The state of Microsoft's 1st/2nd party

[Bitmap Frogs]

makingmusic476 said:

Bitmap Frogs said:

Legend11 said:

Next about the rumors of either Rare or Lionhead closing. Microsoft executives have stated that neither in in danger of being closed. There has been absolutely no credible information backing any claims to the contrary so unless the people making such claims want to step up and show us proof it's basically FUD nonsense.

 

I so wish dox or gtfo was enforced here =D

Anyways spreading rumors that Lionhead is closing is silly considering every game they've made has been a box office success. Fable 2 will break half million worldwide first week.

edit: the reason MS didn't buy Bizarre or Bioware... well there are many reasons but the main one is that buying studios is incredibly risky. The IP's hold value up to a certain extent but it's the talent that's worth the money. How much did EA pay for the slew of studios they bought in the 90's? All those IP's aren't worth a dime anymore and the talent is gone.

They are doing the smart thing: building their own studios (we know that they have at least one full fledged studio building right now) and funding for publishing rights the best they can find around (gears, mass effect, alan wake...).

 

EA treated studios like crap in the 90s.  Buying studios isn't much of a risk so long as the studio is great, they don't mind being bought, and you treat them well after the acquisition.

The talent didn't walk out after Sony bought Naughty Dog or Zipper, or after Microsoft bought Ensemble or Bungie, did it?

 

But the risk is high. Bungie eventually walked out the door and some of sony's investments didn't pan out neither. The former Psygnosis has been reduced to a F1 yearly game farm (let's see, now that sony lost the licesense they might be given some leeway to try new things) and the teams behind the getaway and eight days... well you know the story. The point is that you don't need to treat them like crap to drown the potential creativity and innovation from a studio and that's why dumping massive dollars into buying teams is a risky strategy. Owning a large farm of first party teams is not the only option and not necessarily the best option to build that bunch of head-turning exclusives a console needs.

Microsoft's strategy of funding cherrypicked projects has the same potential of producing great games for its userbase but without the huge sunk costs that come with a team buyout. Mind you, this also has it's own slew of risks but the whole "omgomgomg microsoft has no first party lolololol" is just a fruitless discussion born only from the desire to bash whatever microsoft does. It's SDF at its best.