Obsidian and inXile acquired by Microsoft

[SpaceWizardz]

or find employment elsewhere. But where would that be?

He visited Warhorse a week ago.
That could go either way, but it gives FreeKaner an excuse to write more fanfiction.

 

[Diablo169]

Upon reflection now we ultimately get to find out what's more important for Obsidian's success. Money or talent. I'd wager from the Codex perspective it will be the later, from the general gaming public's perspective?

This was announced at a show where Microsoft had paid thousands of Mexican "fans" to stand there and whoop and cheer, while they announced very little.

 

[Mightmagic]

Oh man, to be bundled up with inXile, that must've hurt.

Lionhead, Westwood, Ensemble.. Obsidian+inXile.. Pandemic

Anyway, looking forward to their ground-breaking mobile games.

Westwood belonged to EA, not microsoft.

 

[Ismaul]

MEAcrosoft.

 

[theSavant]

inXile aqcuired by Microsoft? Whew... maybe this should have happened earlier. Maybe then Microsoft would have sent some quality inspector to the production of Bard's Tale 4. I mean... it couldn't have been worse than what inXile delivered.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

No, the answer is that there are countless quantifiable benefits of tapping into structures and resources of a large parent corporation that might result in making a better game. Might. Or might not.

Might? Definetely not. They will be able to afford the luxury of better graphics and bigger teams, but everything else, from writing, to combat and itemization, will be worse. This is clear as the light of the day. They will make popamole games. If you are into that, that's good news for you.

Just like your many considerable talents once resulted in AoD which I consider the best RPG since Arcanum, and once they resulted in Dungeon Rats which I uninstalled after 30 minutes.

The first hour is indeed a drag, but it doesn't do it justice. The game catches up afterwards and is surprisingly good.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Oh man, to be bundled up with inXile, that must've hurt.

Lionhead, Westwood, Ensemble.. Obsidian+inXile.. Pandemic

Anyway, looking forward to their ground-breaking mobile games.

Westwood belonged to EA, not microsoft.

Pandemic and Westwood were EA.
Somebody is getting their corporate overlords mixed up.

 

[GrainWetski]

inXile aqcuired by Microsoft? Whew... maybe this should have happened earlier. Maybe then Microsoft would have sent some quality inspector to the production of Bard's Tale 4. I mean... it couldn't have been worse than what inXile delivered.

Bard's Tale 4 would've been cancelled by Microsoft the second they realized it wasn't a sequel to the Xbox game.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Microsoft owned Obsidian/Inxlile games compared independent Obsidina/Inxlie games will be what Fallout 3 was to Fallout 1/2 and will people will LOVE it - huge sales and gamejournalist scores inbound.

 

[Atlantico]

Interesting times. Can't say it was a surprise, there have been rumors for months, but still.

We won't see the fruit of this "partnership" for some time, but I look forward to seeing what happens. I agree with Perkel that this is Netflixing computer games and that will certainly open up room for niche games.

Cautiously optimistic.

 

[Reinhardt]

Fabulously optimistic.

fixed

 

[TemplarGR]

I see a lot of hate for Pillars of Eternity and i do not understand it, seriously. Both were good games. Unless you believe all the critical acclaim they got was because Obsidian had large amounts of money to bribe 100s of critics on metacritic...

There is a reason why PoE II failed to sell, and it is not marketing, it is something that flies over the heads of even industry veterans for some odd reason... Perhaps developers like Chris Avellone should stop thinking as developers and think from a modern average (non codex-circlejerk) crpg gamer's perspective, maybe they will understand better:

1) There is a huge market saturation for isometric crpgs. This type of games is not your typical pixel-art 2D platform indie or your typical AAA popamoler, install, instantly play for 30 minutes, quit. These games take tens or hundreds of hours to complete, and need preparation from gamers to learn their combat systems and immerse themselves in their worlds. You can't just fire them up for 10 minutes between your responsibilities and then quit them, they don't work that way. You need uninterrupted game time to FOCUS on playing them, and you need a lot of it.

So when the crowdfunding era released tens of crpgs we had a playtime problem. 3 Shadowrun games, 2 PoE games, 2 DOS games, Pathfinder Kingmaker, Wasteland 2, Tyranny, Torment Tides of Numenera, all the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions, Neverwinter NightsEE, Age of Decadence, Dungeon Rats, Underrail, Witcher 3 (not isometric/indie but still mustplay and HUGE), Bard's Tale IV, Tower of Time, Legend of Grimrock 1&2 and others... I have to ask, how much time a 20-30-40something has to play games in this day and age? Add all the playtime required for a single playthrough for these games... No one can play them all. And that is assuming a player wants to play only crpgs and nothing else, for example i, a modded Skyrim fanatical and huge 4X/Grand Strategy lover, would have an even larger playtime issue... And let's not forget that each of these games has a different gameplay system so you have to learn and adopt to them all...

2) Gamers that used to LOVE the 90s era of RPG gaming are now at least in their 30s with responsibilities. Modern kids and teens never knew the golden era and they are not accustomed to isometric crpgs. Younger gamers tend to play what their peers play, Battle Royale games, MOBAs, Call of Duty, AAA games. It is very hard to catch their interest with crowdfunded games. So the first problem gets even bigger...

3) For Pillars of Eternity II in particular, i believe the biggest problem was how they handled the original game. At release it was incomplete and quite frankly broken. They severely patched it the following months and released 2 expansions for it and to be honest the current full game is much better than 3 years ago. But when PoE II was announced they also announced 3 expansions that would arrive in the following 6 months after release, plus there were reports for bugs, again... So what incentive a PoE I player had to buy PoE II at release, knowing that he was better off just waiting for a discounted bundle with the expansions and the game ridden of bugs and FINALIZED?

With all this time CRPGs demand from players, multiple playthroughs are most of the time out of the question. So i wouldn't want to play PoE II vanilla + bugs at release, only to have to re-play it again after they patch it and release 3 expansions... So i was in no rush to buy it until now. Hence the low sales figures...

 

[Cross]

Well, what is the worst that could come of this? It's not as if Obsidian and InXile were in the process of making good games that Microsoft could cancel before they are finish-

 

[Mortmal]

I see a lot of hate for Pillars of Eternity and i do not understand it, seriously. Both were good games. Unless you believe all the critical acclaim they got was because Obsidian had large amounts of money to bribe 100s of critics on metacritic...

Look at kingmaker and see what was possible and what they did with a small part of POE budget.You will understand the hate was justified. Now kingmaker is a bugfest and released is an unacceptable state, but if they had the same amount of time and budget, things could be very different.
We aren't that picky we want good pen and paper adaptation, some material to sperg builds, and great story telling. Its something that is possible and not so expensive to make. A new gold box game done by inxile, not a remaster, but something done with the quality of bard's tale remaster would be very satisfying too.
So they keep ignoring what we want, the hate is clearly warranted.

 

[Turjan]

I was busy with other stuff and completely missed this. Exciting! Now we can finally get the Minecraft RPG we deserve. I suggest a Choplifter reskin with some dialog cutscenes to get the ball rolling.

What about the Codex? Will this become an official Microsoft fansite? How are the negotiations going?

 

[TemplarGR]

Look at kingmaker and see what was possible and what they did with a small part of POE budget.You will understand the hate was justified. Now kingmaker is a bugfest and released is an unacceptable state, but if they had the same amount of time and budget, things could be very different.
We aren't that picky we want good pen and paper adaptation, some material to sperg builds, and great story telling. Its something that is possible and not so expensive to make. A new gold box game done by inxile, not a remaster, but something done with the quality of bard's tale remaster would be very satisfying too.
So they keep ignoring what we want, the hate is clearly warranted.

Actually, if you include the fact that Russian development costs are much lower than american, i believe the budget was higher for Kingmaker... It is the same reason CD Project Red was able to create so much quality content for Witcher 3 for just 75 million while GTA V with lesser content needed at least double that...

 

[Syme]

 

[Wunderbar]

Oh man, to be bundled up with inXile, that must've hurt.

Lionhead, Westwood, Ensemble.. Obsidian+inXile.. Pandemic

Anyway, looking forward to their ground-breaking mobile games.

Westwood belonged to EA, not microsoft.

Pandemic too.

 

[Bocian]

The future of RPGs is so bright.

 

[Delterius]

that 'memecenter' watermark is the real crime ITT

 

[Latelistener]

 

[TT1]

So now Codex is blacklisted at Microsoft?

 

[Turisas]

 

[Latelistener]

these kind of purchase agreements are usually 6 months+ with 6 months being the bare minimum

You're saying that you knew about the deal 6+ months ago?

 

[Ulfhednar]

these kind of purchase agreements are usually 6 months+ with 6 months being the bare minimum

You're saying that you knew about the deal 6+ months ago?

Conveniently coincides with May 2018 release of PoE 2