ehhh.. gotta be something small.
I guess if they are being purchased it's because they are smaller now. But MS communicated they didn't want to buy studios that had their own infrastructure since MS provides all of that.
Microsoft Rumored to buy yet another Studio or Seven [2018-12, 2019-01, 2019-05]
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I guess if they are being purchased it's because they are smaller now. But MS communicated they didn't want to buy studios that had their own infrastructure since MS provides all of that.
Ryse is a franchise with a huge potential if it is put to good use. But I think that the CryEngine is the best asset of Crytek right now. Imho, it is probably the best and most versatile game engine now, faster that UE and it also produced teh best looking PSVR game, Robinson: The Journey, which looks great.
is that a real picture though? uh crytek is just way too big imo compared to all the other studios they have purchased
actually, I can't really tell. It sounds a bit unrealistic, subjectively
to give you an idea Playground Games is 200+ employees.
Crytek is 450+. Not sure if these are updated numbers but yea, nearly double the size.
Obsidian is 170 ~
everything else is smaller.
How are things looking at the moment in terms of being able to facilitate a AAA dev cyle of 3-4 years interspersed with smaller budget titles in between? Let's say they want to have at least two big titles a year (AAA + AA for either holidays or spring) with smaller budget titles to fill the gaps in between (ala Summer of Arcade).
There are currently 12 studios. If they acquiire 3 more than it's 15.
At a 4 exclusives per year every in a time span of every 3-4 years.
hm... I'm getting off-topic now and may move this later, but if we put that into a line-up list to get some context of where their studios stand in terms of game dev timeline:
(including non-MS studios and non-MS published):
2017
- inXile Entertainment - Torment: Tides of Numenera
- inXile Entertainment - The Mage's Tale
- Ninja Theory - Hellblade (ported to Xbox 2018)
- Turn 10 - Forza Motorboat 7
2018
- Compulsion Games - We Happy Few
- inXile Entertainment - Bard's Tale IV
- Obsidian Entertainment - Pillars of Eternity 2
- Playground Games - Forza Horizon 4
- Undad Labs - State of Decay 2
2019
- Coalition - Gears of War 5
- DLaLa Studios/Rare - Battletoads
- inXile Entertainment - Wasteland 3
- Ninja Theory - Star Wars VR
- Obsidian Entertainment - The Outer Worlds
- Splash Damage - Gears Tactics
- Splash Damage + Ruffian- MCC PC + MCC Xbox Reach
- Coalition - Gears 5 post-launch content
- Obsidian Entertainment - The Outer Worlds post-launch content ?
- Ninja Theory - Hellblade Team launch title? ~2.5 years
- Rare/Iron Galaxy - Killer Instinct Next - launch title ?
- Relic Entertainment - Age of Empires IV launch title?
- Turn 10 - Forza Motorboats, coats, goats, and float16 - launch title?
2021 (guesses, of course)
- Coalition - Year 2 Gears 5 content, a waning of "MS Shootbang" to be followed up by the other McShooty Shootbang from 343i.
- Iron Galaxy - Killer Instinct Next Season 2
- 343i - Halo Infinite? Maybe too strong of a game for 2020 launch...
- Compulsion Games - post-We Happy Few game? - 3 years
- inXile - smaller title - I have no idea what to make of their studio given the number of games they have released since 2017
- Obsidian Entertainment - from the PoE team ? ~3 years
- Playground Games - Fabble rabble
- Turn 10 - Forza Motorhats content
- Undead Labs - Post-State of Decay 2 ? - 3 years
- inXile - bigger title from the Wasteland 3 team ? ~3 years
- Iron Galaxy - Killer Instinct Next Season 3
- Ninja Theory - from the Star Wars VR folks? ~3 years
- Playground Games - Forza Horizon with less mundane game mechanics.
(incomplete) Gotta run for now
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So Iron Galaxy is apparently ~130 people. I wonder if they'd be in the running for acquisition. Their 2018 title, Extinction, didn't seem to make any waves. They have otherwise done some Switch ports.
Maybe MS will pull a Cuphead Switch on more of their smaller catalogue titles, "Perfect for Switch" (and POW Switch/Lite Switch). Battletoads comes to mind, although we haven't seen anything yet about what that is.
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Oof... Well, we know Motorsport is skipping 2019, which probably means 2020 launch.
PG's rumoured Fable game could be hot on the trail, but who knows. I was guessing that the next Forza Horizon would take place in Japan (accidentally coincide with the Olympics in 2020), but... maybe the next FM will do something smart like that as a build-up instead. IMO, FH could use a break to go back to the drawing board and to give them more time to produce something less boring.
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cheapchips
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Assuming it's real, wonder why they'd buy Crytek?
They seem to have produced a few likeable games in recent years but nothing that had people talking.
Do MS really want or need an internal game engine? Are they going to end up in a Frostbite situation if they do?
They seem to have produced a few likeable games in recent years but nothing that had people talking.
Do MS really want or need an internal game engine? Are they going to end up in a Frostbite situation if they do?
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D
Deleted member 11852
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Crytek were so hard up for cash they were not paying their employees [kotaku] in 2016/17. People with great tech but poor business experience are ripe for acquisition.
The value here would be licensing the engine, though. Buying them and keeping the engine only for first parties doesn't make much sense to me. Either way, it's not a 'game developer' acquisition in that case, but a tech company acquisition.
Also, there's a F2P CryTek game, Warface, that I tried on PS4, and it was pretty stinky. Not a great looker by any stretch.
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Deleted member 91098
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Amazon bought the rights to make a fork of Cryengine 3 under their own name (for a touted price of 50 to 70 mio. us dollar). Cryengine (5) is still owned by Crytek and quite a bit different to Lumberyard (the fork from Amazon). The most common thing between the two seems to be that they are not widely used and have subpar documentation. :o)
https://kotaku.com/sources-amazon-spent-big-bucks-on-cryteks-engine-1696008878
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cheapchips
Veteran
The most common thing between the two seems to be that they are not widely used and have subpar documentation.)
Do we have good reports on what Cryengine 5's like to use? We have a load of stuff from 3/Lumberyard from Star Citizen, but that's been such a clusterf**k of a project it seems hard to read too much into their issues.Ike Turner
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There's literally zero reason for MS to acquire Crytek. CRYENGINE would be worthless to them given that all their studios are using UE4 or their own engine (Forzatech & Slipspace) & Crytek's IPs aren't worth squat.
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Deleted member 91098
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Other than PR pieces by Crytek where customers talk about the engine features they like (for example SVOGI) or how helpful Crytek was when implementing missing features or optimizing, not that I know of. I would really like to know what the developers of Kingdom Come, Wolcen, Snow and Mavericks Proving Grounds think about the engine.
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Deleted member 11852
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They made the original Far Cry, three Crysis games and RYSE. They are experienced developers familiar with, with was, cutting edge tech. In development is Hunt: Showdown.
I agree. I don't think Microsoft would buy Crytek for the engine.
cheapchips
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Hunt looks quite good on a gameplay and technical level, even though not my cup of tea. For the former titles and engine developers though, how much of that talent is left within the company?
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