I honestly see that being close to death, since that store doesn't allow for mod support, let alone being able to modify the game. Doesn't help that the playerbase on their is rather small and is mostly gated behind that wall. It still lacks a ton of features that Steam has to boot.

Yeah not every game cost that much to make but even Hellblade that cost around 10 million to make was still a big risk for Ninja Theory, they also had many of their game pitches turned down by publishers and had to do freelance work in order to keep the lights on. Obsidian needed to use crowdfunding to make their games and were at the brink of being Bankrupt.

That was their decision and budget to go with. There is no objective marker for what a game should/should not cost, otherwise, if it was a fabled 10m marker, we'd see very few games these days.

Well, when you look at EA with the likes of "where's your 1b dollar ip?" and other pubs dabbling far too much into MP only with MT's loaded into them, you can start to see why they turned down their game.

I don't think Crowdfunding is a bad thing, especially when it's helped so many indie devs. We are now living in a world where it's not just the pubs devs have to lean their shoulders on, but also gamers as well, and I believe that to being a good thing, rather than just being solely limited to the biggest of publishers out there.

There were more projects of theirs turned down by publishers I wasn't just referencing Razor, Ninja Theory only ever got royalties from 2 of their projects in their entire history DMC and Hellblade. Working with publishers isn't always guaranteed to be successful for Independent company's even Obsidian were screwed over in pay with Fallout:NV and South Park: SoT (although they were to blame by singing on the conditions on their bonus for Fallout).

Crowdfunding isn't a bad thing but it is never guaranteed to be success because not all projects will raise their goal, but a big studio like Obsidian having to resort to it just shows what type of situation they were in and they even confirmed that they were nearly out of cash when they did it.

Yes, especially when those publishers hold strict "we get a 90 meta or you lose any bonuses" policy, which doesn't exactly hold out hope for said devs they are supposed to be helping out.

Tbh, I see croundfunding the exact same way I see publishing, you don't know if it's always going to be good, or if the studio will even have a leg to stand on afterwards. In the case of CF, it's the people and the law that will rip the devs apart, should they scre up. With publisher it'll be them who wring the necks of devs who do them bad, but also the people as well.

Them being out of cash has been dealt to them by some bad cards, not simply because they are asking for hundreds of millions to compete some Star Citizen style project. They also haven't always hit a constant set of home runs either, as that would have given them a steady flow of cash to live on. 

My take on it is, Independents will in the main exist in just a few forms, one is small scale teams doing a combination of making their own ip and contract work in the mobile space another is specialists; by that I mean more independents looking at where the demand is heading in relation to outsourced game related production and becoming more specialised in that direction, an example  might be rather than trying to sell a game proposal to a publisher who most likely want the ip in return for funding, we might see more emphasis on obtaining a contract for remasters/ remakes as a cheaper way to keep afloat and a better way to showcase your talent to the world and it might be a pathway  into becoming the next type of independent the second party studio, these will still be around in some form but even though they are more secure than 3rd party independents they still live with the same realities that affect 3rd parties, that is unless your studio owns one or preferably more successful IP's you will be forever chasing your tail , there are some exemptions like Insomniac but even with all the successful games they created they have had to heavily  rely on Sony and to a lesser extent MS, one of the reasons they spent money on  Fuse rather than do  another second party game at that time was the fact having your own hit game lessens that reliance .  The moral to this story owning, successful ip matters, it might not stop you eventually being swallowed up, but it can help you determine in exactly whose mouth you end up in.

How do you know it won't be different under Spencer? Surely they know they'll lose a huge chunk of the hard core fans if they don't do it right. 

Of course MS will support and push there OS because thats why PC gaming is what it is today. Windows 10 doesnt restrict you from downloading Steam or any other conpetitive App. 

MS's big real competitor is Apple, and unlike Apple MS isnt restrictive. Apple could buy Obsidian and lock them to Apple only devices, would you much prefer that? Sony and Nintendo would do the exact same thing by closing them to one platform. 

Your preference is your preference, you choose to boycott Win10/Xbox so be it, as for me, i couldnt care less if MS buy Obsidian or not, because i know weather there owned by MS or not i can still access there games without changing my hardware, i dont care about the petty little things like logging into another App. Heck i brought BF4 and Dead Space 3 which were exclusive to Origins. I still played them and enjoy them.

I havnt admitted fault because i dont see a fault in this deal. I dont hold personal grudges over MS so this does not affect me.

End of the day, weather we like it or not, it seems MS are buying Obsidian which is considered normal buisness practice, big companies buy little companies and they mainly do it to make money not to lose so id assume MS have big plans for them and now that they might be financially secure we can see what protential they have. 

Obsidian Games
Turn10
Playground Games
Rare
343 Industries
Ninja Theory
Undead Labs
The Coalition
Compulsion Games
The Initiative
Mojang


That is a very decent list. There might be more to come...

Crytek?
4A Games?
Avalanche Studios?
Remedy?

Crytek are too big they would have to downsize before MS bought them, they are nearly 600 employees as of 2017. I could see them going under in the future sadly.

4A seems realistic if MS is actually interested.

Avalanche is a subsidiary so I really doubt it, plus once again they are too big, 320 plus as of 2018.

Remedy would hard to get now since they became a public company in 2017.

The Rumors right now are Asobo Studios and Hazelight Studios.