Xbox Game Studios |OT6| But wait, there's MORE....studios

I think they can with the necessary budget and with less schedule pressure than they’ve had in the past.

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Nah, and that’s fine imo. Studios like ID, the Coalition, and Ninja Theory will be associated with technical mastery (they already kinda are), but they don’t have the manpower to produce something on the scale of Rockstar/ND. At least not for a while.

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Some of them will make games that are qualitatively equivalent IMO, but will probably not be universally recognized as equal to those studios unless they are in the “right” genre.

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I mean nobody is doing games like ID, Hellblade and Ninja Theory are poised to lead xbox in cutting edge tech, Nobody does open world like Bethesda and the writing of Obsidian is top level.

Problem is casuals and media think only 1 certain type of game type/genre is worthy of recognition.

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Cmon now lol, Skyrim is one of the most awarded games OAT. The new Doom series has gotten constant praise and Obsidian is one of the most beloved RPG devs in the media.

They’ll be properly recognized by the media and fans if they’re great.

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The deal is - you KNOW exactly how the game should play out. That helps massively in game design! The navmesh is the same and thre overall logic and flow are still the same, and the interactions are still the same, with probably the same identical dialogues and script. That is massive in itself, and lends a huge boost to how the game gets constructed.

Does not need BGS to do it. The effort is there, but can be handled by a different studio.

If you look at the Demon Souls remake - a lot of the navmesh gets retained. The loop can get changed etc., mechanics can be upgraded with newer code, collision mechanics to be changed, but it can be done in lesser time compared to a maybe, a 6 year cycle for a new TES game.

The original Demon Souls was a perfectly good game by Miyazaki, but Bluepoint did amazing things there because they knew how the game needs to play and look visually.

Control did control alot better tho (no pun intended) I thought the shooting was alot more fun as well.

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Coalition, Initiative, Playground, Ninja Theory.

I think those get the recognition first, if I was forced to pick out of the bunch I’d put my bets on them. I do think Compulsion and Undead are going to enter the chat with their next projects though.

Production quality wise, I think Rockstar is at least years ahead of everyone else and kinda have always been. Naughty Dog is kinda up there as well. But this has happened at the cost absolutely ballooned budgets, development times and crunch. Rockstar used to make like 5 games a generation, now they do 1. No Bully, no Max Payne, no Midnight Club. Gta v selling more than every other title in the franchise prior combined gives them very little reason to do anything, much like why Mario Kart 9 isn’t a thing and won’t be for a few more years. They’re no longer that experimental prolific developer who have a diverse set of games, they just have several studios working on one or two things, much like Activision.

Coalition, Ninja Theory and Playground are the studios under XGS that come to mind when thinking from the production quality perspective.

But that’s the thing, both Rockstar and Naughty Dog’s games themselves have gotten very stale in their game design. RDR2 plays like a slogfest, and Naughty Dog games at least have design that serve their cinematic blockbuster vision but Rockstar games just have lost the kind of freedom they once used to have.

In this case, there are several studios under XGS that shall have more fun and explorative game design even if they won’t have industry leading production quality.

All this while we haven’t even talked about Bethesda, who is quite possibly one of the biggest staple names in gaming, so all they need is one big success (Starfield) and they’ll be back on top.

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I think it was rumoured that R* cancelled a Bully sequel in the middle of development.

Yeah and I’m real sad about that. :pensive:

I think playground will reach the top tier of game development soon. the only reason they haven’t is because they ‘just’ make racing games. (and they don’t seem to count for a lot of people)

If they launch FH5 to 90+ (which seems easily possible, as it looks like they are addressing majority of issues people had with FH4) and Fable also comes out at 90+, they should be in discussion

even in fable is in 80s they still should enter top tier discussions

Here’s your Oblivion Remake

And Skyrim.

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Maybe The Initiative? They did describe themselves as the studio trying to make a game with “stories, and premises that stand along side our peers in TV and movies.” This is supposed to be an ambitious project with tons of industry veterans working on the game together in Unreal Engine 5. It’s also hard to hit it off with a perfect game though, so maybe in the future they’ll be seen as a great studio if they do well with Perfect Dark and their next game.

They also have Christian Cantamessa (Red Dead Redemption lead designer and writer) as the story, world-building and cinematic director for Perfect Dark.

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They are but thats not the point I made.

True but they also only have about 70 developers, whereas Rockstar has thousands of the buggers.

Then what are the points you’re trying to make ? I’m confused lol.

Wonder if we’re gonna see PD next E3.

Maybe, but I doubt we’ll see gameplay. With no Covid, I’d say yes to gameplay, but not any more.

The question was if any Xbox Studio will be seen in the light of Naughty Dog or Rock Star and We all know these games get recognition and some are best in class in their areas but for THAT type of recognition you know these days its limited to those fancy animations, high fidelity character models and heavily skewed to third person.