Xbox Rumors and Speculation

Another smaller rumor...this one regarding Piranha Games who’s currently developing Mech Warrior 5 for the PC. The studio has met with Microsoft multiple times this year, has talked about a Xbox version and loses the license in 2020 back to Microsoft.

I like this potential eclectic mix of studios. Game won’t appeal to most console gamers but it could strengthen the Battletech IP and encourage a Mech Assault reboot.

I prefer controller for most games but I would put together a mouse and keyboard setup in front of the big screen for Mech Warrior if it comes to Xbox. I like them bringing in a studio who’s passionate about the IP.


Dude, mech warrior is a must with keyboard and mouse. If they decide to make a steel battalion esque controller they can have my money now.

*edit*

It just hit me, can the adaptive controller accept multiple buttons through each button? Like add a flight stick to x but each button on the flight stick serve a different function, maybe through an update?
 
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I doubt they'd buy a JP developer, since they seem to have accepted the reality of that market for them.

They do seem fond of making developer ghetto/communities at the moment though, so maybe another Euro dev?

MS aren't afraid of keeping games multiplatform either, so I could picture Rocket league's Dev or someone like that. It fits with the on-going service they like.
 
I very much doubt MS would look at Quantic Dream, with all their litigious happenings of late.

They lost their case for harrassment, and are still in the process of suing the French media for calling the place "One of the most toxic work environments" with sexism and racism.

And I think they're pretty expensive, as far as developers go? Their last game was $30mil.
 
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I very much doubt MS would look at Quantic Dream, with all their litigious happenings of late.

They lost their case for harrassment, and are still in the process of suing the French media for calling the place "One of the most toxic work environments" with sexism and racism.

And I think they're pretty expensive, as far as developers go? Their last game was $30mil.
Agreed. Dont think Microsoft wants to be associated with QD at the moment. Too much BS and drama abound.
 
I heard Shinobi poo-poo'd the idea of Ready at Dawn being acquired, so that might not be in the cards.
 
I heard Shinobi poo-poo'd the idea of Ready at Dawn being acquired, so that might not be in the cards.

I think that makes Bluepoint the most likely studio. Worked with Sony a lot but wouldn't likely be tied to them long term, talented, looking to branch off from remasters, and probably not very pricey.
 
Then I have no idea what studio it could be. Well..it could be that Housemarque studio but that really would be underwhelming and not even worth posting the rumor about imo.
 
Then I have no idea what studio it could be. Well..it could be that Housemarque studio but that really would be underwhelming and not even worth posting the rumor about imo.

I don't know about that. Housemarque is great and a lot better than Compulsion Games. Plus they are moving away from arcade type games and Microsoft would be in a position to grow them.
 
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I heard Shinobi poo-poo'd the idea of Ready at Dawn being acquired, so that might not be in the cards.

Yep. So we can cross that off the list. All Sony’s 2nd party relationships are strong studios (pound for pound) and I could see any of them fitting in with Game Pass.

The “big and small” quote from Klobrille still has me the most curious. Which potential “big” purchases are out there if Remedy and Insomniac are off the board? Only big Indies besides them are CDPR...who could go into publisher territory.

Wonder if Gearbox is selling. They haven’t had a ton of success this gen.
 
This has nothing to do with the current rumor, but what about a studio like DONTNOD? They're medium sized (I think) and they would be a good fit for Game Pass.

It's too bad Telltale Games is gone. I would've liked to see them do something with comics like Deadly Class, Shadowman [2018], Monstress or something anime styled like Mecha Cadet Yu. I like to think MS would've approached them.
 
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Then I have no idea what studio it could be.

Well, there's a lot of possibilities. After all, we're talking about a company that has done "a bit" of work with Sony in the past. That has to be a pretty long list.
 
Well, there's a lot of possibilities. After all, we're talking about a company that has done "a bit" of work with Sony in the past. That has to be a pretty long list.

Even though he said he chose his words carefully the bit part would eliminate most of the studios mentioned so maybe its not such crucial wording

Unless its someone more obscure like Pixeljunk or Tarsier Studios.
 
Even though he said he chose his words carefully the bit part would eliminate most of the studios mentioned so maybe its not such crucial wording

Maybe. I'm just taking him literally.
 
Spencer: I’d Hesitate to Look for a Studio That’s Only Capable of Developing Games on One Device

Phil-Spencer-DICE-18.jpg


Phil Spencer, Executive VP of Gaming at Microsoft, was part of a Q&A session earlier today at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference. A recorded audio webcast can be accessed at this address, though you’ll have to provide a few details first.

Spencer’s talk lasted for about half an hour and contained a number of interesting, noteworthy tidbits. The first one is that he’d hesitate to look for a studio that’s only capable of developing games on one device (type), as he explained that the gaming business has shifted from per device to per user.
We think about content as a critical, critical aspect as gamers play games. The community around these games, allowing people to be connected to their players and their friends and their content across all the devices is why we invest in Xbox Live and Mixer, our video streaming platform, and then cloud. So, we think about it as three Cs, content, community and cloud. Cloud is the way we can deliver community and content to a player on any device. Yes, I’d say I’d hesitate to look for a game studio that’s only capable of building on one device because gamers play games on all devices, and I think you’re missing out on an opportunity if you’re not thinking about games that can work everywhere players show up.
He’s obviously referring first and foremost to Project xCloud, which Microsoft believes will help increase the TAM (total addressable market) from hundreds of millions to billions as all games become available on any device. This will begin with Android devices, he clarified, before highlighting the inherent synergy with Xbox Game Pass.
We focus first on Android phones, because there are 1 billion Android phones on the planet and it’s a place with the content that we’ve natively built up over the past decades on our platform, has it been able to reach. But, we look at cloud streaming as a way over the years where we’re able to bring content to customers on any device that they have, regardless of the local compute capabilities. Again, building the experience around the customer, giving the customer choice on where they want to play. And obviously, when you look at that, we have multiple business models that will work with streaming. But, the connection of streaming with the subscription model makes a ton of sense. You see it in music, you see it in video. So, you can look at Project xCloud and you can look at something like Game Pass, and you can see there is a natural synergy between those two.
Xbox Game Pass itself was described by Spencer as a sort of flywheel to attract customers. This, in turn, explains the increased investments Microsoft has been making in the form of the seven game studios acquired this year (Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, inXile Entertainment, Obsidian Entertainment, and The Initiative).
[…] we’ve built Game Pass and it started on the Xbox One console. It will come to PC and eventually it will come to every device. We use the flywheel that we have with customers on an Xbox to start the growth in Game Pass. But if somebody is sitting back and taking a longer term view of where our business is going, you should look at that as a business model that we think scales to billions of people, not hundreds of millions of people like retail does. So, for us, growing Game Pass early, we’re seeing the success in Game Pass today. It’s been critically important where the content investment, first party studious investments we’re making now are all about accelerating the flywheel of customers coming in and we’re seeing that work.
Microsoft’s strategy as outlined by Phil Spencer is crystal clear. It may take some time for it to gain serious traction as the new game developers will require some years to create the content they’ve been purchased for and the cloud itself isn’t quite ready yet (public trials for Project xCloud are beginning next year), but it could all come to fruition in a very smart way.



https://wccftech.com/spencer-hesitat...ly-one-device/
 
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https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/05/xbox-boss-made-microsoft-love-games/


You may have noticed that Xbox boss Phil Spencer is throwing around Microsoft’s hefty wallet. The company has made a number of acquisitions over the last year to shore up its first-party game development. And Spencer explained that he earned the right to do that because Microsoft’s executive team is more interested in gaming than ever.

Spencer was on stage today for a discussion at the Barclays Global Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco. And he explained that Microsoft’s gaming division generated more than $10 billion in revenue for the first time during its 2018 fiscal year. And surpassing that threshold turned some heads inside Microsoft.

...

Of course, Microsoft has had a gaming division since the Xbox debuted in 2001. But it has operated in something of its own silo until Spencer joined Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella’s executive team in 2017. Quickly after getting that promotion, Spencer began flexing his muscles as the leader of a core pillar of Microsoft’s business.

“We’ve acquired and started seven new first-party studios in the last year,” said Spencer. “We obviously don’t do that without tremendous support from Satya and Amy.”

And the seven new and acquired studios are different from the big-time bets that Microsoft made before its current strategy. In 2014, ']the company bought Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion. And Microsoft would only make deals on that scale because that’s all the executive team cared about. But now that Spencer is free to spend some money on his own, he’s making smaller, more strategic deals.
 
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