Game Studio Flight From Microsoft A Sign of Troubles?

Newsweek's LevelUp blog continues to produce some highly interesting material. Today they have up a look at the 'flight' of game studios from Microsoft's corporate umbrella. BioWare's purchase by EA distances it a bit from their cosy relationship with Microsoft, as does Bizarre's purchase by Activision. Bungie's departure from the company itself goes without saying. So what does all this mean? Is this a sign of troubles in Redmond, or just more fallout from the huge undertaking required to get the Xbox 360 to the position it has today? "For us, the flight of the Killer B's is a clear indication that Microsoft as a whole is still shell shocked not only by the massive losses in the Xbox division, but also more importantly by the poor showing of Rare, which has to rank as not only one of the Microsoft's least successful purchases, but as quite possibly the worst acquisition in the history of gaming. Microsoft paid $375 million in cash for Rare, and based on the modest revenues from its ensuing titles--a Conker's Bad Fur Day remake, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero and Viva Pinata--all they've got to show for it is that proverbial lousy T-shirt, completely stained with red ink."

Comments

Re:Bioware? Bizarre?

[tbannist]

No, it's definitely not a fluff piece. It's overanalyzing a trend of 3 items. And the point isn't that Bioware and Bizarre were owned by MS, but that they had close partnerships with MS and were making the games that sell 360s.

If they go platform neutral that's a large blow to Microsoft's Third Party development and the release of Bungie is a huge blow to Microsoft's internall developed games. Overwall it reflects poorly on the 360s continued success. It might be a blip or it might be the first signs of major trouble in Microsoft's games department.

To put it more bluntly, the idea is that if Microsoft were on the ball and interested in developing first part titles for the 360, they would have kept Bungie and bought both Bioware and Bizarre. As it is now, they are leaving themselves very much at the mercy of their third party games developers. Hoping that they will stick with the Xbox line of products. If the PS3 ever surpasses the Xbox in sales (I know, not terribly likely at this time), they could end up royally screwed.

Re:Bioware? Bizarre?

[powerlord]

You're right, it might be over-analyzing the trend (based on the number of points). It does look at an overlooked part of the picture though.

Nintendo has lots of development companies inhouse and exlusive ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_developers ).

Even Sony has been pretty consistent about maintaining worldwide developer studios ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment#Internal_organization ). Leaving aside studios like Insomniac Games (Resistance:Fall of Man, Ratchet & Clank Series) who have "Close ties" to the studio.

MicroSoft has a much smaller stable of inhouse (and related) development companies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Games#In-house_studios ). They also have the split focus of providing games for the XBox 360, and providing games for Vista (though this is not mentioned). Any decrease in the inhouse development obviously puts more reliance on outside development, and as more and more games (especially from developers like EA) go cross-platform, its those in-house developers that help provide differentiation between competing products (all else being equal).