Obsidian had it with their brand recognition mostly because of Fallout: New Vegas.
They still needed a kickstarter to make the game and if you look at the time it was made, you can compare it to the market and see how they brought back nostalgia, memories and the demand for a game like that. They did it once, succeeded and that was all good and well.
But then after the perfect market conditions were used, they still kept beating that horse. Hoping that this perfect storm would hit twice. But of course it didn't. They didn't have a new IP (so their potential customer range was slashed way down), they didn't have the marketing from their massive successes and a recent mainstream blockbuster and they also didn't make a game as good as the first one.
I personally have a feeling that they didn't just trade their model. If it were a successful model, then this wouldn't have ever been a valid option for them. You don't sell successful companies on a whim like that. They were obviously struggling. With higher funding came higher ambitions and subsequently higher costs.
So yeah, Obsidian was in the wrong market in the wrong time. Sometimes you need to adapt. And as I said before, I seriously doubt that the company was sold because "lol, I love selling my life's work and my metaphorical baby to some massive company for a lump sum"
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"brought back nostalgia, memories and the demand for a game like that"
Indeed. And now it's gone... again. And some people if you feel bad about that make you out to be 'entitled' or 'whiny' :(
There's a reason there's a demand for that after all, and big publishers, Obsidian now part of one, doesn't scratch it.
The paragraph after also 100% applies to Divinity: Original Sin 2. And that succeeded. So it seems a little off to see this strategy as some out-of-this-world bad idea if someone else doing the exact same does hit jackpot.
Agreed. Obviously they saw this as the only way to keep up. Doesn't mean the fanbase should be happy about this since it means it's less likely that we get games we want. As harsh as it sounds, as costumer I rather have that struggling 3M game that I like than a soulless AAA+ product I don't just so they can keep floating. Being a fan means being a fan of the games after all, not the "brand". No true gamer ever really goes "Yay, the company I like made money. Lots of money. It's so great they got money... THROUGH LOOTBOXES YAY!" over "A great game I love, yay!"
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Doesn't mean the fanbase should be happy about this since it means it's less likely that we get games we want.
I think you're mixing these things up. It's either Microsoft supported games or no games at all.
As harsh as it sounds, as costumer I rather have that struggling 3M game that I like than a soulless AAA+ product I don't just so they can keep floating
I think it's a very unhealthy way of thinking about it. You're basically asking a team of people to be constantly stressed about whether they'll get their next paycheck, be forced to work in worse conditions to save money, get a smaller paycheck because of their company's finances and also having the company most likely go into debt... all because you wanted a game that you'd have fun with for a few weekends.
I don't know, personally I can live without that one game that could ruin a few lives, jeopardize a bunch of others and most likely worsen the rest. They did a lot for us, let them be. They finally have some stability in their lives, let them do their thing. You would barely benefit from their sacrifices while they could stand to lose everything. Not to mention that they probably weren't able to make more games, you aren't forced to buy more games, the previous games are still there and this doesn't necessarily mean anything yet.
I'm just sad to see that now it's not just the publishers that are willing to exploit these workers for their benefit, it's also the consumer.
But that's just me.
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If they're xbox exclusive or games I have no interest in them, what's the different for me, the fan, with "no games at all"?
We the consumers aren't a company. Again, few (weird) people are going to cheer at lootboxes since "they make X so much money. I care more for X getting money than consumers being treated properly!" Only the company itself and it's shareholders will think like that. I know they love throwing the "YOUR PUTTING US ON THE STREET!" excuse a lot (BioWare dared offering it after the whole Battlefront fiasco, does nobody think about the big megacorporations anymore?)
And yeah, fully agreed there. But them getting on doesn't constitute a requirement of us being HAPPY about it. Yet if you say that you don't like it, some users here bite your head off, like we like we are terrible for taking bad news without joy.
There is no "exploitination". Consumer developer relationship always been "Here's my money, give me a game I like". That's pretty much where the line ends. Any instances where people imply you need to shell even if you don't like the product or you owe them more than that are false. I don't like your games anymore? You wont get my money anymore. Yet seemingly voicing this concept is a strange alien experience somehow.
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No more Tyranny 2 or Wasteland 3 on Steam, I guess. MS Store is a joke, so they need heavy hitters. Sadly, I can only agree with the comment above. It's always been a dog-eat-dog world.
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Quantum can never fill the void for the absence of the recent Forza games, for example. I doubt we'll ever see those on Steam.
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So do you want the MS store to continue to be a joke, or would it be good if they bought/made more good games and made them available on the MS store so that it doesn't suck so much? Wouldn't it be good if Steam had a little more legit competition? Just food for thought.
Oh, and BTW, that doesn't preclude the games being on Steam. I mean, you can buy ReCore on Steam, and that's an MS studio product.
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I already have accounts on all PC gaming platforms, which includes Microsoft's attempt as well. Apart from some freebies that resemble shovelware, I only activated Minecraft off their Store, so it's not really worthy of much attention for now and I do prefer Steam over any other platform which just follows in Valve's footsteps. Competition is good only if it's packaged along with originality.
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Hmmmm, interesting. So, what original feature or features should be added to the MS Store (or any other) that would make you want to use it in addition to Steam? Just curious. Because, for me, I don't need for the store to have a ton of options (other than better searching/categorization on the MS store...that part is pretty bad)...I just would like to have better selection available. If the MS Store had more games that I actually want to play, especially if they hook into xbox live achievements, I'd buy more there. I do the bing rewards thing, and that racks up $$$ toward xbox or PC games pretty well...it would be great to be able to spend that on games that I might otherwise buy on Steam.
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It's not my concern or job in regards to what should Microsoft do in order to stand out from its gaming platform competition. More games would do the trick for most potential customers, but I'd prefer a personal touch, something truly innovative. If they can't figure it out with an army of employees at their disposal, they won't manage to evolve from their current niche. At least Origin and Uplay are trying their hardest, even if they offer nothing that Steam doesn't already do better. And no, I'm not working for Valve either and I like having my "eggs in several baskets" instead of one. I currently rank the MS Store on the same level of usefulness as itch.io
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Well, fuck.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/11/10/microsoft-to-acquire-obsidian-entertainment-inxile-entertainment
Obsidian https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/1061393312710447104
InXile https://twitter.com/Inxile_Ent/status/1061400512749338624
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