Honestly phil is a genius. He’s given a plate of shit and is told to make this taste good. He trys to get funding early on they throw him a few bones but no where near enough to catch up. So he gets to thinking how can I get shareholders to start throwing real money at gaming. He creates gamepass and tells shareholders it can be the netflix of gaming we just need to throw lots of money at it. Well if their is one thing shareholders love is subscription services so they do throw money at it and guess what gamepass keeps growing and growing and doesn’t look like they will be slowing down anytime soon
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It “will”. needs time only.
20 million by the end of the year… 
I see in the near future, the 100 million companies, Sony with the PS5, Nintendo with the SW and MS with the Xbox Game Pass… its just a matter of time…
Why do people seem to think that Microsoft buying dev studios will be a literal “apocalypse”?
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Their sense of entitlement on how things should be.
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The Initiative Team ( @60 Devs )
From Naughty Dog:
- Sylvia Chambers ( Animator )
- Ryan Trowbridge ( Tech Art Director )
- Lee Davis ( Lead Gameplay Animator )
- Tyler Thornock ( Principal Technical Animator )
- Isaac Yeram Kim ( Concept Artist )
- Sze Jones ( Principal Character Artist )
- Francisco Aisa García ( Senior Gameplay Engineer )
- Robert Ryan ( Senior Systems Designer )
From COD / Titanfall / Apex:
- Johal Gow ( Lead Producer )
- Oliver Guiney ( Concept Artist )
- Jon Lew ( Gameplay Engineer )
- Ben Diamand ( Lead Systems Engineer )
- Justin Perez ( Senior Systems Designer )
- Sean Slayback ( Lead Systems Designer )
From Sony Santa Monica:
- Ian Miller ( Sr Designer )
- Kai Zheng ( Senior Level Designer )
- Erik Jakobsen ( Principal Environment Artist )
- Ray Yeomans ( Senior Designer )
- Chris O’Neill ( Lead Level Designer )
- Brian Westergaard ( Director of Production )
From Crystal Dynamics:
- Darrell Gallagher ( Studio Head )
- Remi Lacoste ( Experiential Director )
- Lindsey McQueeney ( HR )
- Daniel Steamer ( Lead Technical Designer )
- Dan Neuburger ( Game Director )
From Insomniac:
- Jason Priest ( Lead Artist )
- Joey Tan ( Associate Technical Designer )
- Drew Murray ( Design Director )
From 343i:
- Marcia Hunsicker ( Gameplay Animator )
- William Archbell ( Technical Director )
From Blizzard:
- Stephen Clayburn ( Principal Lead Online Services Engineer )
- Jay Combs ( Information Technology )
From Bungie:
- Christine Thompson ( Narrative Lead / Writer )
From Rockstar:
- Christian Cantamessa ( Cinematics Director )
From Dice:
- Eric Persson ( Associate Art Director )
From Bioware:
- Ryan Duffin ( Gameplay Animation Director )
From Playground Games:
- Richard Burns ( UI/UX Lead )
From Avalanche Studios:
- Justin Walters ( Senior Environment Artist )
From Nexon:
- Patrick Ward ( 3D Environment Artist )
From The Coalition:
- Nigel Loster ( Gameplay Designer )
From id Software:
- Kurt Loudy ( Sr Systems Designer )
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Damn…that’s like a freaking all star cast…holy shit!!!
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Well it isn’t their reality. Hopefully all the energy from pearl clutching Xbox’s apocalypse can be put towards things that actually matter.
Xbox game studios OT3 Apocalypse Now
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There are 5 types of people afraid:
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Those afraid this consolidation will lead to a bad trend of major firms buying up others (if I fall into any camp, it’s this one, but Tencent has been doing this for years now. Hell Sony did it back in the day too. I have always said my ideal vision for the console market given the circumstances is a split oligopoly with no one firm holding market dominance and I think these moves even out MS with PlayStation).
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Those who feel MS’s management of studios such as Rare and 343, as well as their shuttering of studios like Lionhead and Ensemble puts the new studios at risk (not unjustified entirely, but Xbox with full backing of MS corporate and Phil and Matt in charge is way different than afterthought Xbox under Mattrick. Also, 343’s issues seem to be more due to laissez faire attitudes among MS, the same thing that makes studios like Double Fine and Ninja Theory great. Don’t get involved unless the quality takes a hit and/or morale/motivation is bad).
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Sony fans concerned this leads to Bethesda games being inaccesible to them (valid, but minimized under Xcloud and PC)
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Console Warriors pissed they can’t use the no games excuse and/or want the status quo of MS as an easy punching bag and PlayStation granted fire sale prices on moneyhats. (Lol)
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A combination of any of the above 4.
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Jesus. Even Xbox internal teams Coalition, PlayGround, 343i and soon Id want in. Plus those ND, Insomniac, Sony Santa Monica, Rockstar, Bioware, Respawn and Crystal Dynamics alum 
That is one hell of a lineup. This gonna be good!
At least they are consistently anti-buying publishers. Not sure how much i buy the ‘people will lose their jobs’ stuff when Microsoft even closed all their retail stores and still managed to not lay people off.
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Natural order of things. Companies doing well want things to stay the same so they keep winning. Companies not on top want change because industry change is when the pecking order changes.
Since gaming attracts so many corporate cheerleaders you get people cheering for the status quo, or change to be fair, even when it isn’t a benefit to them so long as their team keeps winning.
The Initiative must be one of the best trojan horse in gaming. Attract high-quality talent from other top tier gaming studios extract all their knowledge, processes and share it will all the other Xbox studios.
Once the Bethesda deal is completed Xbox will need to host their own GDC for their studios.
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Awesome post! Thanks!
My god, this is an all star line up!
You’ve got to go back to the core cause of console wars and fanboys. The entire reason all of this discourse exists is because people buy a single console but they can’t stand the idea of missing out on any games. For whatever reason they can’t buy all of the consoles, like they still need mom to buy it for them, or their S/O would get angry if they bought another toy that does the same thing, etc… So all they are left to do is to try to make sure the console they like “wins”. If their console is the market leader by far then developers have to put their games out that console, well in theory anyway.
MS or other entities not the one you root for buying studios disrupts the whole fanboy system. Now it isn’t just “my console sells more = more games” now some competing company can just buy the studios and take games away and there is nothing they can really do about it. They only thing they can do is double down on the smear campaigns in the hopes of the competition failing.
What you are seeing now are reactions out of fear and desperation.
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I want Microsoft to acquire more development studios and publishers because it means more games and content for Game Pass and in general. Second reason would be that I don’t want to see Apple, Amazon or Google acquire development studios or publishers that I like. Hehehe.
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doesn’t matter what it’s called, it doesn’t have vrs or mesh shaders.
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