What happened to 12 of gaming's biggest studios after they were sold

Doing on a money basis, is one way. They could have just done it on relevance.

Other good examples to do would be EA buying Origin, MIndscape buying SSI, Sony buying Psygnosis.
 
-Arcadia- said:
Some of those, particularly Mass Effect, aren't Mattrick, though, are they? It's been so long.
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He joined in 2007 before Halo 3 came out. So all of that was while he was there. His predecessor would have signed the Mass Effect contract, Mattrick would have been the one who elected not to acquire BioWare right before the game came out and EA made their bid.
 
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The Ensemble one hurts me the most, even though Bioware should be even higher but I feel like Bioware killed themselves rather than EA gutting them. AOE:O could really have been so much better if Microsoft wouldn't have hamstrung them so badly with all the MTX requirements.

Shout-out to Project Celeste for keeping the dream alive.
www.projectceleste.com

Age Of Empires Online - Project Celeste

A fan-made community server that brings the excellent Age of Empires Online back to life! Complete co-op quests with your friends or challenge their skills in the PvP arena. Join the community and participate in tournaments or gain high level gear in co-op quests!
www.projectceleste.com www.projectceleste.com
 
Zenimax is too big for all of those studios acquired to go bad all of the sudden. Some of them will produce great games. That's more an indictment on poor management and EA is gawd awful at that. Granted MS has been too.
 
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Holy carp, EA's track record for acquisitions is poison. Respawn is the only one that doesn't seem to have gone down the tubes.
 
Zannegan said:
Holy carp, EA's track record for acquisitions is poison. Respawn is the only one that doesn't seem to have gone down the tubes.
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Apex Legends saved Respawn. And oddly it was a quietly revealed game that got unleashed as F2P. I don't think anyone at EA/Respawn knew it would be such a hot game, and suddenly a gazillion people jumped on.

EA's handling of Titanfall 2's release sandwiched between BF and COD has to be the most desperate anti-COD move ever. Everyone knows EA always has to release BF before COD for their early sales win, but to toss T2 into the fire when they should have released it early in the new year to spread it out goes to show how EA management is so desperate to get COD gamers.

Made no difference to COD sales.
 
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Vawn said:
Meanwhile, Sony buys mediocre studios and turns them into modern-day Naughty Dog level studios.
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There's a long list of corpses that Sony has left behind going back decades. They're not the exception. OP's article just neglected to include them.
 
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Lanrutcon said:
Going to blow your mind for a second:

...Fallout 76 was a commercial success.

Despite the shitty launch, the mind-bogglingly bad design decisions, the terrible microtransactions, the legion of bugs and the multiple fuckups...it is financially successful. Now, maybe that's because of brand recognition, maybe it's because it cost them absolute peanuts to develop or maybe it's because gamers are dumb. Who knows, but there you go.

Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 could literally be a 15 frame GIF of a dog pooping and they'd sell. Jesus, imagine if ES6 has online play (which is highly likely given the beta for their online tech...aka FO76). It will print money.
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Fallout 76 was a commercial success?

On what planet?
 
Not sure why some people are being defensive toward MS in this thread. The OP shows that they have mostly done okay with their acquisitions. It is EA that has the bad track record.
 
I think the major difference, hopefully, is Microsoft can handle a flop/poor performer or under performing title, financially. I believe they will have more patience and provide better support than anyone like EA or Activision. The sum of their parts are greater than anyone studio and under game pass, even less than stellar releases, are still content. Microsoft seems to be displaying a lot of patience and buy in to their long term goals, they know it will be bumpy, but they can handle those set backs.
 
Ozzie666 said:
I think the major difference, hopefully, is Microsoft can handle a flop/poor performer or under performing title, financially. I believe they will have more patience and provide better support than anyone like EA or Activision. The sum of their parts are greater than anyone studio and under game pass, even less than stellar releases, are still content. Microsoft seems to be displaying a lot of patience and buy in to their long term goals, they know it will be bumpy, but they can handle those set backs.
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I agree.

I don't know what year it was, but that 2010-2014 era was all about being lean and focusing on Kinect and an all-in-one media gadget. Although for naysayers I got to say that cable in feed was awesome. Playing a slow paced game while watching a baseball or hockey game at the same time with tunable volume was awesome.

So maybe it was around 2014 that is when MS said fuck it. We're going to reground ourselves for the future. One X will be a start to take the power crown. EA Access, tons of OS functionality, more studios. Its unlikely One will ever recover, so it'll be a long term process. Then, Series S/X, tons of Gamepass shit, more studios, and opening up the corporate coffers with Bethesda.

So unless Nadella suddenly wants to now stop the moneybags after Bethesda, Xbox will have the money and freedom to gun for holistic gaming from a powerful system, services and multiplat on PC and Android.

To me it seemed that 2010-2014 era had this narrow focused family gaming vibes which seemed low budget, and they had to release some games in progress that were never fleshed out like the 360 era games. But for sake of filling the catalog in the mid 2010s had to get some games out there.
 
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JohnnyFootball said:
Aside from Mojang and Treyarch, almost none of those acquisitions have really panned out.
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Sea of thieves is very profitable now for MS. Game doing really well now on Steam and Live.

Rare has more creative freedom what they had under Matrick.

Studio is still alive and kicking and working on Everwild.


I know what op trying to do with thread. Creating fear in minds of fans that MS will kill Bethesda now. Forgetting that fact its not same MS now.
 
I think in the grand scheme of things Bethesda and their games will be ok. I can see why people would be worried given MS's track record(Ensemble JFC, that one still hurts) but I think Bethesda will bring hype to the next gen Xbox, when the games release anyways.
 
CobraXT said:
Just a reminder that Sony fucked nearly every UK based studio they have , i believe Phil Spencer will do the right thing with those studios .. and some fans just have to accept that MS hit Sony hard with this acquisition
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What people still can't seem to understand is that they likely bought Bethesda to fuck with Amazon and as a bonus Sony. This was bought for streaming. You couldn't justify the price otherwise.

If rumours are true then Amazon was looking to buy them as well. In fact Amazon may buy another very large unsuspecting publisher soon if they're serious about the streaming game.

Who knows it could be amazon that end up buying sega.
 
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RevenantX said:
Rare has more creative freedom what they had under Matrick.

Studio is still alive and kicking and working on Everwild.


I know what op trying to do with thread. Creating fear in minds of fans that MS will kill Bethesda now. Forgetting that fact its not same MS now.
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I think rare always had creative freedom bar the times when they were doing kinect games.

There is way MS would ever ask rare to make Viva pianeta for instance. At first glance it looks like a game to troll Microsoft haha
 
CitizenX said:
Fck me Treyarch was only 20 million, WOW.
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Infinity Ward was purchased for $5 million:

Lawsuit details: Activision bought Infinity Ward for $5M, went on to generate $3 billion from its games

Activision got the bargain of the century in 2002 when it paid a total of $5 million to buy Infinity Ward, a cash-strapped game studio. Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty series has since gone on to generate more than $3 billion in revenues for Activision. Those details, included in a lawsuit filed by...
venturebeat.com venturebeat.com
 
My guess here is that the units were low intentionally to give it that " pre orders" sold out buzz.

Sounds good in a headline doesn't it? Preorders sold out.. wow so it must be popular right.
 
Takeovers of smaller studios by huge corporations are generally a bad thing. People who celebrate them are simply idiots.
 
I still miss Westwood, they made great RTS games, especially Red Alert 2. EA just ruined so many game franchises, i can't remember the last time i played an EA game it was that long ago.

I bought Age of Empires 1 and 2 at the time, i thought Microsoft already was the publisher or owner, their name was on the box, i know Ensemble made it.
 
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Wait so Sega's studio is developing Age of Empires? Hmmmm

Also Sony and Psygnosis was pretty big one no?
 
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M1chl said:
Wait so Sega's studio is developing Age of Empires? Hmmmm

Also Sony and Psygnosis was pretty big one no?
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i forgot about them until i saw the list...their best games were pretty much the games that shaped the ps1

20 Best Psygnosis Games

20 Best video game listings by "Psygnosis".
www.igdb.com www.igdb.com

And if you go further back they were a juggernaut in the 80s/90s...especially as an Amiga Fan
 
Multiple acquisitions from multiple publishers at multiple time period
i understand why there is no conclusion drawn in the article.
But i see the point when it comes to licenses or studio being in the same hand.
We can fear they will not put enough effort into them if they own X others doing well. (but at the same time you can also take more risks with licenses)
Also MS can have a different approach producing content because of gamepass. Individual maximization of profit per game is not necessary in this case, it's global appeal of the subscription service that counts.
Time will tell.
 
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captainraincoat said:
i forgot about them until i saw the list...their best games were pretty much the games that shaped the ps1

20 Best Psygnosis Games

20 Best video game listings by "Psygnosis".
www.igdb.com www.igdb.com

And if you go further back they were a juggernaut in the 80s/90s...especially as an Amiga Fan
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Everything was fine untill they were merged into SCE in 1999 and relegated to only F1 and Wipeout games. Wasn't Jim Rayan responsible for European branch then?

captainraincoat said:
Sony are also not on that list...they aquired a number of studios and have also shuttered them

Nowhere near ea levels though

List of acquisitions by Sony - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
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But Psygnosis is more painful than any other.
 
The one that hurts the most is what Microsoft has done with RARE.

RARE was considered Naughty Dog level of greatness in the N64 generation.

They produced hit after hit on that system!

It does make me laugh when Halo is credited for the success of bringing FPS shooters to mainstream success when I'm pretty sure that should easily go to GoldenEye.

Then Microsoft gets salty when Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero doesn't find a footing on the 360 and puts forces them to work on crappy Kinect rubbish.

Sea of Thieves may have eventually found an audience but it's nothing like the greatness they used to create.

Such a damn shame! 😥
 
Microsoft closing Ensemble really broke my heart. Same with EA and Westwood. I've always sucked at RTS games but always had an appreciation for them. Sucks these publishers don't feel the same way. Even after these studios really didn't put out duds.
Another acquisition that's not up here is the Bizarre Creations by Activision. I know they released 007 Blood Stone and Blur (which is the fucking GOAT of arcade racers). Then Activision shut down the studio.
 
The tragic thing about Ensemble is that its shut down wasn't even justified by commercial failures.
The studio was very successful and the Age of Empires series was one of the closest points the RTS genre reached to be a mainstream thing at the time. They made a series that even "computer dads" used to have installed on their PC.

No, they literally closed the studio just because it didn't fit their shitty focus on the console market and Xbox brand at the time.
 
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Now write up about the studios Sony purchased. While some have gotten better, even Sony has had its woes. Evolution, Psygnosis, Zipper, Incognito...

Going for a major corporate environment with stricter deadlines and atmosphere can be constricting. You're bought to make a particular kind of game, so hope you don't mind monotony!
 
RevenantX said:
it made lot of money at launch thanks to brand name. Its improved a lot now, though..I went back to it, Still not perfect but man they worked hard to improve that shit game lol
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It was a commercial failure considering it had a budget of 100 million dollars.

2.5 million copies is pretty poor by Fallout standards.
 
Oddvintagechap said:
Microsoft isnt taking Bethesha in house. So it shouldnt face the same fate. The next elder scrolls and fallout probably will be better.
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Yes but you also have to consider how things will work when 120 million + customers are cut off and all those day 1 sales are gone. Do MS just give them the money they would have made?
 
Microsoft dropped the ball.

They should have been all over RESPAWN... for a measly $350M... Could have given them lead for Halo
 
Westwood was a tragedy, I loved C&C Generals.

It's usually that the publisher doesn't understand the culture of the developer I feel and push what they think is the best workflow and new hiring standards or move HR out to a centralized office.

Ruins the cohesion of the team, the efficiency, communication etc. Maybe bad project management too.

We have seen companies been criticized before by former partners like Obsidian and Platinum games for acting like they knew more and being overbearing and demanding.
 
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