Company News RPGPOCALYPSE: Obsidian and inXile have been acquired by Microsoft

[BEvers]

Maybe they bought inXile to explore the potential of their VR battle royale game. That could definitely be turned into AAA material.

 

[V_K]

They probably just want more Demon's Forge.

 

[JarlFrank]

I really really hope this doesn't mean that future Obsidian and inXile titles will be Windows 10 exclusive, because I refuse to "upgrade" to that piece of shit system.

 

[Azalin]

I really really hope this doesn't mean that future Obsidian and inXile titles will be Windows 10 exclusive, because I refuse to "upgrade" to that piece of shit system.

Yeah, I am sure MS spent all that money to buy Obsidian,Inxile and all those studios they bought a few months ago in E3 so that Gaben and Sony can take a piece of the pie...Titles like W3 will be ok and perhaps the Cain-Boyarsky project since there is a contract with Take Two but future titles will be Gamepass/Win10/Xbox exclusives.
PS4 easily beat Xbone in the exclusives department and it looks like they are trying to change that when the next gen comes out.

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

Interested to see what this brings to the table. Fargo's better as a middleman and Feargus' chubby backside can get the boot if it talks too much, and I will be sincerely impressed if anything worse than Tides (the brown standard) comes out of this.

If nothing else, it'll be entertaining to watch their supporters wail. "Publishers ruin everything!"

Ha-ha-ha.

What comes after they dissolve? Another wave of 'indie' kickstarter madness? History repeats itself.

 

[Shaewaroz]

You guys still remember this little video? Can you spot the sellout?



Hint: The boy is Microsoft.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Do cracked copies of Windows Store exclusive games still need to be running on W10 to work? I recall people saying Halo 2's Vista requirement was easy to get rid of.

 

[Zeriel]

Does he win the best AA RPG developer competition by default as his opponents disappeared?

The Chad AA developer who gets to move into AAA funding by virtue of selling lots of games vs. the Virgin Failures who get bought out by a mega corporation. It's poetic, really.

I really wish Cain & Boyarsky weren't at Obsidian, it makes me conflicted. If they weren't there I'd happily wish for Obsidian to go down in flames tomorrow, Fearghus is just too easy to loathe.

So Boyarsky escaped the creative hell that was Blizzard only to be thrust into an even deeper hole.

gg well played

Based on what's been happening with Diablo Immortal, it's entirely possible he saw the writing on the wall with Blizzard shuttering Diablo as a PC focused franchise, or was even asked to shift to mobile himself. Not sure which is the worse place to be at this point, honestly. Probably still Blizzard is better because of job security and pay.

 

[theSavant]

Maybe with the Microsoft money inXile can fix BT4 now...well, probably not.

flabulously floptimistic

 

[Diggfinger]

Interesting. Brian seems content, and Feargus gets "happy every time he thinks about it". What's not to like?

Let's see if we can get a classic from Boyarsky and Cain, and maybe a cool (Darklands 2) game from Sawyer?

 

[Shaewaroz]

I really really hope this doesn't mean that future Obsidian and inXile titles will be Windows 10 exclusive, because I refuse to "upgrade" to that piece of shit system.

 

[Bohr]

Maybe with the Microsoft money inXile can fix BT4 now...well, probably not.

flabulously floptimistic

Going to wait and see before just writing this off, a couple of Patch Tuesdays and it could be in good shape

 

[Prime Junta]

This reminds me of when Microsoft bought the phone business from Nokia.

That turned out well.

Edit: What happened to Brian's upper lip? There seems to be some kind of mold on it.

 

[empathymachine]

The only good thing that may come out of this (apart from the staff getting paid on time I guess) is that Feargus' mismanagement and nepotism will face a dramatic backlash from the corporate rats faster than he expressed his excitement for joining the great "Microsoft's family" in the Obsidian's shill "special announcement" video, lol.

 

[Outlander]

But what does this mean for Robot Cache???

 

[set]

Microsoft realizes they need some first parties. That's all this is. I hope they got them for cheap.
You can expect Obsidian and inXile to churn out console-focused RPGs for the next few years before being laid to rest.
The most I can hope for is Obsidian gets a hold of a good M$ franchise and does SOMETHING with i

 

[Zeriel]

The most I can hope for is Obsidian gets a hold of a good M$ franchise and does SOMETHING with i

Oh no looks like the lithuanian hitmen got h

 

[Rahdulan]

Does he win the best AA RPG developer competition by default as his opponents disappeared?

He at least had the balls to self-publish. Reading his blog has definitely been enlightening and you understand why a studio would opt out of that even if they have to give certain percentage to the publishers. I guess he learned his lesson for DOS2 unless it was a strictly distribution deal, though.

 

[Country_Gravy]

I wish I was more upset about this.

This pretty much summed it up for me. At first I thought, "Oh no!" but then I realized that i never finished W2 or PoE and BTIV was only worth the $20 Kickstarter because of the remakes.

I don't really care about this. Would like to know how much they paid for them. Maybe buried somewhere in their next earnings report?

 

[Alpharius]

Eagerly anticiapting free to play "Wasteland: The card game" windows-mobile exclusive.

 

[Tovias]

Big oof for Obsidian, but seeing how all their attempts at doing their own shit tends to back fire, maybe having some big boy at the reins will help them. I mean, people treat FNV and KOTOR2 as their best games and those sure as hell weren't examples of Obsidian being independent.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I wish I could feel bad about this but, after making sure it isn't actually the 1st April, I don't really care. Obsidian has been on a long slide into irrelevancy for a decade, punctuated by the brief hope of PoE, and inXile is a jumped up mobile developer with no idea how to make an RPG.

TimCain , GTF out and resurrect Troika. You know you want to.

 

[Theldaran]

I think MS will be happy if inXile and Obsidian deliver future exclusives that sell as much as Ni no Kuni and Dragon Quest on PS4. Prior to this, they didn't have anything like that.

There are some people who deeply hate JRPGs/all things Japanese/typical grinding, so there's a lot of market for WRPGs.

It can be either the most terrible train wreck ever, or a rennaissance for Obsidian, particularly. Myself, I just think that the creative spirit within Obsidian has gone dry some time ago. So maybe they sell, but they won't probably do something really great.

 

[Mortmal]

With Inxile and obsidian now dead , ceres is more relevant than before back this : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ceresgames/realms-beyond-ashes-of-the-fallen

 

[Invictus]

All kidding asides guys, what the fuck was Microsoft thinking? Actually I can get the InXile purchase to a certain extent; Fargo makes for a pretty good snake oil salesman, Wasteland 3 could get some decent backing and turn into “their” Fallout and overall the level of credibility wasn’t too bad.... I actually liked both W2 and BT4 but Obsidian? Even if it was dirty cheap their IPs are nothing and unless the Cain Boyarski game is something truly the level of a Hellblade or they just want to have plenty of $30 games on their Microsoft stores it just doesn’t make much sense
I actually like Fargo and I think it could help them a lot but after all the MCA dirty on Fergus I sort of feel like he won, all the bullshit and underhanded shit worked for him and here is his payday
I truly hope that Sawyer gets the fuck out of there, he doesn’t deserve to be making Minecraft addons