Microsoft rumoured to purchase Obsidian Entertainment

[LMU Uncle Alfred]

Farsala said:

shikamaru317 said:

Well, since you seem to want to dig up the past, Sony has closed 7 studios over the years while MS has closed 9, that's not a big difference at all. If you look at the last 10 years, Sony has closed 6 while MS has only closed 4.

7 Studios in 24 years vs 9 in 17 years hmmm.

We also have to look at the quality of the closed studios.

Sony:

989- Sports and Twisted Metal similar to XSN

BigBig- Worthless

Guerilla Cambridge-  Medievil and small games

Contrail- JRPG and technically just absorbed and not defunct

Evolution- Racing

Incognito- After 989 closed they continued Twisted Metal

Liverpool- Racing

Zipper- Socom

MS:

Aces- Hard to say how important the closure of this studio is, but their games definitely have a rich legacy.

Digital Anvil- Worthless

Ensemble- Legendary game developer of RTS series Age of Empires and Age of Mythology

FASA- Mechassault and Mechwarrior, one of my favorite Xbox games

Hired Gun- Port / worthless

Lionhead- Fable, and Black & White. Quite a good studio.

MS Japan- A studio in Japan is pretty important imo, but they didn't do too well.

Press Play- not much pedigree.

XSN Sports- Similar to 989 with sports titles.

 

So Sony shuts down some racing studios, Twisted Metal devs, and some worthless studios as well as a decent developer or 2.

While in my view MS shuts down a legendary developer, and 2 or 3 good devs as well as some worthless developers and in much less time. And that is not mentioning the deal with Bungie and shutting down their creative freedom, as well as mediocre Rare (with which both were legendary developers in the past).

 

It's more than just this.  Platinum games almost bit the bullet after they put in work for their Scalebound project only to have it cancelled. Luckily SE saved them with Nier Automata.  Speaking of FF, after Mistwalker tried their hand at being an exclusive Japanese developer with MS, the father of FF: Hironobu Sakaguchi has yet to make a single game on par with any of the amazing games he oversaw before this partnership.  After this stint he went to the Wii with The Last Story and now just silence.    I'd be surprised to see if Mistwalker was still around doing anything console related.

 

There's just not much hope with MS if you don't want to risk getting hurt in some way; Successful or not that successful of a developer.  It's like they want results now without giving many of them much of a chance.  They have more than enough money to throw down a hole.  That's where you gotta start with new IPs.