Microsoft rumoured to purchase Obsidian Entertainment

[bananaking21]

Carl said:

JRPGfan said: 

Creative freedom is just a PR buzzword for Xbox, reality doesnt seem to line up with their words.

Look at rare.... all the creative freedom in the world... and they choose to make a cheap games as a service, mmo like game?
I doubt buy that for a secound, MS told them they had to do such and such, and the result is sea of theives.

Same with Fable.... they wanted to do a normal fable game, but MS got them makeing a games as a service moba,....
and resulted in MS closeing down the studio.

MS doesnt seem to trust studios with creative freedom.

Can you provide any sources for that, regarding Sea of Thieves?

actually yes

"Phil Harrison’s vision for all of his studios in Europe was now for service-based games. That’s what he thought was the future of games."

this is from the story about how lionhead closed, but its clear they wanted their games to be service based, and that applied to rare games as well. the writing is on the wall. 

 

also

"But according to Kotaku UK's sources, the project -- initially pitched as a "medium-scale game, a AA game""

thats more evidence that MS didnt want big budgets on these games

 

link

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/274665/Why_Lionhead_sank_beneath_the_weight_of_Fable_Legends.php