Frontier would probably get me the most excited, oddly enough.
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Sure, I wasn’t saying an in house studio was a bad idea. Just saying that it’s not like Turn 10 is being used as the primary support studio for Halo. We just had a rumor they pitched in somehow, but there are companies like Skybox that have been working on the game right alongside 343.
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Don’t they have two teams, one focus on Gears and the other Gears Tactics?
Yes, but I think he means another team working on another IP, as with the studios he mentioned.
Gears Tactics I think was primarily made by Splash Damage with the Coalition helping out. Splash Damge previously made Brink and are more known for being a support studio on many titles like Halo MCC, Arkham Origins and of course, Gears 5.
I think 11Bitstudio, Bloober Team and WB Gaming (the 6 main studio + right for IP) should be a very coherent addition
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Red barrels Arc Build a Rocket Boy JP Dontnod Asobo Techland
good independent studios are being sold for a low price in Europe. Microsoft should move in the region. Deck13 and 4A would be good additions
4A was just acquired this week by one of the parent companies of the holding company that also owns THQ Nordic.
P.S. - Botafogo?
Deck13 got acquired by Focus Home and 4A by THQ Nordic. I think MS should look in Poland. 11BitStudios, Techland, Bloober… They’re a lot of great teams
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Agreed, I think outside of Asobo, Frontier, and some Japanese studios, Microsoft should really be focusing on some of that talent in Poland. It’s actually crazy how much a development boon they’ve had in the past decade over there - Techland and CDPR alone are some of the most technically capable devs out there.
11bit is a publisher by themselves (recently shipped Children Of Morta, which actually came to Game Pass haha) and they seem to parade their independent nature as part of their publishing mission statement. It’d be amazing to get them, they make that specific kind of game very competently (like Obsidian with RPGs), Frostpunk has achieved great success and This War of Mine was a big name indie back in the day. But I don’t think they’ll wanna be acquired and tbh, that’s fine. Game Pass is already very attractive to indies, so I just don’t persist on acquiring indies if we shall get the functional equivalent of day 1 game pass in many cases. ID@Xbox is a fabulous programme and most of these independent studios could just get into the ecosystem through that and Xbox is fine with that.
Regarding Bloober, I’ll wait to see how good Medium is. Visually it’s absolutely stunning and one of the few that seem to be focusing on next gen primarily, the whole Zdzislaw Beksinski inspiration is very palpable but I need to see more on the gameplay side to judge their overall competence as I’m still not quite sold on it yet.
Didn’t Techland say they didn’t have any intentions of getting acquired?
Bloober Team games seem to suffer from a lot of jank but they’re a studio that reminds me of Compulsion, have great ideas but need the resources to fully flesh them out. I wasn’t too keen on them the first time around but even if the Medium doesn’t have critical success it shows that Bloober have creative and interesting ideas instead of making a generic Resident Evil 4 style horror game (not a knock against RE4 but it feels like its been the template for a lot of supposed horror games)
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What Microsoft really needs right now is the exclusives they’ve already announced 2+ years ago to start arriving! I’m anxiously waiting for 12 minutes, Tunic, The Last Night. Let’s have them deliver on stuff they’ve already promised and not get caught up in more studios.
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The Last Night went through some major development hurdles. I follow the dev on Twitter and yeah, he said the studio had to undergo a big revamp and the game still seems to have entered actual production only recently, so yeah, we’re not seeing it coming any time soon, which is a bummer. It was a crown jewel moment back then in 2017, but seeing how much Cyberpunk is taking up gaming industry and pop culture, it might have lost some of that wow factor. They’ll have to make it so distinct in its approach and gameplay, and the game director said that was one of the main reasons they haven’t shown much of the game since then, because of the easy comparisons to CP2077 and other examples would get in the way. I’m still hyped for the game though. When it does come, it shall be a “console launch exclusive” and Xbox needs to bank on this game very hard.
I expressed myself wrong. I meant that good independent studios like deck13 and 4a were sold recently.
Yeah Botafogo
Poland wise, I would go after Techland (who I really want to see Microsoft acquire in general) and The Astronauts. I would be a very happy camper if these two development studios were to be acquired by Microsoft.
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Microsoft should buy square enix
Techland might be too big, but The Astronauts seems plausible. And they have Witchfire with development - a mix of Soulslike and FPS - which looks amazing so far.
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How realistically are we looking into bungie rumors?