| Title | Game Studio Double Fine Discreetly Bought by Microsoft | |
| Date | Thursday July 11 2019, @04:14PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the who-pays-the-piper-calls-the-tune dept. | ||
Three years ago, Double Fine started a crowdfunding campaign to fund the second installment of their successful game, Psychonauts. While it was known all along that some of the funds for the game development would come from the publisher, backers were surprised with a paragraph almost hidden in the middle of the latest blog announcement (emphasis in original; Javascript required):
[...]E3 kicked off with us sneaking into the Microsoft press briefing to adorn Phil Spencer in a Psychonauts shirt. We then snuck past Keanu to announce that we would be joining Xbox Game Studios, and that Psychonauts 2 would be published by Microsoft (instead of Starbreeze) as a first party title. Now, before anyone panics! We have confirmed that we will be able to honor Psychonauts 2 for every platform that we have already promised here, and that includes bringing the game to PlayStation 4!
While the first comments on the blog post expressed concern by the backers on the impact of Microsoft's acquisition, the later comments all read very similar, claiming that this acquisition will have a good impact, and trying to minimise also the impact of the additional delay (Psychonauts 2 should have been released by the end of 2018, is now delayed at least until the end of 2019).
Though there is a promise to still launch on other platforms, such as PS4, — that were promised from the beginning — there is a real risk of these platforms becoming "second class citizens" very quickly, now that Microsoft calls the shots. And becoming part of a behemoth probably won't do any good to Double Fine's originality.
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printed from SoylentNews, Game Studio Double Fine Discreetly Bought by Microsoft on 2024-04-20 03:49:37