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.

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.

Bungie left, but a lot of the halo team stayed, so no harm. Rare makes more money now than they did before kinect. Ensamble was a money pit, A 200 man studio that made only rts games and all of their other stuff got canned. Bioware was not worth buying with pandemic, EA paid almost 1 billion for them and they still have yet to recoup their costs. Team Ninja Imploded, that has nothing to do with MS. How is turn 10 having trouble selling their games? They constantly sell 4.5 million copies of their game. Forza 4 came out against way more blockbusters than Forza 3 did and still managed to sell 1 million in about a month and a half.

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 

Well if you're arguing from the perspective of a core gamer, than Nintendo's is arguably the weakest.

Halo is not just one game. This gen a lone we've seen 5 releases of Halo, it'll be 6 releases with Halo 4. No Sony IPs could sell as well with such frequent releases because no Sony IP is as strong. That is why I say Halo trumps everything Sony has. On top of that MS has other great IPs, but I won't even want bother getting into that.

Rare played a role in Kinect's development. They also created the avatars. Their contributions aren't just games. But they happen to be sitting on a goldmine of great IPs.

Frank O'Connor, Chad Armstrong, Vic de Leon are the only ones from Bungie,  you also had nathan walpole but he is gone...So 3 = a lot?

Why should I care about Rare making money?  They did not made money when they made all those awesome N64 games?  Again don't care that Ensamble lost money and Halo wars didn't do that bad.  For a gaming perspective Bioware was worth buying for me, Team Ninja should have been bought considering DOA/ninja gaiden were strong IP's...   And turn ten sell mostly of their games with bundles even now Forza 3 is bundled in Europe.  Without bundles their games sell 1-2 million not that great especially not with all those great reviews and hype..

Now take into account MW3 selling 10 million copies in the first 24 hours, Halo, Gears et le selling 3 million copies within the first weeks/48 hours, you really get a contrast into how much the strategy genre has become irrelevant in comparison with what is the current mass - shooters and Action/RPG's. Starcraft is a brand like no other, this was the second iteration of the game to be released in the last decade - such anticipation and hype is rarely rivaled.

RTS games are moderate, decently sized but really not that more worth investing in when shooters are considerably more popular. When a studio concentrates on RTS and has practically no RTS direction it could go in, in regards to the MS 360 orientation, you know the studio is just pointless asset at the time.

Well you failed at not trying to sound like a troll. As the title of the thread clearly says that MS is investing in there first party devs like they never have before. So you make yourseldf look stupid with you comment.

half of sony IP's would be lucky to sell 1-2 million. Thats is pretty respectable number considering the fact GT has owned the Market for racing games and Forza has managed to get some appeal. DOA/Ninja Gaiden were good games i bought DOA 4 and Ninja Giaden 2 and plan on buying Ninja Giaden 3. There games still come out on Xbox so why does it matter? Sure they would be better off if they bought them, but the didn't no real loss to MS. Ensamble studios didn't do much except loss money. I would rather MS buy out Epic games or Remedy than waste there time with Team Ninja and ther IP's

Halo Wars didn't do bad because its Halo. I guess if they had more interseting projects MS would have kept them around.

In regards to Bioware, look at this way. MS saved about a billion dollars and the 360 still benefits from what Bioware has to offer. Thus far I doubt MS has any regrets about not purchasing that studio.

Forza 3 likely sold 3 million units without bundling. Its also a great bundle title for boosting hardware sales. If you think Halo Wars did well than surely you think Forza is performing well too.