If not for the Activision-Blizzard deal, I think Microsoft definitely would have acquired them.

But I think this is different to Crystal Dynamics setup, that is a co-development which was always planned, I'd guess that this is more a case of it being harder to hire lately made double hard by the fact that Playground is setting up an entirely new studio, I think Eidos is just a way for them to get a quick and large amount of employees on the project (to do mostly grunt work) whilst Playground continues to heavily staff up.

I'd not be surprised if after this, Playground doesn't need Eidos anymore and drops them for Fable 2 because they will continue to staff up heavily, I think this is just a way to get Fable out quicker and allow Playground to staff up more slowly and carefully, there are already like 200 Playground employees on Fable compared to The Initiative's ~60 on Perfect Dark.

Honestly, I think Embracer won't be funding Crystal Dynamics and Eidos very much anyway, after how messy and underbudget Saints Row looked, I think Embracer is going to make Crystal Dynamics and Eidos fund themselves and they may require publishing partners to do so, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of Crystal Dynamics/Eidos next projects being console exclusive to either Xbox or PlayStation.

Maybe Microsoft can just acquire Crystal Dynamics and Eidos off Embracer after the ABK deal is done, Lol.

The other is apparently Compulsion Games Project Midnight.

Played some more Persona 5 (obviously).

Beat the 4th palace and my god the final boss of that place is either plain boring or seriously bugged. I looked up on the internet and found many people who thought the same. IMO it's bugged which causes the fight to drag on for ~30 minutes. Easily the worst enemy encounter thus far.

After that the game really slows down a lot. Nothing happening during the summer break and since I've almost maxed out every social stat, have tons of money and basically got every benefit I want from my confidants, there's not much to do. Some Mementos requests are popping up here or there but I'm not going into Mementos for one or two request. Even if I did, it would only fill one daytime slot. So yeah, I would definitely call it a pacing issue.

Honestly it makes a lot of sense for Xbox to use CD/Eidos though or for Square/Embracer to contract them out when you look at all the projects they're working on in comparison to their sizes and what stage of development those projects are at.

Eidos - 603 Employees According to Linkedin.

• Deus Ex - Pre-Production.
• New IP - Recently Rescoped (Early Production?)

Crystal Dynamics - 356 Employees According to Linkedin.

• Tomb Raider - Either Pre-Production or Very Early Production.

There are potentially hundreds of employees sitting around with nothing to do...Especially Eidos who have over 600 employees, if not for Xbox they'd only have two projects in development, and one is still in pre-production, everything they have is extremely early while Xbox has quite a few projects currently in the middle of production.

That's hundreds of skilled AAA developers with nothing to do, so Microsoft comes in with offers to assist on their games, which benefits both parties, instead of hiring a random studio, Microsoft gets two huge studios full of very experienced AAA developers while they continue to slowly staff up their studios and build experience and Embracer doesn't have to lay off employees because Microsoft is paying for them.

Could see Eidos jumping around from studio to studio to whoever needs the manpower the most, given Eidos size in comparison to their projects in development, once they're done with Fable (and rumoured Project Midnight) they may jump to something else, Embracer will likely have no issue with that, money is money at the end of the day, Lol.

10GB for Pentiment, that's bigger than I thought it would be.

That is some good news. Maybe I will play it again and finish up season 2 and do the Winter battle pass. I guess I will see how you can pick between which one to work on. 

My biggest fear about Embracer acquiring them is coming true as it looks like both studios will be underfunded. 

Really a shame that MS couldn’t acquire them and those IPs.