GameIndustry.Biz Article "How Minecraft and Mojang taught Xbox how to buy studios"

[DJ Lushious]

I found this GameIndustry.Biz article to be very insightful with lots of great quotes from Microsoft's latest acquisitions to the Xbox Games Division portfolio. Here's but a few choice quotes, but I implore you to read the whole article, if this aspect of the video game industry fascinates you.

"Things have been almost exactly the same, just without the terror of going out of business all the time," says Double Fine boss Tim Schafer. "We've been doing this for 20 years, so it's not that terrifying. But you do think about where we're going to get the next six months of salaries from. That fills your mind a lot, and I am just getting used to my mind being free of that. Being able to apply it to games and creativity has been an adjustment, but a really great adjustment."

I prepared the whole thing, I sat with Matt and said here is what we want to do, and he said 'if that's what you want to do, then great'. It was over in like 60 seconds. That was wild for me, because we're used to this six month process of back-and-forth with a million questions -- with things like 'how many pieces of art will there be?'

The first priority was making sure the studios had the things that they needed to build the best versions of their games. That means extending some of the timelines, and giving them more budgets. We have really strong support from Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, and Amy Hood, the CFO. And there's been no signal at all that we should be slowing down, but just to go at a pace that is maintainable for us as a leadership team. We're always out there talking to people. But it has to be the right opportunity.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Cool. Good for them. I hope more companies can adopt the idea and the attitude that it's not a good idea to kill the golden goose. Which has typically been an EA and Activision problem (and to a lesser degree Ubisoft).
If they can allow their studios to continue to produce excellent titles, then that's better for everyone. Especially with some of the best in the industry as found inside inXile and Obsidian.
All of it still works from the inside standpoint of exclusivity though. And I expect that that mentaility will continue underneath even if allowing the creativity on top to continue.

 

[DJ Lushious]

Cool. Good for them. I hope more companies can adopt the idea and the attitude that it's not a good idea to kill the golden goose. Which has typically been an EA and Activision problem (and to a lesser degree Ubisoft).
If they can allow their studios to continue to produce excellent titles, then that's better for everyone. Especially with some of the best in the industry as found inside inXile and Obsidian.
All of it still works from the inside standpoint of exclusivity though. And I expect that that mentaility will continue underneath even if allowing the creativity on top to continue.

It was hard not to think of you when I came across this news, given our discussion in another thread.

 

[toast0]

I mean, litterally every aquirer says this in the history of aquisitions. The proof is in the pudding, usually things start changing around two years later, give or take, and then four or five years after aquisition it's time to shut it down and write an amazing journey blog post.

 

[Aurelius]

I mean, litterally every aquirer says this in the history of aquisitions. The proof is in the pudding, usually things start changing around two years later, give or take, and then four or five years after aquisition it's time to shut it down and write an amazing journey blog post.

Some fare better than others. Microsoft generally hasn't closed down game studios (watch as someone brings out an example I'm missing) -- I suspect it'll depend on the studio and its critical/commercial success. Double Fine might be safe because it rarely puts out a truly bad game, and Obsidian is beloved, but I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was firmer going forward. It probably still has flashbacks to Crackdown 3 and ReCore and wants to shed that reputation for endless mediocrity.

 

[Meeho]

Will they buy out Chris Roberts again and fix another one of his messes?

 

[cybereality]

I actually loved Crackdown and ReCore.