They do have to finish their game with Focus Interactive but its possible that MS could either buy out the game publishing like they Psychonauts 2 or let Asobo finish and even help fund it like they are with Wasteland 3
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Finji and MHDR are basically like 5-15 employees, no point in buying them
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Finji is primarily also a publisher. MDHR is too small and have made one game (albeit an excellent one). Odd Tales hasn’t even released their game yet (although it looks stunning), and The Last Night is already known to release as a console launch exclusive anyway.
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- Asobo - Proved they have the chops, great in-game engine for Plague Tale
- People Can Fly - Some intriguing IP, proven studio
- WB Games - Just for the studios alone, Rocksteady, Monolith (new IP, nemesis system, Fear IP), Netherrealm (MK, Midway IP) WB Montreal, TT Games (Continue on w\Lego), Avalanche Software (HP) & WB Boston (Asheron’s Call IP), as well as a few good support studios like WB NY
- Bungie - New IP coming, can continue Destiny on Game Pass. Let the have the freedom to do what they want to do w\o having to worry about publishing
- Bloober Team - Good working relationship with MS, fills horror niche
Bonus: Japanese Studio formation (like Initiative). I think the best way for MS to get a foothold into Japan is to form their own studio, they own some good IP (Lost Odyssey, Phantom Dust, Blue Dragon, Scalebound) let them start by revitalizing some of these IP’s.
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The thing about Asobo is they aren’t a huge team. MS was uniquely positioned to connect them to the vast array of tech needed to match their vision, and it came in seamlessly (at least it seems that way from the outside). This makes me giddy when imagining the potential for XGS as they explore cloud compute and machine learning implementations in their titles.
Mark my words: The industry will look back on FS2020 as a turning point for game design. It is the first time anyone has taken the power of the cloud mantra seriously from a design pov and paired it with the state of the art machine learning tech and from a production perspective it is a mindblowing success story.
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I’ve been going through and playing the most recent games of potential acquisitions both realistic and those which are a bit more of a stretch. Maybe some spoilers for each game but nothing game ruining.
Remedy - Quantum Break. I’m actually stunned how much I loved this game. I had previously played through the first chapter at release and life got in the way, one thing or another. The game is a bit of a mess narrative wise due to part of the story being told in episodes and the main story happening in game. The combat was excellent and the super powers were clearly the beta for Control, which was my favorite game the year it came out. It felt great to play and was the most polished game Remedy has ever made. There was a bit of a AAA shine that I feel Control was lacking .I would love for Remedy to be bought and I would love to see what they could do with a big budget and the creative freedom Phil has afforded the studios.
Bloober - Blairwitch. The game was a bit of a drag and while I was enjoying it, I didn’t see how a team that made this could make something as ambitious as The Medium. Then the final segment came and wow. I read that the final portion dragged and was the weakest part of the game. That statement couldn’t be more incorrect. The amount of effort put into the final hour or so shows that this studio has a bright future and I cannot wait to see the Medium.
Bungie - Destiny 2. I just never got around to playing Destiny 2, I put a couple of dozen hours into the first Destiny and I enjoyed it enough. I played through the Red War Campaign, which isn’t much, but I loved it. The gunplay feels perfect, the platforming reminded me of TitanFall 2 and the story was simple yet interesting enough. I’m excited to play through the Forsaken soon. Bungie is one of those studios you take for granted because they have been consistently incredible but kind of stick to a certain formula, although perfecting it over the years. I would love to see Bungie break out of the sci-fi FPS realm and would like to see them experiment more with their platforming elements.
Asobo - A Plauge Tale: Innocence. While everyone is championing FS2020, I sadly have a 10 year old MBP that is lucky to still be working. I’m just starting my playthrough of this and so far, I’m completely blown away. I had no idea this game was so horrifying. I missed this at launch and will eventually go through Hell Blade as those are two games that I meant to get around to playing and just didn’t.
Each of these studios would be incredible additions to XGS. Bungie and Remedy are obviously more of hopeful thinking and Bloober being publicly traded makes things difficult, but I wouldn’t count any of them out of the realm of possibility. These four studios along with others mentioned such as Playtonic (to work on platformers and fill that RARE IP Void) and Frontier would also be great additions. You could conceivably add these studios and still spend significantly less than it would cost to get WB Games without their IP.
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Great points on all of the above; Quantum Break not being a massive success is one of the greatest gaming crimes of our time. I think given the messaging from the executives at Microsoft, including Phil Spencer, they’re heavily investing more into Xbox so I’m not sure that we’re looking at a WB Games purchase in lieu of some of the other options. Microsoft made a killing the last year on Xbox, and especially with the massive amount of spending during the COVID period, I’m not sure that things are going to slow down. Game Pass and XCloud are the gateway into the ecosystem, with the potential to reach billions not millions; they’ll need content and studios to do so (not at all saying I have a problem with any of the existing lineup, because they’re legitimately some of my favorite devs), and the recent acquisition spree of other publishers shows that they’ll need to be aggressive to hit those goals.
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This article pretty much details what you are saying. It is indeed a huge accomplishment.
Edit: sorry, forgot the link!
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Saw that the other day. Been following their tech for a while. 
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Asobo just makes too much sense, I suppose is now is as good a time as any given the reception of MSFS2020.
Other teams I would personally have my eye on would be Airship Syndicate for a smaller but agile development team, a Japanese studio and another bigger team like Techland, Rocksteady or Bungie. I would say they need between 25-30 active individual projects to churn out consistent games on Game Pass of varying scope
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Pretty much agree but im hoping that Airship Syndicate gets acquired by THQ Nordic as they would fit in perfectly with them. Back to Microsoft, my #1 is still WB Interactive. Top 4 stay exclusive to Xbox Series X/S and PC while the rest can be multi-platform. Microsoft would get a return on their investment halfway through a 10 year licensing deal if not sooner.
Yeah, Asobo is as clear as Playground was in terms of acquisitions, especially given that Flight Sim will likely be a platform in itself and will need Asobo’s stewardship for some time to come. Of all the potential acquisitions, I think this is the one that I’m most excited about, and will be the most gutted if it doesn’t happen (I’m still imaging where Bioware would be today if MS hadn’t let them go).
I think I would be happy with any combination of those studios we all seem to be high on, but I do agree that another one or two medium/large studios would be extremely beneficial to the output frequency for XGS.
Completely agree. I think that people tend to think it’s WB Games OR any of the other options we’ve all mentioned, but judging from the amount of liquid cash and how high on gaming Nadella is (judging by the SEC statement, at the very least and Phil’s position in the company), I am not convinced that we couldn’t see both options in acquisitions. Given how long these things take anyway, there’s nothing stopping them from closing a deal on WB or a couple of studios while they pursue the other. I love Asobo and am rooting for them the most outside of the WB sphere, but even without the IP I will argue all day long about how valuable the teams at Rocksteady, Monolith, TT, and Netherealm truly are. The other studios are great in their own right and could be extremely useful for an internal support umbrella.
Agreed. Even without the licenses, those top 4 studios are way too talented to just let them slip through their fingers. NetherRealm does own Mortal Kombat though so that would come with them. Mortal Kombat is huge so even that would offset a lot of the cost over time and imagine MK vs KI.
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I think the biggest thing is it is obvious to us that there are some talented studios and good acquisitions out there. It should be obvious to them too. Let’s hope they see it and add to their first party.
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Oh they are looking at studios who don’t even have their first game out.
Look at Asobo and how far they and Microsoft go back. Kinect games and ports galore.
I seriously cannot believe how much talent they have there. I’m a little over half way through Plague Tale and while there are some rough areas here and there so far, this is one of the best games I’ve played all generation. Give them a budget and a top in industry combat director and I believe they can be as good as any other narrative third person team. Heck they probably have someone in house who knows combat design with the amount of talent oozing out of that studio.
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If we never, ever have to have that bullshit “AA” discussion again, that would be lovely.
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I know right. Damn those people. hehehe. lol.
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Wishing Microsoft treated this like a trip to the hardware store. Just get everything you need right now so you don’t have to go back 
Fuel for the fire
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