Toys 4 Bob was in no mans land they probably wanted to work on Banjo and a lot of those old Rare Games but if they would have Ubisoft would have owned the cloud rights and no way MS was going for that. Beenox will take on the Crash & Spyro games so i’m not worried about that but to see Toys 4 Bob leave is kinda weird especially when Xbox always touted how they needed more family friendly content. I’ll wait to see the full picture because this just comes off as odd. They want to go Independent in a time where massive loads of people are being laid off and projects are being cancelled left and right? but you want to stay working with MS? I’ll wait for the full picture to be painted something is off here. Who is paying for their insurance? and stuff like that? does all that end today?
The fact they want to work with MS still means they have done something to prevent the actual bad outcome. Reminds me of my work place where the door guy was retiring but only for the company he worked under. Me and my workers planned to hire him under our name, so he can remain with us.
Independent studios exist, they secure investments from other parties and publishing deals. T4B are small & now predominantly wfh so they are not that expensive, but yeah who would be finding this move? maybe some of the people there got a lot of money from the acquisition?
Since they are now independent, they can be contracted by XGS to work on games that will not be part of ABK cloud streaming rights.
Wonder how CMA will react.
It could be considered ‘selfish’ because a lot of the discourse in the gaming industry right now is about layoffs & developer wellbeing. Honestly though I just want Gamepass to get all the great games I believe the Activision-Blizzard deal will provide the service with. That includes the Crash titles.
I feel like stating stuff like this shouldn’t be controversial but judging by the heated conversations in some places, I could easily get labelled greedy or entitled. But seriously, Gamepass is about to get some great games in 2024. As a subscriber, that’s obviously good for me.
Meanwhile what happens behind the scenes… is way beyond my understanding or control.
My assumption is If it’s Activision IP or published under Activision it probably goes to Ubisoft. If it’s XGS and Xbox or new IP, it goes around that.
Oh balls.
Yes it was clarified that ABK IP would still go to Ubisoft even if a third party developed it.
They could work on Banjo.
I’ll be the odd one out and say I hope they work on Blinx and give it a new spin life, like what Insomniac did with Ratchet and Clank.
I think there is potential with the time ability, with physics or destruction of the world.
They can work on Brute Force for all I care, just do what you like.
Blinx is unironically cool
My personal guess is that Microsoft planned to close the studio as part of the cuts and this avoided it. I wouldn’t be suprised if they couldn’t afford a buyout and they did a deal that the first game is for Microsoft to cover the buyout costs but that’s just pure speculation
Pretty sure it would have been Activision’s decision from pre-acquisition completion, as Microsoft said the division would be run separately as a limited integration silo because of the ongoing clown circus FTC proceedings. They also had to testify that the layoffs were previously planned by Activision as well.
If I remember correctly - while they did say there were already layoffs planned, they did acknowledge that some of the layoffs were to reduce overlap brought about by the acquisition. Though to be fair when they argued that Activision would remain with limited integration they were not saying they would not be involved, just that if they eventually needed to divest Activision becaude of the FTC that it would still be fit to run independently of Microsoft.
So interestingly, Toys for Bob being able to spin themselves off as an independent company helps support that point.
https://x.com/chris_dring/status/1763524206552039435?s=46&t=h5h6GxWqqnXg4c-MYVr6qg Quite impressive for a “slowly dying” brand lol.
Wow, Xbox is such in a safety net for live service, they can practically do whatever they want to test on.
Overwatch seems not so dead either, cool, though I stopped playing I’m glad it’s doing fine
It was never dead or even come close, hence why people wondered why a sequel is needed.
It’s going to be something to see when GTA6 launches, since either both it an 5 will be on the top ten or everyone on 5 will try to migrate to 6.