Xbox Acquisition |OT| - So We’re Back to Making Lists, Huh?

100% means nothing but why is Microsoft Game Studios a publisher for CB2077?

Can’t the be marketing deal since that happens all the time and you don’t see Sony or MS as publishers

Probably just a mistake. Microsoft Studios doesn’t even exist anymore.

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Yea but why even have it there its so weird

With Bethesda, they do. More are coming. Both in terms of growth and adding more studios. InXile and Zenimax Online will start loading up soon. When you add outsourcing and 2nd party, it’s not close.

Ark is also basically a permanent screen saver footage for Major Nelson this week on Xbox. There’s always a loop of some flying dinos in the background.

I think in the very least they are very close.

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From an industry prestige perspective, it’s worrying that the top 3 head count studios for Xbox are: one studio that seemingly can’t be managed properly to get a game out, one focuses on a kids game and the 3rd on a multi-player only game. 343i have more staff than naughty dog, but faff about with TV, and wider “lore” stuff which would be better placed cranking out maximum fidelity and tech development.

Ideally, studios like Rare, Obsidian, Arkane and Ninja Theory could get up to 300+ AND work only on one game at a time, to really hit top tier production values. Obsidian in particular is one studio I’d salivate over if every single staffer worked on the same game all at once.

343i and Mojang manage two of the biggest brands in gaming: Halo and Minecraft. The number of employees for each company means much more than just “amount of people developing games”.

Let’s take Mojang for example.

Mojang is currently supporting Minecraft (which is out on pretty much everything), Minecraft Dungeons (One, PS4, Switch and Windows) and Minecraft Earth (mobile). There is a Minecraft movie supposedly coming out in 2022. There’s been four officially licensed novels in the Minecraft universe in the last three years. Merchandises. Minecon. Minecraft Festival. Minecraft Live.

While Mojang isn’t directly involved in some of the above, there are employees responsible for the brand management, licensing, organizing events, etc.

And of course we should remind that Minecraft is one of the most profitable franchieses for Microsoft. Its staff should be huge, even if it is for a “kids game”.

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Yeah, I think by now Minecraft is in a world in itself and much more than just a “kid’s game”, especially when you have many adults playing on it.

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I know, I know. Purely from a selfish perspective, Mojang doesn’t enter my head as a 1st party studio because it’s multi-platform and a kids game. The only thing I ever played was Minecraft Dungeons and I’d be down with more of that.

But I don’t care about ongoing engagement, profitability, continued game life, YouTube viewership (urgh…wash your mouth out) etc. I want MS to churn out game after game of high production value, top quality games that I can play, finish in a few sittings, never go back to, then wait for the new new IP they create.

Guys do you think Phil and Bungie has settled on a price?

I would love to see them back at home. Destiny is really good you can really feel the epicness of Halo in this game the DNA is still here plus the next gen update is so delicious. It is so smooth and beautiful.

Phil loves Bungie and Destiny2 I see him playing a lot recently.

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I know what you mean. Just try to think of Mojang in another way: it is probably one of the motives that made Microsoft see gaming as a profitable market.

Microsoft bought Mojang in 2014 for a third of the price it is paying for Zenimax. Before Mojang, the two latest gaming acquisitions for Microsoft were Lionehead in 2006 and Twisted Pixel in 2011. The first one closed down, while the second became independent after a few years. But after Mojang Microsoft has acquired 15 studios.

Plus, the quality of the game is not necessarily tied to number of employees. Ghost of Tsushima, one of the best games of the year, was developed by Sucker Punch, a studio with around 150 employees. To put things into perspective Microsoft now has 10 studios with more than 150 employees.

Also, Minecraft is far more than just a kid’s game. I’ve learned a fair amount of programming from the early days of Minecraft, and it’s modding/creativity community is literally second to none. Calling the largest game in the world a “kid’s game” just because you don’t like it is reductionist as hell. I’ve been playing the game for a better part of a decade and I’ve never once associated it with such; sometimes, pure creativity is a needed escape from the monotony of professional life and the limits of real-world creativity.

Also, as you mentioned, quality of projects have absolutely nothing to do with the size of a studio.

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Gods I hope so; selfishly, I want to see Destiny return to the pre-Eververse hawking days and would love for their next IP to be optimized and exclusive to Xbox/PC.

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Agree with that, but that just makes it less of a game, to me, if one at all.

In the sense that Lego, it’s nearest analogue, isn’t a game. It has no real start or end. It’s a tool to experiment with…potentially endless. I can’t really tolerate any game upwards of 15hrs these days.

Preach!

Seriously the game is stunning and a joy to play with great art direction and nice story.

I give my greenlight for getting them back :sunglasses:

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Again though, it is a game even if you just consider the creativity aspect; people legitimately make games within the game itself. But beyond that, I don’t play in creativity mode, I play in Survival Mode and there’s just as much “game” in that as any survival clone that’s followed in Minecraft’s wake (Ark, Rust, DayZ, etc.).

Nooooo! I mean, fair enough, but Destiny is the antithesis of where I want MS going and I do worry how much Phil bangs on about that game. It plays into the Xbox as the GAAS, FPS, shooty bang bang box reputation that I hoped MS was shedding and, with a proportion of their recent purchases, look like they are addressing.

Here here! Meeting adjourned, go forth Phil and conquer. But seriously, Bungie needs some resources so their “expansions” could have more content and less of the focus on hiding the best gear beyond MTX.

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Totally respect that, but how do you actually win/beat Minecraft? If you can beat it, it’s more likely I’d consider something a game. That’s why I think Dungeons is more purely a “game”, at least to me.

You kill the ender dragon. The game does have an ending, but it lets you keep playing afterward.

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