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Microsoft Studios (& Partners) Current and Future Landscape
- Thread starter Figments
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I'm actually really excited to see where TC takes Gears 5. I understand with Gears 4 they had to play it relatively safe being a new studio and all. But for a first attempt, Gears 4 was incredibly polished on XB1 (PC version was also solid from what I hear).
I'm itching for some news on anything from MS regarding their line-up for 2018 and beyond.
a lot of the posts here are just speculation. Remember the year when we thought Battletoads would show up. Remember when we thought Banjo woupd show? We even thought Halo would show last E3. All we really know is that some studios are working on stuff then threads like this overhype what will be shown then we're dissapointed.
Rare recently said they aren't interested in making sequels to games they already made but they would like to make old franchises fresh again with new gameplay and new ideas. Maybe it's a Perfect Dark reboot with modern stealth shooter gameplay?
Would like to remind you that the same guy posting Fable will be done by U.K. studio, Forza Horizon 4 will be in Japan, Microsoft is making a mech game, etc posted this in 2016:
https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/4luugg/e3_teaser_trailer_coming_online_later_today/
The ONLY thing that didn't happen was Battletoads. All the other like 12 bullet points happened.
Also he said "zombie game (probably State of Decay 2 but could also be Dead Rising or DayZ) — in E3 2016 we got DayZ, Dead Rising 4 AND State of Decay 2. Not just one.
Why is this so catchy but also so shit, I can't turn it off! Now it's looping with the Fable music and it's become a giant mess but I don't want to turn either off, whats happening!?
EDIT: Wait it's started to line up to a cool beat... I'm getting into this in a weird way.
There's no way we don't get a KI2. Maybe not this generation but definitely a launch title with the next Xbox in 2020 or 2021. It's Microsoft's Smash Bros at this point. Guest characters and all. System seller.
At this point, one must believe right??
I mean, if this is all a fable, *har har.....
What games do we have on Xbox? Shouldn't MS just cancel E3 presentation if these are all lies?
Just look at The Coaltion's vacancies page, Gears 5 is definitely on the way.
Don't forget Lobrille also found a lot of unknown game ID in his discovery, those should be new IP.
I think they'll go the Halo 6 route with Gears.
Halo 6: Reveal at E3 2018, release in October-December
Gears 5: Reveal at E3 2019, release in October-December
Don't need any time to show off more gameplay multiple E3's because people know what to expect from Halo and Gears and people will buy it.
Damn that's true..
I still think BattleToads was indeed coming. Let's not forget Spencer wearing a BattleToads shirt. I don't think it was just for KI.
I think maybe MS got cold feet ? Didn't like the design of the game? Something that will resurface eventually.
We can safely assume all these games, if real, are coming to PC via Windows Store. And Steam if MS are in the mood. I wonder if a smash hit lineup of Perfect Dark 3 and Fable and other highly desirable games could be the catalyst Microsoft need to push their Windows Store to the greater audience, assuming they can work out its awful technical issues.
game companies hiring for Microsoft's projects include "crossplay" in the job description which means Xbox playing with PC so yeah, definitely until at least 2020, all Microsoft games will be Windows 10 as well.
Curious to see how Microsoft is going to tackle Halo 6 with PC. Maybe similar to Gears. Co-op crossplay.
I've believed game announcement rumors too much and gotten caught in enough hype trains. I'm going to be pessimistic until the week before E3.
Right now I couldn't imagine what they will show at E3. I'm still chomping at the bit to play Crackdown and more BC games coming.
I'd be way more excited for a traditional PGR or even a remake of PGR 2 over a new Forza Horizon. Yes I'm insane.
For me, PGR was like the Goldilocks of racing games. Most arcade racing games were too hot. Sim racing games were too cold. PGR was just right.
I appreciate, respect and own the recent Forza and Forza Horizon games. None have hooked me the way PGR did. The kudos system and sliding through corners haven't been matched.
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You won't have to wait until E3 to see Crackdown 3 or State of Decay 2. Developers from both games have continued stating that they are very sure it's coming out Spring and won't be delayed and that Microsoft is waiting to make sure the game is about to be finished before announcing release date and release date likely won't come until shortly before game is finished (like how Microsoft announced a March release date for Sea of Thieves in December)
If they keep a 3 year schedule, it could be announced this year for a fall 2019 release.
New Halo and Gears in the same launch period would be nuts.
What? Halo 6 is definitely a reveal with 30 second teaser followed by 10 minute gameplay demo and release in October-December of this year just like Forza because people will buy Halo, doesn't need extra marketing time. With Sea of Thieves in E3 2016, they had a 50 second CGI trailer and then had a 6 minute world premiere gameplay demo.
Again, Electric Square is working on a new IP which is confirmed. The Coalition is only allowed to focus on Gears (just like 343i can only focus on mainline Halo) so Coalition is likely just overseeing the project because of their shooter experience. Not doing any real development. And a few months ago, Rare was hiring concept artists (which did not mention Sea of Thieves in job listing) to draw art for a game so that they could build it into a real game.
We have to remember that this is not a E3 2018 leak but an API leak, some stuff is likely prototype or just recently started development that we won't see until 2020 (just like Age of Empires was found in files June 2016 and we didn't get an announcement until August 2017 with no date, or the fact that Battletoads was found but scrapped/cancelled and never saw the light of day)
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If Perfect Dark is real I have a feeling it won't be coming from a major studio, it'd be someome that we aren't currently discussing.
Certain Affinity keeps coming to mind. They have a long history as a high-profile support studio for AAA shooters including many of Microsoft's. Plus they're hiring a good bit at the moment. I can see Microsoft being willing to give them a shot at helming an original project. I know they wouldn't exactly inspire confidence but that would be why The Coalition is helping.
Again, just a feeling.
Certain Affinity keeps coming to mind. They have a long history as a high-profile support studio for AAA shooters including many of Microsoft's. Plus they're hiring a good bit at the moment. I can see Microsoft being willing to give them a shot at helming an original project. I know they wouldn't exactly inspire confidence but that would be why The Coalition is helping.
Again, just a feeling.
All this talk of Fable is wanting me to have MS take the 360 version of Fable 2 and Fable 3 and give the 4k boost like they have done with a few 360 games.
The 360 version of Fable Anniversary is far more deserving of that treatment than 3 is.
Yeah, getting a new Gears this year is very wishfull thinking. A new Halo this year seems more plausible
I'd die if the host for the Japan festival was Han(I know the actor is Korean). But I doubt FH would go full blown crazy Tokyo drift
Didn't they hire a bunch of people with action adventure and FPS experience years ago? Hopefully it wasn't only for Kinect Sports Rivals and/or Sea of Thieves......
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Whoever is making Fable,
How easy is it to reuse assets?
Fable Legends was close to release, could a studio theoretically turn that from an arena game to a full fledged Fable 4?
If so maybe that would significantly cut down the dev time. So maybe we see it sooner rather then later.
How easy is it to reuse assets?
Fable Legends was close to release, could a studio theoretically turn that from an arena game to a full fledged Fable 4?
If so maybe that would significantly cut down the dev time. So maybe we see it sooner rather then later.
Playground Games is likely the one making it because London starting with "L" is making it claiming an insider and the only place I know with that description is "Leamington Spa" and the only studio located there I know of is Playground Leamington. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ning-second-studio-working-on-open-world-game
In this day and age, it's very easy to reuse assets for other projects. It's something that virtually every publisher does these days to cut costs. They can't make a complete game out of it, but they can reuse assets for the world.
Please let all of this be true because it would mean Spencer wasn't just talking, but intends to also deliver. It would be so good if MS could actually compete with the other two again or at least just offer much more exclusives than they have been doing so far. That's the most important thing really.
The way I look forward to a Sony E3 because I know I will see games that will make me say "holy shit" is what I want from Xbox E3 shows as well. When the time comes for PG's new game to be shown I want to be amazed and be able to enjoy the first footage together with my buddies on Xbox Live. We really haven't had many of those moments and I want those though. :)
The way I look forward to a Sony E3 because I know I will see games that will make me say "holy shit" is what I want from Xbox E3 shows as well. When the time comes for PG's new game to be shown I want to be amazed and be able to enjoy the first footage together with my buddies on Xbox Live. We really haven't had many of those moments and I want those though. :)
I definitely agree that Sony definitely has the "holy shit" quality but in my opinion, Sony's way of announcing games has been horrible this generation. Announcing 2019-2020 games (like Death Stranding), etc. It got so bad that at E3 2017, all Sony had to reveal was a Shadow of the Colossus Remake (which is cool but shouldn't be all they have) because they didn't have any more reveals. "They're probably just saving everything for PSX" they actually saved a lot of stuff for PGW that wasn't shown at E3 but even then all you got was one game reveal. I much prefer Microsoft's (recent approach) and Nintendo's approach of revealing games that are coming out soon and not blowing their entire load. Yeah sure it might've sucked at E3 2017 when Microsoft had nothing new, but now at E3 2018, the only thing we know about is Ori and everything else is new. Same thing with E3 2019 and beyond, every game you see at E3 2018 will be released by Spring 2019 (with maybe a couple delayed games) and then at E3 2019, every game you see (besides one or two games) is new. It's a great strategy.
With Sony, you might get a few surprises but for the most part, you have a lot of 2019 and 2020 games spoiled already meaning that you know most of the PS4 games for the generation. Pretty sure Sony didn't reveal anything new at PSX because they wanted to avoid not having anything at E3 so they'll have one or two surprises. But that's it. Just my opinion, I like the surprise factor of E3.
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Look, I think you're putting far too much weight on the comparisons I'm drawing across the different racers here. I'm not saying that they're basically interchangeable or some shit. Going by that last line, you seem to believe I'm arguing that PGR isn't needed because Forza Horizon exists. That's not the case at all, and I've actually argued for years for incorporating what Project Gotham was into a third branch of the Forza franchise if the brand recognition is the issue. Like I said though, you can put ALL three games (FM, PGR, FH) on a straight line and then will follow a somewhat logical progression (with FH1 acting somewhat as a bridge between was PGR was and what FH currently is). That's not to say that all racers are inherently similar... Daytona USA wouldn't be sensible to rebrand as a Forza spin-off, nor would Burnout, and certainly not Mario Kart, because those actually are fundamentally incompatible, and basically can't be marketed to the same general audience that you can effectively market both Forza Motorsport AND Forza Horizon (and PGR) to. There are different Need for Speed games that diverge more from each other than PGR does from either end of the Forza spectrum.
You're trying to have your cake and eat it regarding difficulty options vs progression with PGR and FH. Yes, you can go for a platinum medal instead of a Gold or Silver in race one... but if your entire point was that the game becomes more progressively challenging as you progress through it, then it logically cannot present the same level of challenge from the outset. So if you platinum your entire way through PGR2, then when you buy PGR3 the earlier races will be considerably easier regardless of if you choose the platinum medal or not. The only way for those races to be as immediately challenging as you became accustomed to after beating the previous game would be if all the races were roughly equivalent in challenge... which is the very thing you just blasted Forza Horizon for doing. You can't have this both ways.
And "depth" is something that is very often argued misguidedly in gaming. Everything you listed as being deep in PGR exists equally in Forza Horizon, the only difference is whether or not the game will block your progress for not demonstrating it. Mastering any corner produces a faster time, just because there are less cases of Forza Horizon telling you "no, you failed" does not diminish any potential for technical mastery of any corner in the game. Your Mario example is pretty bad tbh, as Mario games whilst they have the potential for crazy amounts of technical mastery (usually demonstrated in speedruns, as I alluded to in my previous post), the games rarely demand you to actually demonstrate this in order to complete it, and offer countless ways for weaker players to succeed also (such as returning to an easier stage and returning with a Tanooki suit). Depth isn't the same as difficulty, and PGR testing you on the things you listed is only difficulty. That same depth exists in both FM and FH. Putting cones on the course in FH and giving you a strict time limit wouldn't add depth to FH any more than increasing the difficulty of an AI opponent does to a fighting game. If you can take two human players, pit them against each other and one person's mastery of the game's mechanics will cause them to constantly beat the other person... then the depth is there, and this works for FH as much as it does PGR, they both have the same scope for you to drive better than you did yesterday and set a better time on any given course. FH is a online focused game where performances for countless actions are measure and compared with anyone else. There's scope for you to take any one of these and attempt to perfect it to be better than anyone else has, just because the game doesn't tell you you're not good enough for setting a score/time/whatever that would put you in to top 10k as opposed to the top 250k says absolutely nothing about the depth entailed.
Anyway, this is now completely off-topic and has spiralled way beyond what the original comments justified. So PM me if you want to continue the discussion, because it's no longer relevant to what everyone else here is discussing. But this point you're actually telling me what feelings various games that I've played for hundreds of hours each can and can't evoke in me, like it's some objective science.
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I don't think this is that far off for Gears. I think we get a Halo reveal earlier than E3, though, and then a multiplayer beta before launch.
Maybe they use the HCS Finals in April to drop the first trailer.
I think they are on a 3 year Dev cycle just like Halo (each game takes 3 years to make).
Halo 6 will definitely get a "AND YOU WONT HAVE TO WAIT TO PLAY HALO 6 BECAUSE THE BETA IS AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW" E3 moment.
I disagree on the reveal before E3 because Microsoft only does reveals at events and they don't go to any other event other than E3 and they don't host their own public gaming event.
I don't see Gears getting the same launch window as Halo either. Every 2 years is also excessive. Halo gets 3 years every game since they started it so why doesn't Gears?
Think it depends, where do you play your multiplats? Do you have a gaming PC, PS4 pro, regular PS4? none?
I think if you want an Xbox just for the exclusives, I would go with the S. But if it's going to be your main gaming machine, the upgrade to the X is worth it IMO.
How cool would it be if the new Fable was a combination of BOTW/Dark Soul with all the meandering/romancing in towns.
We are on the same page, my friend. I agree with you that Halo is this year and Gears is 2019. I meant I think the timeline is right.
People seem to think that because Master Chief Collection is getting a patch or there hasn't been an official reveal yet, 6 isn't this year. I just don't see how it isn't this year. It's always on a three year cycle. This is the third year since 5 released.
I think this stems from this:
E3 2016: Halo 6 won't be at E3 yet
E3 2017: "Don't expect any Halo at E3." *everyone expects Halo*
*disappointed*
Gamescom 2017: We aren't showing any Halo 6 yet.
Most recently
Fans: "HALO 6 IS GOING TO GET REVEALED AT TGA"
343: We want to make Halo 6 the best and most polished game yet, for this reason, we aren't going to show any Halo at this time. When we are ready and when the gameplay is polished enough, we will show it off.
Fans: Damn I guess it isn't coming until 2019 or 2020.
I mean I guess it's possible it comes out early 2019 (January or February) if they're really concerned about quality control but if that's the case, I think it's more likely that they push it from October to late November-early December or something like that.
But, it could be that they just don't want to make people wait multiple events to see the same games over and over again/fatigue. And want to avoid situations like Crackdown 3, where they show the game and it looks like garbage, isn't ready yet.
That being said, in 2017, almost all of the reveals we saw were for 2017 or 2018 games from virtually every publisher. You don't need to reveal a game 3-4 years before it comes out anymore, people aren't interested in that. If you reveal Halo and release it 8 months later, people will buy it. This isn't some new IP where you need multiple showcases to prove its good, this is a game where everyone knows what to expect (there will be concerns about campaign but I'm sure they'll show the campaign at E3 to minimize that).
Everyone was saying Sea of Thieves would get delayed and won't make Q1 2018 and gets delayed to Fall because Microsoft was quiet about it, then we randomly got a 30 second date announcement saying "March 20" in December. I don't think people are seeing the shift in game marketing. And I hope that at E3 2018, when every game is brand new and "Fall 2018", "Early 2019", "Spring 2019" they finally realize that games aren't announced that far out anymore.
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gotta disagree. the twists of fable 1 were much better. as was the world building. there was so much left unexplored by that game. though fable 2 is right after it. 3 just felt like such a bore. i loved 3 as well though so i can see why you'd pick it.
Dude I fully agree with you here and what I mostly meant was how they always tend to have at least one game that will blow you away visually. Which E3 was it that they had Days gone, God of War and another game? I was amazed by all the amazing graphics.
I just want that again from MS. I remember when they showed Halo 4 for the first time, me and my buddies went "this is 360? Hooooooly shit". I didn't really have that with any of their E3 shows ever since Xbox One launched.
Hey, forgot to respond o this post before.
Yea, I kinda just lumped it all together tbh. I don't really play FH2 or FH3 online much as I'm not really fond of their online implementations. In FH3 you can pick to only do racing, but that still follow the roadtrip formula, randomly grouped team races still count as races, and race results contribute to an XP total, that also accumulates skill points and other feats, so you the championship positioning don't necessarily reflect each player's racing performance. It's funny actually, because in a way it somewhat resembles the way MSR and PGR1 worked, in that you were aiming for a Kudos total rather than a actual first place finish, which is partly why PGR1, allowing you to succeed by accumulating a bunch of points via drifting, as opposed to actually driving fast.
I preferred the older, traditional online implementation in FH1 where you simply select a car, you (or the host) selects a course, and whoever cross the line first wins.
Let it all be true!!!!
But for real MS needs to bring back Fable. Those games even if flawed were great.
I really loved Gears 4 and would love the continuation in 5.
Perfect Dark 3rd person? It could work...right now my crazy idea is that it could be similar in style to prey/dishonored/bioschock. Like small open world sections.
The rest just give it to me. I am not sold on Sea of Thieves and mildly excited for Crackdown 3 so I hope they can deliver at least empty promises of these games.
But for real MS needs to bring back Fable. Those games even if flawed were great.
I really loved Gears 4 and would love the continuation in 5.
Perfect Dark 3rd person? It could work...right now my crazy idea is that it could be similar in style to prey/dishonored/bioschock. Like small open world sections.
The rest just give it to me. I am not sold on Sea of Thieves and mildly excited for Crackdown 3 so I hope they can deliver at least empty promises of these games.
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