As far as I recall, that applies for direct contracts with Microsoft and is a different matter if they are subcontracted. IE: Microsoft has a contract with a support studio to work on game XYZ where the support studio handles the staffing required. That may have changed though.
EDIT: They classify it as “outsourced”.
Outsourced Staff: Outsourced Staff are individuals who are employed by a third-party Microsoft
supplier that is approved to perform Outsourced Services for a specific outsourced arrangement.
In an outsourced arrangement, Microsoft has transferred an ongoing end-to-end business
function or process to the supplier.
Its not though. That’s exactly why it’s an issue. Such a policy in gaming is very harmful. It may exist elsewhere in software development, but elsewhere it is much less of an issue because you are working with standard tools on something that doesn’t really need to adhere to artistic or creative visions. You aren’t usually learning in-house tools.
But ABK’s staff will still be busy with ABK’s projects - even right now ABK hires hundreds of people, despite having such huge amount of staff (ironically mostly needed for GaaS support).
It is hilarious that GaaS games in reality require tons and tons of people, sometimes more than for new games because GaaS games need regular content.
I’m not talking about them buying ABK to help with XGS, I’m saying staff is an issue to the point that buying a company like ABK is a good idea to get a chunk of staff like that, same sense them buying Certain Affinity for staff and help on Halo. Embracer, Tencent or someone else could come in and buy one of the only other studio who knows how to use slipspace engine, that would be pretty bad.
Nah it’s not like that. Every 360 game they produced was timed/launch exclusive even after Steins;Gate, their games were selling good on 360 to the point where even when they started doing simultaneous launches with PS3 they were still doing slightly better on 360.
They -tried- to continue this partnership into the Xbox One generation. They released Chaos;Child as an Xbox One exclusive in 2014 and Psycho-Pass as an Xbox One exclusive in 2015 but they flopped so hard they had to pull away from Xbox (Stupidly enough, these Xbox releases never came to the West. Chaos;Child and Psycho-Pass would later come to the West on PS4 and PC but the Xbox versions were left behind in Japan only. This is because the Western publishers such as Spike Chunsoft and NIS America who were bringing these games to the West did not believe in Xbox during these years.)
They did bring Steins;Gate 0 to Xbox One digitally (once again, Japan only. even though it’s localized on every other platform), brought Occultic;Nine to Xbox One (this one never left Japan on any platform) and this year brought the fighting game Phantom Breaker Omnia to Xbox (This time the Xbox version actually came to the West! They sold the IP to Rocket Panda Games a bit after release though). They were also involved in the Corpse Party 2021 release which came to Xbox in the West.
They also have a few projects planned for Xbox still. 2D beat-em-up “Ogre Tale” and Detective Visual Novel " Mystereet F" (this one actually has a Xbox Series version planned, however I believe they said development is “on hiatus”)
Many of their games have been Switch/PS/PC only since Xbox One though (they actually worked with Nintendo on the Famicom Detective Club remakes). The latest game in the Science;Adventure series, Anonymous;Code was Switch/PS only.
Again, I don’t expect it, maybe Spike Chunsoft will acquire them or something, but I’d really love to see MS “reward” MAGES for trying their best with Xbox even in the “dark years”, and there is a trove of really amazing Visual Novels in the backlog here. It’s also only like, a $15 million acquisition I believe.
This seems quite a bit different than Microsofts 18 month on and 6 month off policy:
“The IRS considers any on-site worker to be a full-time employee, if that worker spends a significant proportion of their working life in the office and has no other clients. Employers in the game industry often seek to avoid scrutiny by restricting contractors to a nine-month maximum stint. But after their contractors have taken three months off, they are then rehired for another nine months. But this ideal is often flouted, with contractors staying for a year or more at a time.”
So what is the same? A 3 month off time would be a huge policy improvement for Microsoft. 6 months and that dev is certainly on another project.
American media will go insane as soon as they see Microsoft promoting fan service…If it was blood and violence, then it would be fine, but it is fan service - it is too depraved
They come to Playstation because Playstation had some presence in Japan. And they often come to PS4 and just BC for PS5
Nah games skipping Xbox has nothing to do with that, that’s just an ID@Xbox guidelines thing. Danganronpa 2 and 3 on Game Pass have plenty of fanservice (I’d say more than in the Science;Adventure games), even MAGES’ own recently released on Xbox titles, Corpse Party and Phantom Breaker Omnia that I mentioned have quite a bit (in Phantom Breaker, browsing the unlockable Gallery menu is almost like browsing a Rule34 site with how racy the images there are, and nothing was altered on Xbox)
There would most likely be some changes if this hypothetical acquisition ever happened yeah, as XGS’s name would be on it now, but that’s agreeable, they make games with fanservice, but aren’t “a fanservice developer”. The Famicom Detective Club remakes they worked on with Nintendo did not have any elements like this.
Main reason I don’t see it happening is it seems like MS’s motto now is “go big or go home” (even if I think this is a bit of a detriment to Asia acquisitions because I’m still not that certain they’re getting a JP publisher), so I doubt they’re actually looking for Visual Novel studios lol.
Im counting their mainline games, which are New Witcher, which will take 5-7 years lol.
Remake/Remaster are not new games, them can be made faster, cause the baseline for story and settings ideas of the games are already done. They just need to redo graphics and add modern controls, if need be and way of life improvements.
I believe for the next decade they have a trilogy of Witcher games planned, a Cyberpunk sequel, a new IP and 2 externally made games (one being the announced Witcher remake). It’s a very impressive slate that even if they delivered half of could make them a very strong acquisition for anyone that did acquire them, though I do worry it’s far too ambitious for ANY studio to expand so rapidly let alone one who stumbled so majorly not all that long ago.
On the other hand Microsoft has mentioned an interest in a more diverse range of content in future acquisitions, and have been funding and having success with smaller projects like Grounded and Pentiment. I don’t necessarily think the audience is on Xbox yet to justify a first party visual novel team, but for how relatively inexpensive it is they could take the time to find that audience through game pass. Plus it’d help with the push in Japan - especially with how well suited their games could be to an XCloud/mobile push.
True but that was bad leadership from Bonnie Ross and the heads at 343! If they had a better understanding of how to make Halo Infinite great the contractors could of just sat back cooked a great meal
Capcom is going to all time highs while square goes the opposite direction. We might get a scenario where Xbox goes for SE since they are clearly struggling with all their bad decisions lately.
I would think that with Booty speaking about collaboration between studios, that all the studios will be helping each other out with their games more often, like Arkane helping Machine, Or TC and T10 helping 343 with getting Halo Infinite ready for launch.
