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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Microsoft is investing in their first party studios like never before.

epicberserk on 05 December 2011
D-Joe said:
crissindahouse said:

btw if microsoft wants to have a top developer they should buy epic games. not only are their games from high quality, they have the unreal engine, the most succesful engine overall ( i believe)

maybe they could force other developers to prefer the next xbox with "their" engine then. engine for free but the game has to be time exclusive or so^^

as in my other reply said,they will buy one in Feb~March if MS made it

 

bigger than TP or RedLynx,but not publisher level

developed some creative games

he didn't told me which one actaully(guess because NDA) but i start to thinking maybe it's Harmonix

 


if it was harmonix would make sense for dance central being their top selling kinect game , and always demoed rock band at past e3 since the first one



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epicberserk on 05 December 2011
TadpoleJackson said:
Lostplanet22 said:
investments are always positive but MS's history is not helping. No more Bungie, Fucking up Rare, Closing Ensemble, losing the partnership with bioware and Team Ninja. This generation started good but ends like an dissapointment, not only in the amount of exclusives but also in the quality of the exclusives except turn ten;..but they are cursed and have problems selling their game.


Wooh! 

 

According to an interview in OXM if MS hadn't let Bungie leave the top brass of Bungie would have quit anyways taking a lot of people with them. Bungie would have been more or less dead anyways. The devs at Bungie wanted to be independent. 

Rare has made the most games I have enjoyed this gen. None other developer has come close. 

Ensemble was losing money. It's a business. If something isn't earning money you do something to change it. They probably saw that they would get the same benefits of having Ensemble go 3rd party(robot) without any of the cons.

iirc Bioware was a package deal with the crappy Pandemic. I don't care how good Bioware is it wouldn't have been a smart investment at $860Million. Plus I would have lost one of my favorite PC developers 

What were they supposed to do with Team Ninja? They are already owned by Tecmo after they lost Itigaki it was pretty much over :3 


but microsoft does have a big portion of  ex pandemic employees 20 i believe or could be more then that



Legend11 on 05 December 2011
usrevenge said:
its very well possible that MS is focusing all their first party devs on games for the nextbox, which is honestly the only hope for the system... if there is a bad launch for the nextbox PS4 will surely take the cake for hardcore gamers. which sucks for me because they will surely use the PS3 controller and my god its terrible.

The Playstation brand name is no longer what it once was, especially in markets like the United States, so if anything the next Xbox launch will be much more successful than the 360's. 



Scoobes on 05 December 2011
yo_john117 said:
Scoobes said:
yo_john117 said:
Lucas-Rio said:
Mr Puggsly said:
Lucas-Rio said:
Microsoft has by far the worst first and second party studio among the 3 manufacturer.

They don't care about developping games. They closed their best studio, Ensemble Studio without any reason. They turned Rare into a joke.

It will take a very long time until they are taken seriously as a developper.

Nonsense, Halo a lone puts them over Sony in my book.

They closed down Ensemble because they didn't need them. Ensemble's best days were behind them. If MS feels the need to put out more strategy games I'm sure Robot Entertainment would be glad to help.

Rare has played a pretty big roll in the 360 appealing to casual audiences. Something PS3 has been struggling to do. So I'd hardly say Rare is a joke.

It only takes one great game to be taken as a serious develeloper.

Rare is a joke. They went from an universally acclaimed  developper on Suoer Nintendo and Nintendo 64 to a very average developper to xobox, to a bad developper to Xbox 360.Now they are done. They are doing some Wii sport copies that any studio could do. They are dead.

Halo is a big franchise, but Bungie is not even with Microsoft anymore. And the diversity of Sony developpers annilates Microsoft.

Ensemble Studio was better than any studio Microsoft still has. The way they threated them was digusting. They forced them to make a dumbed down RTS for 8 years olds kids (Halo wars) then they closed them eventough it outsold pretty much all of the Rare shovelwares titles.

That's is completely wrong. The best studio MS has is 343 Studios.

Err... haven't they only made 1 game that's a remake of the original Halo? Not that they won't produce excellent game in future (considerring the talent there it seems likely), but they're still unproven when it comes to original products.

Yep they've done the Halo remake and the second Halo Reach map pack (which was so much better than Bungie's 1st map pack for Reach), they are most likely going to make MS the most money since Halo 4 is going to be just massive (and who knows what else they are going to do), and they have some of the best devs from around the world. If you don't think they are the best surely you would agree they have by far the most potential.

They definately have the most potential but that doesn't always translate to great games; it's dependent on how the whole team works together. They're unproven when it comes to releasing original titles but all the signs are good so far.




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epicberserk on 05 December 2011
fastyxx said:
D-Joe said:
Seece said:

Lionhead working on a NON Fable game? Hell has frozen over!!!

I think they should buy Ruffian, beef it up there, and give them more dev time. Crackdown was competant but C2 sucked (mainly cos it had like 7 month dev time) so I think they're capable of a great game, nothing AAA though ...

Remedy, no brainer for me .... also Harmonix. And Double Fine. All other ones they should buy.

Ruffian developing a Microsft publish game,but not sure will it be Crackdown 3(still throwing money for this ip?pretty wired for MS)


Crackdown could still be saved.  The second game was bad - a rushed cash grab that MS forced so that they could have another exclusive.  But that franchise has potential if given time and resources to really innovate.  (And Crackdown 2 still sold nearly a million units, despite horrible reviews.)  They'd have their work cut out for them after the bad taste left by C2, but there's an audience there for a quality game.  Hell - I just sold my used copy for $17 on Glyde, which is actually pretty decent for how old/not great that game was.  


well rumor has it microsoft was trying to reboot crackdown ip and was in talks with sucker punch and that drove sony mad with vengence so they bought out sucker punch



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Millenium on 05 December 2011
crissindahouse said:

btw if microsoft wants to have a top developer they should buy epic games. not only are their games from high quality, they have the unreal engine, the most succesful engine overall ( i believe)

maybe they could force other developers to prefer the next xbox with "their" engine then. engine for free but the game has to be time exclusive or so^^

True, buying Epic Games would be massive for them, but the question there is are they ready to splash down ALOT of money, buying Epic Games could be potentially more expensive than BioWare/Pandemic were. Gotta remember, Epic is huge, they've got several studios around the globe, they own 2 subsidiaries themselves, revenue from their engine is crazy, I'm not entirely sure Microsoft will be willing to splash down that amount of money, even for Epic.

I'd love it if they did though :)



donsterydo2 on 05 December 2011
Jadedx said:
This is for the guy with the donkey kong Avatar:

http://games.gearlive.com/playfeed/article/gears-of-war-10-million-to-produce-10051350

Gears of War 1 20-30 people 2 years, 10 million dollars. Gears 2 was 20 million about 40 people, 2 years.

Also why is everyone forgetting Firebird? They have been around at least 2.5 years and they will def have a new game out for 2012 and the new xbox.



Firebird Studios probably doesn't exist.

 

And i LOL at people who still think that old RARE IP's will be back. They won't sell = they're dead. Get over with.



Jadedx on 05 December 2011
donsterydo2 said:
Jadedx said:
This is for the guy with the donkey kong Avatar:

http://games.gearlive.com/playfeed/article/gears-of-war-10-million-to-produce-10051350

Gears of War 1 20-30 people 2 years, 10 million dollars. Gears 2 was 20 million about 40 people, 2 years.

Also why is everyone forgetting Firebird? They have been around at least 2.5 years and they will def have a new game out for 2012 and the new xbox.



Firebird Studios probably doesn't exist.

 

And i LOL at people who still think that old RARE IP's will be back. They won't sell = they're dead. Get over with.

That is what people said about Spawnpoint before they became Good Science, but they do exist, the lead software dev and the graphics guy from firebird accidentally posted the name of the studio; they are both still there, but their resumes no longer say firebird.

BTW Rare's old IPs will be back, I am sure of it.



crissindahouse on 05 December 2011
Millenium said:
crissindahouse said:

btw if microsoft wants to have a top developer they should buy epic games. not only are their games from high quality, they have the unreal engine, the most succesful engine overall ( i believe)

maybe they could force other developers to prefer the next xbox with "their" engine then. engine for free but the game has to be time exclusive or so^^

True, buying Epic Games would be massive for them, but the question there is are they ready to splash down ALOT of money, buying Epic Games could be potentially more expensive than BioWare/Pandemic were. Gotta remember, Epic is huge, they've got several studios around the globe, they own 2 subsidiaries themselves, revenue from their engine is crazy, I'm not entirely sure Microsoft will be willing to splash down that amount of money, even for Epic.

I'd love it if they did though :)


yeah sure this will be expensive and if it will cost too much they shouldn't but they are expensive because they are a cash-cow which means they would get money from this company's work.

it's not like "they cost 1 billion so microsoft will be 1 billion poorer after that" it's their company then, same like i build a house. it costs 500k but i'm not 500k poorer then because it's mine :)

so, if this company wouldn't cost much more than it is are worth it would be good for microsoft but if they are worth 1 billion and they would have to pay 5 billion yeah this could be not so clever^^  like with skype not sure if this was a good deal but seeing what they pay for skype they could do something like that in the videogame devision as well. rare was the last huge buy that was 2001 or so?

lol that's funny on their site:

"© 2004-2011, Epic Games, Inc. All rights reserved. Epic, Epic Games, the Epic Games logo, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Marcus Fenix, the Crimson Omen logo, Unreal, Unreal Engine, Unreal Tournament, and the Unreal Tournament 3 logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. Other brands or product names are the trademarks of their respective owners.



Millenium on 05 December 2011
crissindahouse said:
Millenium said:
crissindahouse said:

btw if microsoft wants to have a top developer they should buy epic games. not only are their games from high quality, they have the unreal engine, the most succesful engine overall ( i believe)

maybe they could force other developers to prefer the next xbox with "their" engine then. engine for free but the game has to be time exclusive or so^^

True, buying Epic Games would be massive for them, but the question there is are they ready to splash down ALOT of money, buying Epic Games could be potentially more expensive than BioWare/Pandemic were. Gotta remember, Epic is huge, they've got several studios around the globe, they own 2 subsidiaries themselves, revenue from their engine is crazy, I'm not entirely sure Microsoft will be willing to splash down that amount of money, even for Epic.

I'd love it if they did though :)


yeah sure this will be expensive and if it will cost too much they shouldn't but they are expensive because they are a cash-cow which means they would get money from this company's work.

it's not like "they cost 1 billion so microsoft will be 1 billion poorer after that" it's their company then, same like i build a house. it costs 500k but i'm not 500k poorer then because it's mine :)

so, if this company wouldn't cost much more than it is are worth it would be good for microsoft but if they are worth 1 billion and they would have to pay 5 billion yeah this could be not so clever^^  like with skype not sure if this was a good deal but seeing what they pay for skype they could do something like that in the videogame devision as well. rare was the last huge buy that was 2001 or so?

lol that's funny on their site:

"© 2004-2011, Epic Games, Inc. All rights reserved. Epic, Epic Games, the Epic Games logo, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Marcus Fenix, the Crimson Omen logo, Unreal, Unreal Engine, Unreal Tournament, and the Unreal Tournament 3 logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. Other brands or product names are the trademarks of their respective owners.


Hah yeah, funny how they specifically trademarked Marcus Fenix :P

 

You have a good point, it could work out, as for Skype, in the end it could be profitable for them if they put Skype in the right direction, I should imagine they planned that for the long term when buying them...