TheBigFatJ said:
I support your basic idea, but this is just wrong. MGS has nothing to do with Halo, Gears, Fable or Mass Effect. Lionhead is a second party company to Microsoft. But Bungie, Epic and Bioware are all third party. They are not associated with Microsoft Game Studios. |
Halo: IP owned by Microsoft, so they choose which developers and which games come out when. They got Ensemble, their first party studio under MGS brand, to make Halo Wars. They got Bungie, now an independent developer, but there are MGS staff working on Halo 3: ODST. They are making other unannounced games, most notably Peter Jackson, Ryan Payton and Gearbox (rumour) + MGS staff. MGS has everything to do with Halo's future.
Gears: IP owned by Epic but published by Microsoft and all indications clearly show it will continue and stay on 360. I would say 30% of team behind Gears 2 is MGS financed, including almost all the QA and marketing team. Just look at Gears 2 credits in the manual. There is a whole page with all MGS names. Admittedly, MS or Epic can decide to pull out of Gears partnership and pull out their MGS staff but this would be one of the stupidest moves in gaming history seeing its selling crazy on the 360.
Fable: IP owned by Microsoft and Lionhead Studios is paid under MGS. Again, whole page full of MGS staff in Fable 2 manual so MGS has say in future development and control on future publishing i.e. when and what comes out. Lionhead is as much second party as Insomniac, Naughty Dog is to Sony - but ultimately Sony and the developer need to agree on when what comes out.
Mass Effect: IP owned by BioWare (I think) but all indications point towards a trilogy on 360 with MGS staff working on it. Mass Effect manual has MGS staff again here. The biggest indicator on prolonged MGS involvement is the fact that BioWare spokesman has asked gamers to retain their savefiles for ME1 to use in ME2 and will use the same assets/scenarios. This indicates using the same teams and platform exclusitivity. Admittedly this is the weakest involvement of MS but still, no big evidence to say otherwise.
