Sulphur on 21/9/2020 at 14:06
It's almost as if MS really wants to raise the stakes when it comes to challenging Sony. This is almost like we're headed to the state of things back in the 90s when Sega and Nintendo were these gargantuan companies duking it out for supremacy, or the early days of the PSX when Sony winded Nintendo right out of the gate. It's not the same situation or context, but it's shaping up to be a real whopper of a battle.
The good news for us is we're probably getting more immersive sims from this, as MS is possibly more willing to take risks than Beth's individual management was. And, you know, I dearly hope they give Fallout back to Obsidian. Who doesn't want more of it from the minds behind it?
reizak on 21/9/2020 at 14:25
It's hard not to feel a little worried, considering how much MS's commitment to PC gaming has ebbed and flowed over the years, but I guess they do seem serious about it these days. Still, as long as they're manufacturing a console, there's always the chance that they might go back to trying to promote it with exclusives, especially if the unified Game Pass model doesn't work out as well as they might like. Time will tell I guess. But yeah this likely was the only way Obsidian was ever going to possibly get to make a Fallout game again, so there's that.
But then there's modding, which doesn't happen on their own store, so what's going to happen to that aspect of Elder Scrolls and Fallout in particular?
Sulphur on 21/9/2020 at 14:34
Mods for TES games will be one of the litmus tests for how much MS intends to honour the PC legacy of its acquisitions. Look, my cynical side tells me that in the long run, MS will probably end up grinding some of their studios into irrelevance just like they did with Rare et al., but they're saying mostly the right things right for the moment and it looks like they're actually going all in instead of paying lip service to PC like the last five gajillion times, which isn't a bad place to be if this entire thing ends up a successful gambit.
But if it fails, well. That's a story history's already written about.
Anarchic Fox on 21/9/2020 at 15:06
Rare had a minor resurgence lately with Sea of Thieves. Other than them, there were Lionhead Studios, whose collapse may have been Molyneux's fault; Bungie, which survived and eventually regained independence; Mojang, which as far as I can tell is puttering along fine; then Obsidian and Double Fine, who were acquired too recently to have show much impact. Microsoft seems to treat its studios far better than EA or Activision.
That being said, this is unhappy news for me. Up until now, I've preferred Sony's exclusives over Microsoft's, and find PS controllers more comfortable than Xbox ones. The most likely outcome is that I become even more of an indie hipster than I am already. :p
demagogue on 21/9/2020 at 15:14
In my perception and memory, Microsoft and games never really mixed well. But in our era of massive companies gobbling everything up, I don't know if they'll have the influence on individual games like they used to.
Jason Moyer on 21/9/2020 at 16:25
While the old, "wise" bits of my brain are laughing at what a dumpster fire MS's studio acquisitions are going to eventually become, the excitable part of my brain is going "wait...Obsidian/Arkane/BSG under one umbrella? could that mean....hmmmm"
Pyrian on 21/9/2020 at 19:19
It could! It could. It probably won't, but hey.
Malf on 21/9/2020 at 23:00
I notice Todd Howard and Pete Hines are still around.
But what about Robert Altman?
If he's fucked off with a payment and no longer involved in the day-to-day running of Zenimax / Bethesda, that can only be a good thing.
twisty on 22/9/2020 at 01:30
Quote Posted by Sulphur
It's almost as if MS really wants to raise the stakes when it comes to challenging Sony. This is almost like we're headed to the state of things back in the 90s when Sega and Nintendo were these gargantuan companies duking it out for supremacy, or the early days of the PSX when Sony winded Nintendo right out of the gate. It's not the same situation or context, but it's shaping up to be a real whopper of a battle.
My gut feel is that they're more inclined to be looking further ahead, to competitors with serious cloud muscle, such as Google and Amazon, who have already dipped their toes into this lucrative market.
