I keep that line on my profile because it continues to be accurate. ;-)
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Microsoft Studios (& Partners) Current and Future Landscape
- Thread starter Banjo-Kazooie
- Start date
I keep that line on my profile because it continues to be accurate. ;-)
Oh my.
Show me the receipts of the secret things.
While you're here, where the hell is Phantom Dust???
oh shit
Poodlestrike
Banned
O snap
Nightengale
Member
Erm what exactly is surprising about that?
Multi-portfolio creative director who works with external dev games continuing to have new unannounced projects he's working on at any time...
Multi-portfolio creative director who works with external dev games continuing to have new unannounced projects he's working on at any time...
Salty Hippo
Member
I mean, did anyone really believe there were ZERO games in the pipeline? "Secret things" doesn't mean anything, especially when it includes ports of Og Xbox games. It doesn't suggest a high quantity or quality. It could be just 2 amazing AAA games, or 10 bad small ones. That profile description will always be accurate unless Adam leaves the team or Xbox goes out of business.
I'm not throwing jabs at Adam, I think he does good work. But Xbox is in dire need of a "show, don't tell" attitude from its leaders and creative directors.
Edit: Beaten.
I'm not throwing jabs at Adam, I think he does good work. But Xbox is in dire need of a "show, don't tell" attitude from its leaders and creative directors.
Edit: Beaten.
chaosmaster(1)
Member
I'm guessing he's working on Ori 2 and that's most likely being revealed at e3.
Idk what it is but lots of people on gaf get excited by indirect ways of saying "videogames are in development"
Its sillier that people were acting like there wasn't anything in development
Judging by a lot of shit posts, you'd believe there really wasn't anything in development lol.
If they do that, then they'll deserve all the "flack" (LOL) they'll get for it. I personally don't think they're dumb enough to show something really early in development or far from release after the high profile cancellations they've had recently. There's already a narrative that's formed due to those cancellations and MS would do best to avoid it by showing off games they have the utmost faith in releasing relatively soon. They need to earn back that trust before being able to do early reveals again.
I wonder what's going on with that as well. Last we heard, it's supposed to be before E3. Not sure what would be the hold up, it's not a full on remake or remaster, it's an up-port (like PS2 on PS4). It could possibly be done and they're just waiting to release it. If everything's on schedule, we should probably get a release date sometime this month for a pre-E3 release.
Could be a shadow drop announcement at the E3 conference, just an additional mention while talking about a few saller games, leading into a bigger announcement for something else.
I think this topic should be a thread of its own. It's a serious issue that's being overlooked.
Why is MS this gen so awful with (marketing) exclusives ? So they have an awesome console in Scorpio right ? This is the perfect moment to boost not only sales but brand image too. To attract more gamers. If you don't have enough or decent exclusives for the year, what else can you do ? Simple. Get the marketing rights for larger than life games such as Rockstar games, Star Wars games. Even your average joe that isn't into gaming would pay attention. This is such a missed opportunity for MS. To show first footage of RD2 BF2 at E3 on your new console and show what its capable of. The target audience with those games is SO HUGE that the marketing rights to them would be well worth it.
Sony has ALL 4 of the big ones. ALL 4. From Battlefront 2 to Destiny 2, from Red Dead Redemption 2 to COD. MS does not even have 1. In a year where they are going to release the most powerful console. The best place to play 3rd parties. And you can't show off any footage at E3. That's such a big loss I'm afraid they can't make up for that in any way.
Instead what do they have ? Nothing that can even come remotely close to that. I'm being realistic here but there isn't a game that excites me or could excite me that they haven't announced yet. Assassins creed i'm over that franchise, madden fifa meh same old. Forza 7 not my cup of tea. The only thing that remotely could excite me is if they bring in Itagaki but that's never gonna happen. So what else can they do ? Shadow of war is the one I can think of and based on what we've seen it doesn't look that good. Doesn't look like it's going to do much for them.
It's such a far cry from the 360 era where you had so many exclusives 1p 3p it was absurd. Now barely anything and the few ones aren't really great to begin with. Marketing has become even more important in this day and age compared to 10 years ago so you'd think MS would put more emphasis on that. On the right deals. Instead they wasted it on so so, smaller ones. They could've done without those and not much would've changed.
A Red Dead Redemption 2 first footage on Scorpio at E3 alone would've put hype levels at over 9000.
Hatefilled Vengeance
Member
I'm sure they looked into whatever ridiculous amount of money it would cost to make those deals, given their 2nd place status, and decided the money was better spent elsewhere.
Seems like ruffian games is developing an xbox one exclusive game.
http://www.ruffiangames.com/careers/
http://www.ruffiangames.com/careers/
Was posted earlier in the thread. Could possibly be support on one of the existing games we know about it a completely new game
They made Crackdown 2. Sumo digital is assisting reagent and cloudgine with 3. Ruffian could also be helping, but that's not known
Poodlestrike
Banned
They might've, but I don't think that the current Crackdown is Unreal 4? I know it's flexible, but the destruction and cloud stuff would be pushing it.
ed: never mind, ignore me, it's Unreal 4. Probably just Crackdown, but it could be something else.
TBH I dont think the Ruffian listing is for Crackdown 3, because if that was the case, why not mention the game in the job description? It was announced 3 years ago at this point
Sometimes one of the key parts of announcing a project is to atract talent to the studio, so why not use that leverage on the job description if this was in fact CD3?
Sometimes one of the key parts of announcing a project is to atract talent to the studio, so why not use that leverage on the job description if this was in fact CD3?
Yeah we saw that awhile ago.
Quite possible they're just helping out with Crackdown 3 but I'm a little skeptical because why hide that they're working on it? Sumo, Reagent and Cloudgine aren't. Though even if it is a new game, it would almost certainly be something in the more AA mold like Recore. Ruffian is only like 40-50 people and I believe they have some other small stuff in the works as well. Still, it could easily be something cool like a new IP or maybe a reboot of an Xbox classic like Fusion Frenzy.
Steverulez
Member
Well that's some wind out of the sails but unsurprising. Thanks for clarifying!Its Crackdown 3
Banjo-Kazooie
Member
Steverulez
Member
This assumes no-one else is contracted to it either, which is possible.
Well reagent and Cloudgine aren't really that big. So the brunt is done by Sumo and I guess the MP is Ruffian
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
Yeah, it's about 30 people total when you added up Reagent and Cloudgine.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Yeah, Cloudgine in particular is basically just handling the cloud processing stuff. More like a middleware developer, if I understand it correctly (which I very well might not be).
Its Crackdown 3
Steve showing he is still in his form when it comes to MS projects
Still weird that they dont mention in the job offers
phantasmic_glaive
Member
Well.. they really only been awful at the beginning and they are still feeling that. Probably why acti decided to go with PlayStation this gen, the relationship between R* and Disney is what led to the RDR2 and SW. And they bet big on Destiny and it payed off.
No matter how much money you got at the table, it's still hard to go against someone who is all in. Sony, the company as a whole, are All-In on video games and entertainment. Remasters, revivals, remakes... robot dinosaurs, FFVII, free games, licensed characters (Spider-man), share play, streaming games, etc. It's a hit to MS blindside that things have been shaken this much.
Of course MS has games in development. They wouldn't cancel games without having new ones to double down on, as you wouldn't cut down trees without planting new ones. They just had to endure this first half without spreading themselves too thin with new announcements. That's probably the best thing Phil has done thus far in planning strategies. Yea it's been a tough year and a even tougher one ahead. But these recent steps are in a good direction.
16 Cloudgine - engine development and cloud tech
18 Reagent Games - Head up game design and project management
30-50 Ruffian games - multiplayer outsourcing
200-300 Sumo digital - Singleplayer outsourcing
100 Microsoft studios - Lead designers (lead art designer etc)
The Microsoft studios development team have a lot of lead game designers and creative directors working on the project.
It's probably about a 150 people developing over 4 years at release (Q4 2017) with the game starting prototype close to 5 years ago.
The games multiplayer was pretty much finished and going through testing around E3 2016 according to Shannon Loftis.
Campaign has been in development as early as Gamescom 2015 going by it's unveiling were it looked like it was far enough along in development already.
18 Reagent Games - Head up game design and project management
30-50 Ruffian games - multiplayer outsourcing
200-300 Sumo digital - Singleplayer outsourcing
100 Microsoft studios - Lead designers (lead art designer etc)
The Microsoft studios development team have a lot of lead game designers and creative directors working on the project.
It's probably about a 150 people developing over 4 years at release (Q4 2017) with the game starting prototype close to 5 years ago.
The games multiplayer was pretty much finished and going through testing around E3 2016 according to Shannon Loftis.
Campaign has been in development as early as Gamescom 2015 going by it's unveiling were it looked like it was far enough along in development already.
I know we will see 1 AAA for like 2018 cause so far we have nothing for 2018. Also, I'm making a bold guess here no Halo 6 in 2018. If it comes true I said it first.
Steverulez
Member
Rare have an incubation team but I find it hard to believe they have 2 other games in full production, even if they are small. Whats the source of 2 other games?
Shinobi and the Inner Circle.
Maybe it's nothing but I remember the Jet Force Gemini trademark renewed not so long ago.
I'm pretty sure it comes down to who doles out the most cash for money hats.
Steverulez
Member
Inner Circle guys are nice and all but I would get some receipts on that info before trusting it.
Shinobi mentioned on a podcast that Rare was working on another game alongside sea of thieves, He didn't mention two that was the inner circle guys. The inner circle guys probably heard about a third prototype because we have heard from Shinobi that Rare's being treated as a new IP factory. I think it was last year that a job post for a animator on Rare's website mention rigging creatures for a story based game(Hope Fable), as we know Rare has been explicitly clear sea of thieves has no story. So it's likely that they are working on a second story based game.
If I had to guess let's say 100-120 people are working on sea of thieves and 30-50 are working on this second game, when sea of thieves is finished that team will move on to the secondary project to get it out within the next year or two. They will of course leave 30-50 people behind on sea of thieves team to set up a live team to produce content for sea of thieves. We will probably see the studio expand, as they have been hiring a lot since sea of thieves was revealed.
MCC part deux.
Just because it's a secret dosen't mean it isn't obvious.
Banjo-Kazooie
Member
Hopefully not