They’re horrible at making games too. Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally and once they took them over they’ve run them into the ground of mediocrity. In over twenty years I don’t think any developer or franchise has benefited from Microsoft owning them.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure who "they" is in this scenario. If it's Microsoft Games Studios... well, yeah, they're a publisher. You just described what a publisher is.

I think if we're talking about their recent publishing strategy they've certainly been on a bit of a rut. There's still some interesting stuff happening with their IP. They got Relic to make a surprsiingly faithful Age of Empires, people do like Microsoft Flight Sim, that type of thing. But still, yeah, they've made a lot of purchases and we haven't seen new games coming out from most of those to justify those purchases, which does speak to a bit of a struggle to find a direction. That Hellblade sequel looks intriguing, but for a publisher with a lot of fully owned studios that has been fighting claims of monopolistic practices for their high profile acquisitions their output from that stable hasn't picked up pace yet.

I get it, games take forever to make now. That Hellblade game has been marketed for as long as the Xbox Series has, and that came out in 2020. Still, that itself is a problem. If the big oil tanker is hard to steer you have to plan your turns before you get to the icebergs. I do genuinely hope they get it together, though. That's a lot of talent, IP and potential to let run on idle for too long. Or worse, to fail in the context of a major corporation and stop getting support.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They got Relic to make a surprsiingly faithful Age of Empires, people do like Microsoft Flight Sim, that type of thing.

"Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally" so not really a counter argument to phillaholic when you mention two games outsourced to external developers.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Kinda. This is the exact opposite of that, in that they control the IP and went out to find an external dev with lots of subject matter expertise to make it.

On paper I'd say that's better than them buying Relic off of Sega, but then Sega fired a bunch of people at Relic this year, like everybody else, so what would have been better is very much up for debate.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sega fired a bunch of people at Relic this year, like everybody else, so what would have been better is very much up for debate.

Microsoft shut down the entire Ensemble studio, the original creator of AoE. Internal game development at Microsoft is bad.