Obsidian and inXile acquired by Microsoft

[IHaveHugeNick]

People are being all excited about this. It's amazing how brainwashed by corporations people are. Remember how everyone was rightfully horrified about EA buying BioWare back in the day?

Except this is entirely different, do you think they're buying InXile to make AAA corridor-shooters? Even good ol' Steve Ballmer wasn't that crazy.

Microsoft are going all in on the GamePass , and for that to work they need it filled with as big variety of content and genres. I'd expect InXile will keep doing what they do, while Obsidian might get to make high budget popamole RPGs while churning out Pillars sequels on the side.

It might work, it might not, but one thing we all realize is that the whole 'revival era' has mostly been a financial failure and was doomed to die out sooner rather later. Now at least maybe they'll have a fighting chance.

 

[Mark Richard]

'Microsoft today announced the acquisition of two heavy-hitters in the RPG gaming world, namely inXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment. And there was much rejoicing

Microsoft stresses that both studios will remain autonomous. What this means for gamers remains to be seen, Microsoft’s publishing arm has a reputation for enabling studios without squashing creativity'

What are they on about? After the MS acquisition, Lionhead became the Fable studio exclusively. MS had Rare make Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, then put them to work making Xbox Avatars for the next ten years.

 

[glass blackbird]

What the fuck is Microsoft trying to pull with this? What value added are they hoping for? This is just idiotic from a business standpoint, even if they are doing this only to try to make windows store appealing.

Fargo must be laughing all the way to the bank. The greatest trick he ever pulled.

MS needs more big names and exclusive titles to sell xbox hardware. Not sure InXile counts for the first, but at minimum, MS should get some games out of these two acquisitions that they can add to a list of exclusives for PC/Xbox and convince people to buy a new console.

The actual quality of the games is less important upfront than having them at all to help sell their hardware.

Wastelands 2 had an Xbox port, right? Maybe it sold better on consoles than we thought? That'd make things a little more understandable.

 

[Nano]

People are being all excited about this. It's amazing how brainwashed by corporations people are. Remember how everyone was rightfully horrified about EA buying BioWare back in the day?

Except this is entirely different, do you think they're buying InXile to make AAA corridor-shooters? Even good ol' Steve Ballmer wasn't that crazy.

Microsoft are going all in on the GamePass , and for that to work they need it filled with as big variety of content and genres. I'd expect InXile will keep doing what they do, while Obsidian might get to make high budget popamole RPGs while churning out Pillars sequels on the side.

AAA corridor shooters > Netflix for video games

 

[rusty_shackleford]

People are being all excited about this. It's amazing how brainwashed by corporations people are. Remember how everyone was rightfully horrified about EA buying BioWare back in the day?

EA is known for buying companies to obtain their IPs and destroying the company.

Microsoft? Not so much. Especially considering they own two of the major gaming platforms and would benefit heavily from good exclusives.
Just a few months ago they acquired 4 other video game companies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undead_Labs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Theory

Seems more likely that Microsoft will just inject them with cash and tell them to do their thing.

 

[BEvers]

Perhaps BT4 flopped so hard that Fargo had to sell, and Microsoft couldn't turn down buying inXile for a fraction of the price of Obsidian

 

[cruelio]

brian fargo ran interplay interplay into the ground making terrible decisions including trying to ride the early cinematic and art game wave that helped kill old style crpgs. he then made nothing but garbage at inxile right from the beginning when all it had made was cell phone shovelware and a truly terrible ps2 bards tale game. he shows up and literally scams kickstarter with his terrible games that are so bad i can safely say it's a mystery where the millions of dollars went. like you can think pillars of eternity is shit but you can tell they spent money on those games and tried, compared that to wasteland 2 that looks worse than russian shovelware from ten years prior. and now his garbage company is bought out just when people are catching on to what a fraud fargo is and no one is buying his shit games. i'm legitimately upset.

 

[Nryn]

I'm trying to think of other crpg devs in America who can pick up the slack ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ if Obsidian and InXile are eventually told by their corporate master to chase after the latest mainstream trends... and I'm drawing a blank.

Surely Vogel is not the last man standing, is he?

 

[Mustawd]

All this talk about infinite resources.

Someone needs to recut the video to show Feargus saying "We can just call up an expert at microsoft and ask 'can you make great games?' "

 

[glass blackbird]

I'm trying to think of other crpg devs in America who can pick up the slack ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ if Obsidian and InXile are eventually told by their corporate master to chase after the latest mainstream trends... and I'm drawing a blank.

Surely Vogel is not the last man standing, is he?

Jeff Vogel is making a crafting RPG based on base-building and minecraft

 

[Nano]

People are being all excited about this. It's amazing how brainwashed by corporations people are. Remember how everyone was rightfully horrified about EA buying BioWare back in the day?

EA is known for buying companies to obtain their IPs and destroying the company.

Microsoft? Not so much. Especially considering they own two of the major gaming platforms and would benefit heavily from good exclusives.
Just a few months ago they acquired 4 other video game companies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsion_Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undead_Labs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Theory

Seems more likely that Microsoft will just inject them with cash and tell them to do their thing.

Both EA and Microsoft are various degrees of terrible. Enjoy your UWP-bound Netflix games, bootlickers.

 

[BEvers]

I'm trying to think of other crpg devs in America who can pick up the slack ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ if Obsidian and InXile are eventually told by their corporate master to chase after the latest mainstream trends... and I'm drawing a blank.

Surely Vogel is not the last man standing, is he?

Beamdog, Bioware, Stoic, Whalenought....

Laidlaw and Gaider might found a new studio too.

 

[Tenebris]

You've gotta be shitting me. Are we gonna get 30 fps cinematic Pillars and Torment games now?

 

[glass blackbird]

Personally I'm excited for Obsidian's Halos of Eternity starring Master Chief and Cortana

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Who are inXile and who is Brian Fargo?

 

[Diablo169]

Chris Avellone Could we get your thoughts on this when possible please?

 

[deuxhero]

At this point, nothing of value was lost.

 

[Fairfax]

Microsoft? Not so much.

They destroyed Rare, Ensemble, and Lionhead. New management now and all that, but their record is very far from clean.

 

[LESS T_T]

Extended version of inXile video:

Could not be happier to continue bringing you RPGs for many years to come!

 

[santino27]

F

It's okay to spell out the word.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'd say "It's dead, Jim!", but it's really been dead for a couple of years now.

 

[Haba]

Oh hi there boys!

 

[BEvers]

Extended version of inXile video:

So Microsoft heavily cut Fargo's announcement speech, while giving Obsidian more then double the time.

 

[Delterius]

Interplay is back together baby

They should totally buy the Interplay trademark from Herve and use it as a title for the new inXile-Obsidian RPG division.

they should probably just charge Herve to take interplay off his hands

 

[Tigranes]

People are being all excited about this. It's amazing how brainwashed by corporations people are. Remember how everyone was rightfully horrified about EA buying BioWare back in the day?

Except this is entirely different, do you think they're buying InXile to make AAA corridor-shooters? Even good ol' Steve Ballmer wasn't that crazy.

Microsoft are going all in on the GamePass , and for that to work they need it filled with as big variety of content and genres. I'd expect InXile will keep doing what they do, while Obsidian might get to make high budget popamole RPGs while churning out Pillars sequels on the side.

It might work, it might not, but one thing we all realize is that the whole 'revival era' has mostly been a financial failure and was doomed to die out sooner rather later. Now at least maybe they'll have a fighting chance.

Yeah. Basically,

(1) Obsidian was doomed to either bankruptcy or buyout at some point, from Day 1. Build up a 100-200 person company making kind-of-~AA budget RPGs and stay independent? It's a miracle they stayed alive over a decade (and we know they were very close to not making it that long). A buyout was always coming, even before MCA's comments about how the founders were really keen on it.

(2) Usually the worry is that a company's signature style and creative direction will be lost with a takeover. But Obsidian's signature style already evaporated after FNV, and little trace of it can be found today - so that boat has already sailed.