Assuming this won't turn in to a WMR Exclusive, this is great news! It's nice to see another major Player backing VR game dev's like this.
Microsoft just bought another big VR developer. inXile Entertainment, the developer of 2017’s excellent VR role-playing game (RPG), The Mage’s Tale, is joining Microsoft’s growing family of internal studios. The news broke this weekend an Xbox fan event where Microsoft also confirmed it was acquiring Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian. In a video announcing the news, inXile noted that the acquisition would allow the studio to continue developing the games it’s known for but at a higher level.
Formed by games industry legend, Brian Fargo, inXile is best known for its deep RPGs, including Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera. It brought its signature style to VR last year with The Mage’s Tale, which let you cast spells and do battle with evil creatures initially on the Oculus Rift and then later on the HTC Vive.
Shortly after the game’s initial release last year, though, we reported that inXile had raised $4.5 million in funding and was working on a new “open world survival RPG” for VR. Not only that, but the studio previously confirmed that it was bringing The Mage’s Tale to PSVR too. However, in tweets following the news, the studio noted that work on projects outside of Wasteland 3 and Bards Tale 4 were now ‘to be determined’. https://uploadvr.com/microsoft-buys-mages-tale-dev-inxile-new-vr-rpg-status-tbd/
And for anyone concerned that MS will just kill their VR Projects:
Microsoft also acquired UK-based developer Ninja Theory earlier this year, and the studio released the excellent Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice VR after that announcement. There’s still hope for inXile’s continued work in VR, then.
On a personal note, I have a long history with Microsoft. And based on what I've seen, this buyout will lead to a very strong VR release of their projects. I'm especially excited about the VR Open World RPG.
I'm surprised you didn't catch that : I'm saying MS isn't out to to promote VR "as a whole", the same way their Xbox was never about promoting non-VR gaming "as a whole".
Still not making much sense. What does the XBox have to do with "non-VR gaming"? XBox promotes console gaming as a whole. Are you replacing "console gaming" with "non-VR gaming"?
Regardless, even if MS goes exclusive with their VR Titles, they are still promoting VR as a whole. Exclusivity doesn't negate "as a whole" promotion. Exclusives are "part of the whole."
Exclusives simply promote one platform over another; but all platforms are still underneath the whole of the Industry.
Exclusives simply promote one platform over another;
That's what I said to begin with, and the part we agree on.
As for the part where it benefits other platform to have titles and developers removed from them, well you just have to remember what happened when the Oculus Store switched off Revive support, to know how well that worked out for "promoting VR as a whole".
And I was only expressing a doubt on MS' intentions, based on past MS/Xbox experience : It's not like MS has announced anything.
The DRM Check that caused an issue with Revive was a one-off blooper that has not stopped Oculus nor Sony's PlayStationVR from creating Software Exclusive experiences. The DRM Check was a "Hardware Exclusivity" issue, but this conversation is about Software Exclusivity. You're mixing apples and oranges here.
XBox Software exclusives can't be played on PlayStation and visa versa. This doesn't stop the promotion of "console as a whole" as driven by both of those platforms.
Lone Echo is an Oculus Rift exclusive, and it promotes VR as a whole. If MS decides to use inXile for software exclusives, then it still promotes VR as a whole.
Microsoft definitely doesn't have the best track-record when it comes to gaming. My favorite corporate move from MS is when they bought out Bungie and launched Halo; but that franchise is not without its controversy.
All of Microsoft's problems stem from that fact that it has way too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone thinks that they know best, and strategies rarely align.
I'm hoping that this inXile buyout turns in to another Bungie situation, minus the exclusivity.
I love bard's tale. It was the best game for a kid on his commodore64 at xmas. Is this game going to be used for the new msft xbox VR strategy I have heard to compete with sony ps5 and psvr2? Anyways I agree with you about the too many cooks stuff.
I heard iribe and carmack and others were always fighting over resources and personnel at Oculus. It seems carmack is the top chef now and I am looking forward to what he can do with quest now that iribe was ejected.
