When you say Japanese Studio, what would you have in mind?

If I was going for personal wish-fulfilment, I'd love them to buy out Mistwalker and hire them a dedicated dev team of 200+ people. Lost Odyssey wasn't a huge hit, but it did sell nearly 1mil with half of those in NA alone. Even if it won't help in Japan, the IP has universal appeal similar to Final Fantasy. Maybe even moreso because of the more mature overtones and being less Japanese-centric.

Just look at the jump NieR: Automata took from the first game. That game did sell well in Japan, but it's also far more Japanese-centric. If MS backed a Lost Odyssey sequel with a production budget of that scale, then marketed the game correctly, it could have serious potential.

One point of difference it'd have is turn-based combat. There's a couple of comparable games on the market in Persona 5 and Dragon Quest XI, but again, they're very Japansese-centric. Even when they sell great, and the games are amazing, they still struggle for western appeal. There's been demand for a Final Fantasy title with traditional turn-based combat. I'd love to see it tested.

Best case scenario, I could see it playing out like The Witcher trilogy. First game has a relatively modest budget, but garners a lot of acclaim for it's overall qualities. Building on the interest from that, they get an improved budget for the next game closer to other high-end titles in the market. And if that works out just as well, then similar to The Witcher 3, they can go all-out and make a third game with an unlimited Final Fantasy esque budget. That ultimately helps buffer against Sony's deals with Square Enix.

And one last thing. With this aquisition, they wouldn't have to wait too long to pump out a title. Monolith Soft were able to remaster Xenoblade to a high degree in less than two years. They could have a Lost Odyssey remaster or even reamke in a similar time frame. You could even outsource it to not delay production on the sequel.

Anyway, this got a bit long. Any thoughts? Is this too much of a crackpot theory?

If Halo Infinite isn't a hit, Phil is going to relocate 343i to Japan and force them to develop shmups. And that's going to be our Japanese studio.

Grounded is pretty cool. The sense of scale is quite impressive. It could be the best game of its kind though and meh, just doesn’t appeal to me. I made an axe, which allowed me to cut grass down. I picked up a stalk and it told me I can use that to build walls and shit, nah no thanks. I loved Fallout 4 and never got into the base stuff.

The enemies are pretty relentless. Ran into a spider and noped the fuck out. Eventually I died to an ant with about six minutes left in my demo. You can replay, it’s just limited to 30 minute sessions.

Jesus Christ why is this thing so massive? I remember when some people said that the XSX was big, watch the slim version copy the XSX design.

https://mobile.twitter.com/NeuralNois3/status/1272900151481417738

I really do not understand this console design :( I have no idea where I am going to put that thing in my living room. Probably behind the TV, not only is it big but it looks so ugly and weird. 

I was very disappointed by it when they revealed, the controller looks so slick and nice.

Tamsoft is a developer (mostly) that is essentially independent but pretty much tied to Marvelous. I'd recommend Tamsoft + prying off Tecmo from Koei and you get a veritable amount of dev muscle to power Mistwalker alongside Grounding. 

You could also do a dick move and pry Compile Heart away from Idea Factory or a really dick move and gobble up Delight Works or even worse, Type Moon itself, and then use the well known one IP they have as a battering ram into Japan. 

But that is so un-Microsoft like (let alone un-Phil like, this seems like a Peter Moore move) it's bound to never happen. 

To be honest, getting Satya's all green to buy Zenimax wholesale (which does include a JP studio) and spend the remains on Mistwalker (so Mistwalker+Tango) would be a winning combination, but Zenimax together isn't cheap, so it most likely would have to be a MS rather than XGS decision. 

and best of all.... new achievements!

Shinobi states that he doesn’t expect MS to reveal the XSX price in July, interesting to see who will break first.

Matt states that MS has “a bunch of new IPs coming”. https://www.resetera.com/threads/isnt-it-time-for-microsoft-to-bet-on-new-ips-created-by-the-first-party-studios.229021/page-5#post-37196068

Also lol that thread, funny how much they complain about MS not making any new 1st party IP meanwhile Sony didn’t even show off a new IP from their 1st party at their show Ratchet, Horizon, Spider-Man, GT, two spinoffs and Remake. Btw their argument is that 2nd party doesn’t count