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[johnjohn]

Yeah, I'm sure their next Skyrim port will be super exciting... after six months of patches... sort of.

Bethesda released Deathloop and Ghostwire recently and they have Redfall and Starfield coming out next year....

 

[Louay]

I mean sure they talk all time but what matter here the other side willing to sell, MS would not force their way buy publisher.
Both of Acti and Zenimax were willing to sell and MS won the bidding war for both these companies.... MS were lucky to have these two opportunities in span of 3 years.

So how many Publishers willing to sell as of today ?
EA
UBI
Probably Square ?
Koei ?

the rest have not shown any interest in selling yet.

 

[Killer8]

You people are so shallow about it at this point. More fake narratives, everything is about how it can hurt Sony instead of, y'know, actually benefit Xbox.

I'd ideally want it to benefit Xbox and hurt Sony.

I'm not going to pretend to not be mad about Sony's treatment of their Japan Studio. It's a disgrace and I want to see them embarrassed over it - not for any petty console warring reason, but because they destroyed a rich, multi-generational legacy so callously. If even the gaijin American company was willing to invest money to build up a Japanese first party studio, that's egg i'd happily like to see smeared on Sony's face.

 

[Beechos]

Capcom would be the only jap dev/pub that would move the needle for me.

 

[Thebonehead]

At Microsoft's scale there are always bound to be rumours

 

[TheGodfather07]

they may have talked to them but they probably got the same response they did when trying to buy nintendo

 

[Thebonehead]

Not gonna happen.
Insulting me won’t change reality. Being salty about another forum also won’t.
MS isn’t buying any of the big Japanese publishers.
Now I’m putting you on ignore because I’m not getting insulted over.l nothing. Feel free to keep spewing hate and insulting people, I’m not taking any part on it. Goodbye.

Lol.

What a melt you are.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I'd ideally want it to benefit Xbox and hurt Sony.

I'm not going to pretend to not be mad about Sony's treatment of their Japan Studio. It's a disgrace and I want to see them embarrassed over it - not for any petty console warring reason, but because they destroyed a rich, multi-generational legacy so callously. If even the gaijin American company was willing to invest money to build up a Japanese first party studio, that's egg i'd happily like to see smeared on Sony's face.

Polyphony are Japanese. They exist.

Microsoft couldn't even build a 50-person team in The Initiative and keep that going with a semblance of progress, hence why their game is now basically being developed by Crystal Dynamics. They're only just now trying to address deep problems at 343i after multiple years & games, and you think they can somehow start up an original Japanese team successfully?

Sure, ok. I like to daydream too, but when it comes to this stuff, I base it off reality and past results.

 

[Ozriel]

Well at least Phil tried for many years now...but failed, but Phil wil keep trying (Caus he has the green light) to buy the biggest Japanese studio' s to fullfil his and MS's wet dream...creating a monopoly...like in the OS market

Imagine arguing with a straight face that the party that’s committing to keeping Call of Duty multiplatform for the entire generation are pursing a monopoly with …Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.

Polyphony are Japanese. They exist.

Microsoft couldn't even build a 50-person team in The Initiative and keep that going with a semblance of progress, hence why their game is now basically being developed by Crystal Dynamics. They're only just now trying to address deep problems at 343i after multiple years & games, and you think they can somehow start up an original Japanese team successfully?

Sure, ok. I like to daydream too, but when it comes to this stuff, I base it off reality and past results.

I’ll agree with the ‘daydreaming’ part. Because MS didn’t bring on Crystal Dynamics to bail out the Initiate. That was always the plan. You think they wanted to make an AAA game with just 50 people ?

The Initiative was set up in such a way that a (relatively) small team of talented veterans would handle conception and pre-production, and then a capable development team would step in to handle the bulk of the production/development.

But I’m sure if you ignore the well managed and efficient studios at Microsoft Games and focus on the likes of 343, you can come up with a narrative that suits you.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I’ll agree with the ‘daydreaming’ part. Because MS didn’t bring on Crystal Dynamics to bail out the Initiate. That was always the plan. You think they wanted to make an AAA game with just 50 people ?

1: When was Perfect Dark ever said to be a AAA game? The rumors went back and forth between it being an episodic smaller game, to a AAA game, to "quad AAAA", and back again. Even some of the mess that spilled out from people at The Initiative confirm the game existed in one form before being completely rebooted (this is probably after Drew Murray left and went back to Insomniac), it was probably only decided to be a non-episodic, "normal" AAA game after that reboot.

2: Even if The Initiative planned to bring in other devs, I can guarantee you they didn't plan for it to go as messy as it did. The exodus was real, the frustration was real. You can't just handwave it and say "That was the plan the whole time!".

The Initiative was set up in such a way that a (relatively) small team of talented veterans would handle conception and pre-production, and then a capable development team would step in to handle the bulk of the production/development.

Sorry but this just sounds like a bad approach to game development. Dev teams don't need smaller, outside planning groups to come up with concepts for them to build from, especially when it's basically an outside contractor. The vast majority of development studios have their creative planning units in-house, integrated with the larger production teams.

The Initiative sound like they were the equivalent of indie script writers who'd then go put their scripts for sale for directors, producers etc. to try making a movie out of. But that's a model that only really works in Hollywood film; gaming is a VERY different industry when it comes to development, especially at the root of the process. It was a noble idea with The Initiative but getting a bunch of creative leaders in a small team was always going to lead to ego clashes and stalls, then disbanding.

But I’m sure if you ignore the well managed and efficient studios at Microsoft Games and focus on the likes of 343, you can come up with a narrative that suits you.

Prior to 2018 Microsoft only had five active internal studios, after closing down others like Lionhead. Of those five, at least two of them (343i and Rare) were struggling, these are facts. So you're already at a 60% batting average; if it were a school class that would be considered a failing grade. And no Playground doesn't count at this point because they hadn't been acquired yet. Meanwhile The Coalition were doing "okay" but were seeing a downturn in retention for each new Gears title, so that average is probably looking closer to 50%.

This was a very real thing and even after the 2018 acquisitions there have been documented problems. I just listed The Initiative, but also look at Rare with Everwild, look at how long it's taking Hellblade II to release despite the first game releasing in 2017, Bleeding Edge getting phased out quick, and revealing HBII way back in 2019 at the TGAs. We've heard of at least a soft reboot for Avowed internally, etc. Now Microsoft, even with those ongoing things to sort out, have added in the Zenimax teams, and soon will most likely add in the ABK teams to that mix as well, the latter with quite a few who have their own serious issues.

I'm not "making up narratives", I'm literally recalling events and information that has occurred over the past four years.

 

[DaGwaphics]

I'm not "making up narratives", I'm literally recalling events and information that has occurred over the past four years.

You are though. You've created the narrative that you want to believe is true and are fighting hard to make the pieces fit.

Rare has hardly been struggling, SoT is their most successful game to date (before or after MS). Ninja Theory was something like 40 people when MS took over, they have completed the game they were working on and started HB2 at some point in 2019 from the sounds of it. It's only 2022, games take longer than that to make today. The initiative started as a novel idea, you take some of the brightest minds in the industry and let them create the core concepts and direction with the bulk of the work being contracted out. If they could make something like that work, who knows, it could be industry changing. We'll see how it goes for them when they release something. It does sound like they just didn't gel as a group (maybe a case of too many cooks in the kitchen). Maybe the idea wasn't a good one, maybe it was, time will tell. But trying new things isn't an automatic negative.

Avowed, is all rumors and speculation and again is another project that hasn't been in the works for that long from the sounds of it. If anything, the only major complaint you could have about MS at this point is that they were revealing future projects way too early in 2019 and 2020 in an attempt to build buzz for the current-gen. I don't personally like that approach either, but they seem to have changed directions there anyway. Sticking with promoting the shorter term instead.

Games take 4, 5, even 6 years to make now and that's just the way it is. Until MS has studios sitting for 7 or 8 years releasing nothing, you can't really point to poor management there.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

You are though. You've created the narrative that you want to believe is true and are fighting hard to make the pieces fit.

Not hard to "fight" for pieces to fit when they fall right into place. You guys are conveniently ignoring a lot of contextual factors leading to the events transpiring today, that's not my fault.

Rare has hardly been struggling, SoT is their most successful game to date (before or after MS). Ninja Theory was something like 40 people when MS took over, they have completed the game they were working on and started HB2 at some point in 2019 from the sounds of it. It's only 2022, games take longer than that to make today.

No, Rare HAS been struggling. SOT may be their most "successful" game yet (we don't really know what the revenue figures it's pulled in are, just player counts, but concurrent player counts for it on Steam are "decent" at best compared to the heavy-hitters. They're better than Halo Infinite's, though, so I guess that counts for something), but it took several seasons and years to clean the game up from its mediocre launch.

And when we talk about relevance in terms of cache with the gaming zeitgeist, in terms of being an industry-leading developer, y'know things Rare did pretty often during the SNES and N64 years? Yeah they are NOWHERE near on that level anymore. At best, they are just another developer in the sea of developers to the vast majority, SOT popularity be damned. Their position in terms of both scope of their output, and relevance of their output in guiding the market, has dropped significantly since being acquired by Microsoft in 2001 and that's not up for debate.

The initiative started as a novel idea, you take some of the brightest minds in the industry and let them create the core concepts and direction with the bulk of the work being contracted out. If they could make something like that work, who knows, it could be industry changing.

Well the facts are, they didn't, because of poor leadership. The same thing that's been an issue for several of Microsoft's 1P studios for a number of years, and there are very specific people these problems can be traced back to but almost never bear the brunt of deserved criticism. Coulda shoulda woulda is great and all, but The Initiative is a failure of a venture, because of lack of cohesion and poor leadership, a good chunk of that can be laid on the shoulders of Xbox division upper management, and Matt Booty.

We'll see how it goes for them when they release something. It does sound like they just didn't gel as a group (maybe a case of too many cooks in the kitchen). Maybe the idea wasn't a good one, maybe it was, time will tell. But trying new things isn't an automatic negative.

No, it's not. But when you're a platform holder that has a known problem with division leadership, and have mostly produced substandard results over a course of several years, any further failures are going to be exacerbated. At this moment in time, The Initiative is a failed venture. The Perfect Dark we end up with could be something with nary a scrap of the original Initiative concept at play, so the bulk of that credit would go to Crystal Dynamics...who are not The Initiative.

Avowed, is all rumors and speculation and again is another project that hasn't been in the works for that long from the sounds of it.

Well apparently Jez Corden got a chance to play the game so is it far along or is it not? Has it been in the works for a while or has it not? If it hasn't, why let a media person play the game, then write up a fluff piece to get people hyped, then not even show off new gameplay (or at least what he played) at your latest Showcase?

If anything, the only major complaint you could have about MS at this point is that they were revealing future projects way too early in 2019 and 2020 in an attempt to build buzz for the current-gen. I don't personally like that approach either, but they seem to have changed directions there anyway. Sticking with promoting the shorter term instead.

Well at least we can agree on this part. Unfortunately for MS, most of their short-term upcoming releases are either extremely niche and won't have much individual appeal to benefit the platform, or in the case of Starfield, got hyped so hard that by the time it was shown, at least for me, was thoroughly disappointing for the most part.

Games take 4, 5, even 6 years to make now and that's just the way it is. Until MS has studios sitting for 7 or 8 years releasing nothing, you can't really point to poor management there.

Uh, what? I just mentioned Rare & Everwild, The Initiative & Perfect Dark, 343i & basically everything they've touched for the past five years. We can even bring up Playground and Fable to some extent; though that's a mostly well-oiled studio, such a sudden genre change is obviously causing headaches. They should've tried an open-world sci-fi futuristic racer instead, and maybe, y'know, have Obsidian take a crack at Fable? I'm just saying, if I were Matt Booty, that's probably what I would've encouraged, and just swap over some team members who'd want to work on whichever project in particular.

So yes, between that and other things like Hellblade II still with no real release date despite its prequel and HZD both releasing in 2017 (and HFW releasing this year), there are enough cases to suggest that there may be issues of poor management at the Xbox division when it comes to the games software.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Not hard to "fight" for pieces to fit when they fall right into place. You guys are conveniently ignoring a lot of contextual factors leading to the events transpiring today, that's not my fault.



No, Rare HAS been struggling. SOT may be their most "successful" game yet (we don't really know what the revenue figures it's pulled in are, just player counts, but concurrent player counts for it on Steam are "decent" at best compared to the heavy-hitters. They're better than Halo Infinite's, though, so I guess that counts for something), but it took several seasons and years to clean the game up from its mediocre launch.

And when we talk about relevance in terms of cache with the gaming zeitgeist, in terms of being an industry-leading developer, y'know things Rare did pretty often during the SNES and N64 years? Yeah they are NOWHERE near on that level anymore. At best, they are just another developer in the sea of developers to the vast majority, SOT popularity be damned. Their position in terms of both scope of their output, and relevance of their output in guiding the market, has dropped significantly since being acquired by Microsoft in 2001 and that's not up for debate.



Well the facts are, they didn't, because of poor leadership. The same thing that's been an issue for several of Microsoft's 1P studios for a number of years, and there are very specific people these problems can be traced back to but almost never bear the brunt of deserved criticism. Coulda shoulda woulda is great and all, but The Initiative is a failure of a venture, because of lack of cohesion and poor leadership, a good chunk of that can be laid on the shoulders of Xbox division upper management, and Matt Booty.



No, it's not. But when you're a platform holder that has a known problem with division leadership, and have mostly produced substandard results over a course of several years, any further failures are going to be exacerbated. At this moment in time, The Initiative is a failed venture. The Perfect Dark we end up with could be something with nary a scrap of the original Initiative concept at play, so the bulk of that credit would go to Crystal Dynamics...who are not The Initiative.



Well apparently Jez Corden got a chance to play the game so is it far along or is it not? Has it been in the works for a while or has it not? If it hasn't, why let a media person play the game, then write up a fluff piece to get people hyped, then not even show off new gameplay (or at least what he played) at your latest Showcase?



Well at least we can agree on this part. Unfortunately for MS, most of their short-term upcoming releases are either extremely niche and won't have much individual appeal to benefit the platform, or in the case of Starfield, got hyped so hard that by the time it was shown, at least for me, was thoroughly disappointing for the most part.



Uh, what? I just mentioned Rare & Everwild, The Initiative & Perfect Dark, 343i & basically everything they've touched for the past five years. We can even bring up Playground and Fable to some extent; though that's a mostly well-oiled studio, such a sudden genre change is obviously causing headaches. They should've tried an open-world sci-fi futuristic racer instead, and maybe, y'know, have Obsidian take a crack at Fable? I'm just saying, if I were Matt Booty, that's probably what I would've encouraged, and just swap over some team members who'd want to work on whichever project in particular.

So yes, between that and other things like Hellblade II still with no real release date despite its prequel and HZD both releasing in 2017 (and HFW releasing this year), there are enough cases to suggest that there may be issues of poor management at the Xbox division when it comes to the games software.

A lot more opinions than facts there, fueled by a predetermined bias and a lot of imagination.

Again, the initiative was just formed 4 years ago and I think a certain amount of setup time is a given there before serious works starts. Again, they have released no games, so they have been neither a success or failure at this point. To even think that a brand new studio starting from scratch is somehow a mess because they didn't immediately drop a AAA game in 4yrs is beyond ridiculous. It took Interior Night about 5yrs to get As Dusk Falls out the door and that is a narrative experience with a smaller scope and without the same kind of level design/technology requirements. Games take time to build. Period. If you give them a couple years for proper studio setup, this game hasn't been in development for long. Do you ever ask yourself how many years of development occurred before you ever got a look at HFW? (hint it was more than 2 or 3)

Regarding Ninja Theory, I don't believe there is a law that says because Gorilla (a completely unrelated and irrelevant dev to the discussion at hand) went straight to work on a sequel that NT had to do the same. News flash, they didn't and their sequel was in "very early development" in Dec 19. How many years did Gorilla spend on HFW again? LOL If it isn't out over the next 2 years you can start to talk about it.

Rare is just a matter of opinion again, because we've heard nothing from them regarding management at MS being a problem for them creatively. While they did have hits under Nintendo it's important to note that they always liked to take risks and try new ideas, of which many didn't exactly light the sales charts on fire. Their release cadence has drastically slowed in recent years, but the same can be said for Rockstar and the majority of devs, the result of the increased time and money needed to build modern games and the fact that SoT is a GaaS game that has required a fair bit of attention after release.

To say that MS had over hyped Starfield before they showed it, when they had barely even talked about it before hand (in typical Bethesda fashion), what can you even say to that. I guess even a quick splash screen is too much hype from MS. LOL

And then you bring in Fable, a game that got a reveal trailer in 2020 that did nothing more than announce its existence. Also, a game that was actively still hiring for key positions after that CGI trailer was released. And now that is a problem because it didn't release less than two years later? That's a clown show level argument, nothing more can be said about that. Again, maybe the announcement was early, but let's be realistic the announcement was nothing more than letting the public know that Playground was making a Fable game, nothing more, nothing less.

Somehow you've built a narrative in your mind that makes it okay for Sony to take 5 or 6 years to release games but MS needs to push a much more aggressive schedule. MS did announce several projects much earlier on than Sony ever would, it's one thing to disagree with that choice. It's a completely different thing to complain about MS not releasing the finished games in the same time frame from these very early announcements as Sony typically would from their much later announcements.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

A lot more opinions than facts there, fueled by a predetermined bias and a lot of imagination.

Again, the initiative was just formed 4 years ago and I think a certain amount of setup time is a given there before serious works starts. Again, they have released no games, so they have been neither a success or failure at this point.

I think it's fair to say they're somewhat a failure because of the talent the studio had lined up at it, which was supposed to circumvent a lot of the usual problems with starting up new AAA studios. Turns out that doesn't work if you don't have cohesion, a unified vision and strong leadership along the chain.

To even think that a brand new studio starting from scratch is somehow a mess because they didn't immediately drop a AAA game in 4yrs is beyond ridiculous.

That's not the reason why; it's because of the other stuff I just mentioned

It took Interior Night about 5yrs to get As Dusk Falls out the door and that is a narrative experience with a smaller scope and without the same kind of level design/technology requirements. Games take time to build. Period. If you give them a couple years for proper studio setup, this game hasn't been in development for long.

I don't think As Dusk Falls is the best example to use here, because that game would've came off as underwhelming no matter when it released, releasing the way it did. I honestly thought those were still concept art pieces, not the final presentation of the game. Even with the last trailer, I kept asking "Where's the gameplay?". Well, that was the gameplay, little did I know.

More impressive games have been developed in a similar or shorter period of time than As Dusk Falls, honestly.

Do you ever ask yourself how many years of development occurred before you ever got a look at HFW? (hint it was more than 2 or 3)

I know that. But the bulk of HFW's work took place between 2017 and late 2021. That's about 4, maybe 4.5 years of the bulk of work. They probably started planning the game in 2016 so add another year to that, doing small pre-production during the tail end of HZD's development.

Hellblade was released in 2017, same year as HFW. Did Ninja Theory not conceptualize the game until 2019? What took them so long, then? Bleeding Edge?

Regarding Ninja Theory, I don't believe there is a law that says because Gorilla (a completely unrelated and irrelevant dev to the discussion at hand) went straight to work on a sequel that NT had to do the same. News flash, they didn't and their sequel was in "very early development" in Dec 19. How many years did Gorilla spend on HFW again? LOL If it isn't out over the next 2 years you can start to talk about it.

No, there isn't any such law, you're right about that. I'm just pointing out the difference in priorities between the two studios. Given what a nothingburger Bleeding Edge turned out to be, it really makes you wonder why Microsoft even kept that game going along in the first place and didn't terminate it. Why not encourage and help Ninja Theory move on to Hellblade II earlier if they obviously had an interest in doing so?

Also it's Guerrilla, not Gorilla.

Rare is just a matter of opinion again, because we've heard nothing from them regarding management at MS being a problem for them creatively.

Well they've had so much turnover over the past twenty years any employees who'd have such an issue likely didn't stay long enough to speak out about it

While they did have hits under Nintendo it's important to note that they always liked to take risks and try new ideas, of which many didn't exactly light the sales charts on fire. Their release cadence has drastically slowed in recent years, but the same can be said for Rockstar and the majority of devs, the result of the increased time and money needed to build modern games and the fact that SoT is a GaaS game that has required a fair bit of attention after release.

Bro, almost every game they put out on the N64 saw big sales, usually at least 2nd-biggest sales next to Nintendo's own games. Diddy Kong Racing, GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark...even if you want to break it down to just genre-specific stuff, Killer Instinct Gold was one of the best selling fighting games on N64, period. Don't even get me started with the DKC trilogy on SNES, the first game single-handedly helped the SNES finally pull ahead of Genesis in NA. That's selling power.

With Nintendo, during the SNES and N64 years Rare had way more hits than misses, and quite a number of games that helped push some aspect of the industry forward. They've had virtually none of that while under Microsoft, despite being with MS longer than they've been with Nintendo at this point. Going by frequency of releases is silly; sure R* have also scaled back their number of releases but look at the scale of what they've released. GTA V is an industry leader in open-world game design, let alone revenue and sales, and RDR2 set a new standard for visual fidelity and art design in open-world games.

What has Sea of Thieves been a leader in since release? Exactly.

To say that MS had over hyped Starfield before they showed it, when they had barely even talked about it before hand (in typical Bethesda fashion), what can you even say to that. I guess even a quick splash screen is too much hype from MS. LOL

So we're going to forget about the roundtables? The developer diaries? Do those not count as building up hype?

And then you bring in Fable, a game that got a reveal trailer in 2020 that did nothing more than announce its existence. Also, a game that was actively still hiring for key positions after that CGI trailer was released. And now that is a problem because it didn't release less than two years later? That's a clown show level argument, nothing more can be said about that. Again, maybe the announcement was early, but let's be realistic the announcement was nothing more than letting the public know that Playground was making a Fable game, nothing more, nothing less.

Then maybe they should've withheld announcing it too soon. MS already screwed up that May showcase earlier on by touting "gameplay" when there was very little if any actual gameplay there, certainly of anything running on a Series X. Then for their only actual gameplay at that June Showcase to be Halo Infinite, yeah, I think the fact practically everything else 1P-wise shown there was a CG trailer, left a sour taste in a lot of mouths.

If the Halo Infinite gameplay demo went off well, the abundance of CG trailers wouldn't have stood out. But it didn't, so they did. Too many games revealed too soon, that's my personal issue here.

Somehow you've built a narrative in your mind that makes it okay for Sony to take 5 or 6 years to release games but MS needs to push a much more aggressive schedule. MS did announce several projects much earlier on than Sony ever would, it's one thing to disagree with that choice. It's a completely different thing to complain about MS not releasing the finished games in the same time frame from these very early announcements as Sony typically would from their much later announcements.

Because Sony managed to begin improving their 1P output and exclusive games output in the late 2000s when Microsoft was cockblocking them from getting many of the big Western 3P exclusives and even preventing them from doing that for a lot of Japanese 3P games (tho in that case it was mostly thanks to 360 being wildly popular in the US & UK). Sony have earned the right to show CG trailers for big new games and take even 7 years to bring a game out such as the case with TLOU Part 2. Even then, though, they can overdo it sometimes; I think the time between them showing off Dreams and actually bringing it out was criminal. That was a mistake, hopefully they never reveal something so early ever again.

Microsoft...have not earned that right, that patience and leniency with most gamers yet. This doesn't have anything to do with games taking 5-6 years btw; for AAA that's expected. The problem is it became pretty evident during mid 2020 (before the Zenimax announcement) and early 2021 that MS still didn't do much in the way of securing any big 3P AAA exclusives (timed or full), and had a majority of new 1P AAA games not Halo/Gears/Forza in the over that wouldn't see release until 2022 or (as it turned out) even later. Microsoft lapsed to the point of letting that gap create itself in their release schedule, when they didn't have to.

 

[DaGwaphics]

@ thicc_girls_are_teh_best end results are what matters, your personal opinions of the functionality/capabilities of management and the developers in between conception and release is absolutely meaningless. Companies are free to do different things, MS was announcing very early, Sony was not, not much of discussion there. I don't like the extremely early announcements either, but it doesn't say much about the management or developers there, just a different style.

The baseless and completely subjective opinions on Rare and the rest brought forward in the last post aren't even worth commenting on, tbh.

Laughable to say they sat idly by in regards to 1st party output, this thread wouldn't exist if that were the case. They've taken steps to permanently correct the problem, it just takes a bit of time.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one. </discussion>

 

[Jimmyisback]

Its probably already been done. Just waiting for abk acquisition to finish.

 

[Bergoglio]

Capcom is the next.