KiigelHeart said: goopy20 said: Ok, I was being optimistic when I said they're unproven. Lets get real for a second here and look at the actual track records of these new studios... Double Fine They made Phychonauts and Brutal Legends, both games are considered as some of the biggest flops in gaming history. Psychonauts ended up selling 100k copies and caused its CEO to resign. Brutal Legends ended up selling around 200k copies and ended up in a counter lawsuit between Double Fine and Activision. Compulsion games They made Contrast and We Happy Few sitting on a 57% and a 62% Metacrtitic InXile Their last games were Bard's Tale 4 (71% Metacritic) and Wasteland 2 (77% Metacritic). Not bad games but point and click strategy games historically don't do great on consoles. Undead Labs State of Decay 2 69% Metacritic Ninja Theory Made good games like Heavenly Sword (79%), Enslaved (80%) and Hellblade (88%) but they don't tend to sell great. Hellblade sold only 1m copies for example and they just released Bleeding Edge with a 61% metacritic score. Obsidian For me this is the only new studio to get excited about as they did make some good games in the past like New vegas and Kotor. However, that was a while back and they've also made a lot of duds since like Tyranny, Skyforge and had 4 games cancelled between 2005 and 2017. Outer Worlds was not bad, though. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Playground/ Turn 10 They've only made the Forza series. Great racing games, no doubt, but we have yet to see what they can do in other genres. I mean could Polyphonic make an amazing RPG? Who knows but I would assume their 1st try isn't going to be as good as something that a developer like Bethesda would make. The initiative Big question mark here. They started 2 years ago and still have only 40 people working there. We only hear about top talent joining them but Tom Shepherd left the Initiative after just 1 year. Not saying none of these studios are capable of making a AAA system seller but their track records aren't exactly encouraging. That's why MS should put them to work on 1 big project at a time and hope some of them strike gold so MS has some brand new AAA ip's to work with in the future. It's risky, of course, when you consider that it took GG 6,5 years to make HZD and that's likely the problem with MS. It seems they're not willing to take those kind of risks and build new AAA ip's. Instead they've been playing it save for 2 console generations now and spend the bulk of their 1st party resources to desperately try to keep Halo and Gears alive. Since when is Brutal Legend considered as one of the biggest flops in gaming history? It didn't sell that well but it ended up selling around 1,2 million copies. It reviewed well too and it's a good game. Great game even if you're into rock music. Also what does that lawsuit have to do with anything? Do you even know what it was about? You shouldn't write "let's get real" and then come up with posts like this. Not cool, gooby.

Since it was listed on Wikipedia's page of biggest commercial failures in video games, of all time. I also kind of enjoyed it but it's not exactly a test case on how to build a successful AAA game, and I highly doubt MS is willing to give them the resources to do so with their future games.

goop is optimistic again. goop you keep using that word, optimistic. I do not think it means what you think it means 😆

Why do I care about lawsuits or sales? A good game is a good game whether it sells ten million or ten thousand. Why in the world would I want as a gamer for a dev to spend almost seven years on a soulless Far Cry clone that I might play through one time? You know what was better? The PS3 era when Sony was behind the Wii and 360 and Sony was pumping out new IPs and quality games like crazy. Maybe you prefer this gen where GG has two titles and ND has one title and Sucker Punch has one title and we have one GT. No thanks.

How many more times can you shift the goalposts in this thread? First it’s MS is emphasizing quantity over quality. Then that’s proven wrong, it’s oh, they need more AAA games. Then shika shuts the thread down with a AAA post and it’s “oh uh... ok they have AAA games coming but the studios are unproven!”. Then that’s proven wrong as well and it’s uh.... sales and lawsuits. Is this more of your optimism at work?

Ryuu96 said: "And sure, budget, time spend developing and the size of the team usually are a part of it. But in the end a AAA game is simply a game that is a must play title and that people end up buying a specific console for." No, AAA is simply and only, a game with a large budget,

There's little point arguing the definition of a AAA game, so for arguments sake lets just call them "must play" games. You know the kind of games that make people decide to buy 1 console over the other. Most people buy a Nintendo console for their Mario and Zelda games alone. Sony has a bunch of them as well and MS used to have Halo and Gears, but they're just not the console pushers they were 10 years ago. So again and be honest now... Would you buy a Sony or Nintendo console if the MS exclusives we mentioned like Ori, Gears Tactics or whatnot, would be exclusive to those platforms?

PotentHerbs said: sales2099 said: Horizon Zero Dawn didn’t even hit 90 on metacritic...but little Ori did ;) Lol with that logic...

The whole thread premise is wacky so when in Rome :)

goopy20 said: Ryuu96 said: "And sure, budget, time spend developing and the size of the team usually are a part of it. But in the end a AAA game is simply a game that is a must play title and that people end up buying a specific console for." No, AAA is simply and only, a game with a large budget, There's little point arguing the definition of a AAA game, so for arguments sake lets just call them "must play" games. You know the kind of games that make people decide to buy 1 console over the other. Most people buy a Nintendo console for their Mario and Zelda games alone. Sony has a bunch of them as well and MS used to have Halo and Gears, but they're just not the console pushers they were 10 years ago. So again and be honest now... Would you buy a Sony or Nintendo console if the MS exclusives we mentioned like Ori, Gears Tactics or whatnot, would be exclusive to those platforms?

There’s little point in arguing “must play” as well. You claim Sony has a lot, I think they have one or two.

goopy20 said: KiigelHeart said: Since when is Brutal Legend considered as one of the biggest flops in gaming history? It didn't sell that well but it ended up selling around 1,2 million copies. It reviewed well too and it's a good game. Great game even if you're into rock music. Also what does that lawsuit have to do with anything? Do you even know what it was about? You shouldn't write "let's get real" and then come up with posts like this. Not cool, gooby. Since it was listed on Wikipedia's page of biggest commercial failures in video games, of all time. I also kind of enjoyed it but it's not exactly a test case on how to build a successful AAA game, and I highly doubt MS is willing to give them the resources to do so with their future games.

Yes it can be considered a commercial failure, but it still isn't considered one of the biggest flops. It's good not every game is made following a "how to build a succesful AAA game" formula though. It would mean less interesting and good games like Brutal Legend. Also Microsoft funded Quantum Break with a big budget despite Alan Wake's slow sales.

Ryuu96 said: We've gone from "I want quality" to "I want AAA" to "What about their sales when they were indie with small budgets/marketing?" Again, the title doesn't even match the OP, AAA doesn't = Quality but you have been shown that multiple Xbox Game Studios are currently working on AAA titles, along with shown that they've produced quality products in the past.

Please tell me you see through this guys “concern”. I mean people know the kind of fan I am, but I ain’t making threads doing subtle insults to the competition.

Ryuu96 said: OP has moved so many goalposts, from asking for quality to asking for AAA to asking about their sales as indie studios, ignoring multiple users arguments including all of my own, along with his history of baiting Xbox fans it leads me to believe he's arguing in bad faith and concern trolling, I was warned prior to not bothering engaging but I thought I'd give it a shot, clearly I should have listened. The OP and Title don't even match but if we pick at both of them, we've shown OP that XGS has multiple AAA's coming and that these studios have produced multiple quality products in the past, whether they deliver the goods or not in the future is another question, almost every studio has duds so anything can happen, regardless the question is asked far too early as well given the fact that these studios are mostly in the early stages of development so none of us can say for sure what Microsoft's focus is. ~Of course locking is broken...~

Yea, I would not call that moving goal post as much as people trying to find technicalities to find a way to fit xbox games into the category. You know very well what the type of game he is talking about. And there would be no one descriptor that could be used that would not have been dissected to try to include games that obviously dont belong. While true those types of games he is describing could be coming to the xbox from those small studios, its hard to believe that they will be just as big as halo/ gears with studios half the size working on multiple games at a time in a span of 2 years.

sales2099 said: Ryuu96 said: We've gone from "I want quality" to "I want AAA" to "What about their sales when they were indie with small budgets/marketing?" Again, the title doesn't even match the OP, AAA doesn't = Quality but you have been shown that multiple Xbox Game Studios are currently working on AAA titles, along with shown that they've produced quality products in the past. Please tell me you see through this guys “concern”. I mean people know the kind of fan I am, but I ain’t making threads doing subtle insults to the competition.

Concern? I think you mean optimism.

goopy20 said: sales2099 said: The irony is that you clearly don’t like Xbox yet admit to subscribing to them and thus giving your time and money. Even if you think you are cheating them out by playing their games for dirt cheap and quitting that’s time you are still investing that otherwise people with your bias wouldn’t even touch Xbox traditionally before MSs recent initiatives.  Xbox went from only repeating 3 IPs over and over with duds in between to having the same studios as Sony with several A-AAA games in the pipeline. That’s amazing progress. And you have the notion to complain they aren’t on Sony’s exact level? It’s been 2 years and it is astounding how far Xbox Studios has come.  Ultimately you have convinced me this is a “putting Xbox in their place” thread. Very shallow and petty. Sorry but you can’t stop the hype these studios are creating.  (And your topic title is still redundant because Ori scored a 90) What makes you think I clearly don't like Xbox? Except for the Xone, I owned all of MS's consoles and did enjoy them. Besides a ps4, I also have a pc and a Switch, so I'm really not loyal to any particular console brand. However, I don't blindly agree or get excited about everything a platform holder does. I loved the 360 until they went all crazy on us with Kinect. As a consumer, I lost faith in the Xbox brand and it caused me to not buy the Xone. That doesn't mean I want Series X to fail, though. The specs are amazing and I would love MS to come out of the gate with loads of AAA ip's that'll give the ps5 games a run for their money. I will just end up buying both, just like I did with the 360 and ps3. All gamers have their specific taste in games and somehow I doubt you would have cared at all about Ori if it was a Switch exclusive. I saw you were trying to grasp the concept of what a AAA game really is. And sure, budget, time spend developing and the size of the team usually are a part of it. But in the end a AAA game is simply a game that is a must play title and that people end up buying a specific console for. For example, I bought a Switch just to play BOTW and a Xbox/360 mainly for Halo. Now, lets say Ori, or any of the other games we're seeing from MS were exclusives on the ps5 or Switch instead, would you then consider buying any one of those consoles? Sony and Nintendo have those kind of games and MS used to have them with Gears and Halo. But now that they don't have the mass appeal of 10 years ago, Ms simply needs some new AAA titles that could really persuade people to go with the Series X instead of a Sony or Nintendo console.

Ah the classic “fallen angel” scenario. You’ve become bittered with the brand. You can explain all you like myself and others clearly see where you stand. I mean I could buy a PS but who am I going to fool? Ownership means nothing imo, it’s where your passions lie that tell the truth. Fact is you changed the point of your argument about 3 times since you made this thread. You said MS making filler and people prove that’s false, with Ori scoring 90. You then say AAA matters more. People show the AAA in development. Then you say “but they aren’t system sellers”. Ok Mr. stockholder-and-not-gamer. Not to mention insulting the AAA games that aren’t even announced yet. Like how you think it’s objective to write off a rumoured Perfect Dark reboot without knowing anything about it shows this thread is a dead end.