Disagree, Killer Instinct was clearly a success, especially if Microsoft are trying to bring it back, 10m players during the shitty Xbox One gen is pretty good too.

Microsoft has a huge fighting genre gap in their portfolio leaving Sony to gobble up that entire market and they aren't trying to fight back at all, while fighting game sales have dipped a little (IIRC?) they still sell millions.

It doesn't have to be a AAA studio, it doesn't have to be a 300+ studio, it can be a nice small-mid sized studio, looking at KI credits, only ~90 Double Helix developers were on Season 1, Iron Galaxy even less at ~50, the studio costs would be small.

Plus Killer Instinct is perfect for Game Pass, it'll be a game that will receive years of support, so the studio will be busy for quite a long time, if they want they can staff up and make smaller stuff.

It's that or don't make Killer Instinct at all because they apparently can't find a developer, let Sony take the fighting market completely and never recover again, it took a lot of work for Microsoft to be taken seriously in the fighting game community, it's a waste to throw all that effort away now.

Disagree, Killer Instinct was clearly a success, especially if Microsoft are trying to bring it back, 10m players during the shitty Xbox One gen is pretty good too.

Microsoft has a huge fighting genre gap in their portfolio leaving Sony to gobble up that entire market and they aren't trying to fight back at all, while fighting game sales have dipped a little (IIRC?) they still sell millions.

It doesn't have to be a AAA studio, it doesn't have to be a 300+ studio, it can be a nice small-mid sized studio, looking at KI credits, only ~90 Double Helix developers were on Season 1, Iron Galaxy even less at ~50, the studio costs would be small.

Plus Killer Instinct is perfect for Game Pass, it'll be a game that will receive years of support, so the studio will be busy for quite a long time, if they want they can staff up and make smaller stuff.

It's that or don't make Killer Instinct at all because they apparently can't find a developer, let Sony take the fighting market completely and never recover again, it took a lot of work for Microsoft to be taken seriously in the fighting game community (years, I remember them being booed at EVO 2013) it's a waste to throw all that effort away now.

That's a possibility I susppose. We don't really know if it was Gearbox or 2K who sold out to Epic on Borderlands 3, maybe a bit of both. If Epic offers Gearbox money for exclusivity, I'm sure they'll take it. If the Embracer merger happens before it releases, maybe Embracer will choose not to sell out to Epic. Has Embracer released any Epic exclusives so far? I'm not sure. 

Edit: Apparently Embracer released Saints Row 3 Remastered as an Epic Store Timed exclusive on PC, might have released some others as well. So yeah, if Epic offers money for Homeworld 3, it could definitely release late on Steam and Windows Store. 

Obsidian's Josh Sawyer was pissing some people off on Twitter today I see. Weighed in on the Mass Effect butt camera situation:

He got ratio'd pretty hard, lots of highly upvoted replies criticizing his take.

One guy brought up the fact that Fallout New Vegas, one of Josh's own games, has prostitutes with nothing but a black tape X covering their nips, and one of those prostitutes was voiced by a 13 year old girl at the time. 

Others brought up how Bioware is basically censoring their own game for being too sexy, the same thing FOX News tried to do to the original Mass Effect back in 2007.

Disagree, Killer Instinct was clearly a success, especially if Microsoft are trying to bring it back, 10m players during the shitty Xbox One gen is pretty good too.

Microsoft has a huge fighting genre gap in their portfolio leaving Sony to gobble up that entire market and they aren't trying to fight back at all, while fighting game sales have dipped a little (IIRC?) they still sell millions.

It doesn't have to be a AAA studio, it doesn't have to be a 300+ studio, it can be a nice small-mid sized studio, looking at KI credits, only ~90 Double Helix developers were on Season 1, Iron Galaxy even less at ~50, the studio costs would be small.

Plus Killer Instinct is perfect for Game Pass, it'll be a game that will receive years of support, so the studio will be busy for quite a long time, if they want they can staff up and make smaller stuff.

It's that or don't make Killer Instinct at all because they apparently can't find a developer, let Sony take the fighting market completely and never recover again, it took a lot of work for Microsoft to be taken seriously in the fighting game community (years, I remember them being booed at EVO 2013) it's a waste to throw all that effort away now.

Also I'm guessing XIV is never coming to Xbox at this point, another XIV event and no Xbox announcement, only PS5.

Sucks for those that wanted it but I think Phil fucked up when he said it was coming, I seriously doubt it is ever coming Tbh.

On the topic of MMOs though, I may start Elder Scrolls Online when companions launch this Summer.

Just as I've said months ago, it was quite predictable, because the announcement was made back at X019 and we've heard no word about it ever since. I think it's safe to say that it is not coming to Xbox One at this point, because all those GaaS games usually tend to tie a new platform addition to a major update and if this one is not coming, looking at release schedule, the next major update to FF XIV should be released in summer 2023 which will make porting it to Xbox One pointless at that point as the majority of active Xbox gamers would be on Series X|S at that time anyway. I think there is still a tiny possibility that they can announce the Xbox port at some point this year at Xbox show, because this event was aimed at Japanese audience and we know that Xbox is irrelevant there so they could potentially have decided not to announce it there, but I doubt it.

As for Final Fantasy franchise in general, it's quite obvious that the future of it on Xbox platforms is a huge question mark and we still don't know yet whether Square Enix even wants to release Final Fantasy games on Xbox at this point. FF7R is PS4 only and we still don't have a confirmation if it's coming to Xbox or not, except the Amazon listing from early last year which could easily be a mistake or the SE plans could have changed. FFXVI is also PS5-only at this point so who knows. I can be wrong here but it clearly seems like this is the reaction of Square Enix on FFXV selling well below expectations on Xbox One which resulted in them changing their view on platform's support. So, yeah, I think it's time to forget about simultaneous releases of Final Fantasy games on Xbox and other platforms because the focus is definitely not there. (Huge mistake by SE in my opinion, because this will result in sales dropping even lower on Xbox). But well, just like MS says that they don't need Playstation to sell Bethesda games, Square Enix clearly doesn't need Xbox to sell Final Fantasy games.

I think the issue here is that fighting games genre has been on the decline as of lately, so Microsoft is not sure if it's worth investing into KI franchise or not. I would say that it's only worth investing if MS will be sure that the game will be well received by FGC and it will become an EVO-discipline for several years. 

Just as I've said months ago, it was quite predictable, because the announcement was made back at X019 and we've heard no word about it ever since. I think it's safe to say that it is not coming to Xbox One at this point, because all those GaaS games usually tend to tie a new platform addition to a major update and if this one is not coming, looking at release schedule, the next major update to FF XIV should be released in summer 2023 which will make porting it to Xbox One pointless at that point as the majority of active Xbox gamers would be on Series X|S at that time anyway. I think there is still a tiny possibility that they can announce the Xbox port at some point this year at Xbox show, because this event was aimed at Japanese audience and we know that Xbox is irrelevant there so they could potentially have decided not to announce it there, but I doubt it.

As for Final Fantasy franchise in general, it's quite obvious that the future of it on Xbox platforms is a huge question mark and we still don't know yet whether Square Enix even wants to release Final Fantasy games on Xbox at this point. FF7R is PS4 only and we still don't have a confirmation if it's coming to Xbox or not, except the Amazon listing from early last year which could easily be a mistake or the SE plans could have changed. FFXVI is also PS5-only at this point so who knows. I can be wrong here but it clearly seems like this is the reaction of Square Enix on FFXV selling well below expectations on Xbox One which resulted in them changing their view on platform's support. So, yeah, I think it's time to forget about simultaneous releases of Final Fantasy games on Xbox and other platforms because the focus is definitely not there. (Huge mistake by SE in my opinion, because this will result in sales dropping even lower on Xbox). But well, just like MS says that they don't need Playstation to sell Bethesda games, Square Enix clearly doesn't need Xbox to sell Final Fantasy games.

I wouldn't give up entirely just yet. PS5 is getting the open beta prior to the launch of Endwalkers because the game was already on the PS4 and players are getting a free upgrade. If the game 'is' coming to the Xbox, I wouldn't be surprised if it was waiting until the expansion came out in the fall so Microsoft wasn't asking players to buy the base game in the Spring/Summer to make them pay another $40 in the Fall when Endwalkers comes out. We'll just have to see.