I hope that Microsoft would announce during X018 that the acquired Splinter Cell franchise and Initiative will be handling it. Alternating between SC and PD. The only problem I see is that we have to wait for looong time to play one of them.

Ubi has the rights to all Tom Clancy IP for games, i doubt that MS can buy the franchise but they could buy lifetime exclusivity for the new game especially if funding is a problem like the rumors state. They should try to get Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia as exclusives.

I don't think Phil is going to make any multiplat exclusive.
Splinter Cell fits Microsoft so well. They need to get like they did with Gears. It has history with Xbox and Ubi doesn't seem to believe in its profitability anymore. This would make Microsoft job easier.

So I once more tried to give Burnout Paradise another chance. After all the Remastered version is in the Vault.
Played a few hours and... it's still such a flawed game. I can't believe how anyone thinks that it's good. It's barely average.

- Races are all the same due to only having half a couple of finish lines
- the vast majority of events are in the city and not in the countryside, but you always end up there because nearly every race wants you to drive there
- no fast travel, so have fun driving all the way back to the city (pro tip: Close the game and reload it to get to the junkyard)
- the driveaway mechanic is so terrible. It's far better to get wrecked properly. It takes so much fucking time and most of the time you're not facing the right direction
- other times you get respawned far outside of the tracks
- Races are no fun because the AI can take a completely other route and then you have no one to take down
- navigating during races is atrocious
- AI is dumb as hell. Drove a lap race on Big Surf Island and wrecked 10+ times and still easily finished 1st. Other racers were even driving in the opposite direction, missing all the checkpoints
- Ramming opponents from behind will take them down. Ramming traffic (even from behind) will wreck you. What sense does that make?
- no proper crash mode
- graphics are bad and the remaster is nothing more than a FullHD 60FPS patch. The dark and washed out filter makes me feeling depressed.
- changing cars at the junkyard is terrible. The animations are terrible as they are far too long. The game probably loads them (very slowly) since you can't use any menu buttons during these animations. (Same for unlocking new cars)

give me more time and I could list a dozen more.

I would give it a 6/10 and with that it's pretty much the worst racer I've played in two generations. Worse than any Forza, any GT, any Need For Speed, Project Cars, The Crew, Split/Second, Driver SF, any PGR, Burnout Revenge, Blur, any DiRT, any GRID, Onrush, any F1, Midnight Club LA, any Motorstorm

MS buying Obsidian might have a bigger impact than we think, looks like they have full intentions of developing AAA games.

Obsidian Entertainment draft acquisition papers include a clause that allows them to grow their staff count to over 200. I expect them to be a proper two-team studio moving forward if the acquisition offer is being accepted.

— Klobrille (@klobrille) October 12, 2018

They need to go all out with CD3, just hope that the new footage impresses me.

Everyone talking about studio acquisitions and I’m just sitting here waiting for everyone to see a revised and polished Crackdown 3. Primary reason I’m excited for X018.

— Klobrille (@klobrille) October 13, 2018

I think if MS get them going forward it makes sense to have them as a 2 team studio with one team sticking to CRPG's and the other making the AAA RPG they have wanted for such a long time now I mean there is also a chance they do build more towards 2 AAA teams overtime but for now that seems unlikely. it's not only Obsidian that will be a multi team studio it seems like most first party studios are working towards that, We have Ninja Theory at 2-3 teams, Rare fully staffing up their second team for the new IP thats under development, PG hiring the best part of 200 staff, The Coalition seem to be 100 or so more than when Gears 4 released and I think will have a second team of their own before long.

Undead Labs and Compulsion look to be a single team but are also going to largely increase the number of staff for the next games they develop. I do also hope eventually 343 can spin of a 2nd team to work on a new IP at some point as having a new AAA IP developed by "The Halo Developer" would sell on the studio/Halo name alone and remove some of the risk with setting up a new AAA IP and they same could eventually be said for The Coalition.

The entire landscape of MS studios going forward looks to be a lot bigger than just simple studio pick up and with likely just over 2 years until Next Box it lines up very well with games dropping the bulk of stuff arriving in 2-3 years between Q4 2020-2021 and even at that 2-3 years is pushing it for new AAA games from these studios so that makes me believe next gen can't happen any earlier than Q4 2020 unless MS have/are signing up a bunch of second party titles to cover that period, I do wonder what will happen with the current RPG scheduled for late 2019 at the earliest in whether that means it will release this gen as a multiplat or X1 exclusive or even a possibly delayed and improved to be a launch title for next gen.

I very much doubt that they will have a dedicated CRPG team, they have stated many times that they want to develop AAA titles. I'm sure that Pillars was developed by a small team internally, I'm not saying that they won't develop more CRPG's if they join MS but they started doing smaller projects like Pillars and Tyranny because of financial problems their current project The Outer Worlds seems to be a AAA game.

At this point I'm giving up on 343 and Coalition being a multi-team dev but it looks like we might not need them too.

I wonder how far along fable is. I missed the first trilogy so did many people I imagine. Will jump into the reboot though. Especially if it's a launch window title for neXtbox where there's usually more time to enjoy the games coming out.

The first Fable in particular still holds up very well if you get the Fable:Anniversary remaster. 

Well worth a look in and can probably be bought on the Xbox Store for download quite cheaply. Myself, I'd play 2 and 3 as well, but 1 in particular do have a go.