MS is on a spending spree

No they're not buying another dev so settle down, instead they have entered into a partnership with People Can Fly to develop a new AAA game with a budget of somewhere between $30-50 million codenamed project Maverick.

Some interesting tid bits...

Development of the new game will be "performed under the work for hire model" and is based on "the intellectual property rights owned by the publisher.

So MS will publish and own the IP, and i'm not sure what the "performed under the work for hire model" is.

Anyway i'm probably one of the few people on here who liked Outriders, but I didn't enjoy Bulletstorm, so their games tend to be hit or miss for me but will keep an eye on this.

They did a decent job with Outriders.

MS has actually worked with them a lot. This isn't surprising.

People Can Fly is pretty good.

I prefer this model over acquisition.

ugh I hate agreeing with you

I kid...

Cool beans.

I hope it's either a new Gears or the rumored Gears collection.

Interesting. I really enjoyed Gears of War: Judgment and Bulletstorm. Looking forward to seeing what this game turns out to be.

From *People Can Fly* I really like Gears of War: Judgment which was a nice addition to the lore of the game that wasn't made by Epic at the time and Bulletstorm was fun but man, that cliffhanger! Come on People Can Fly, I demand answers to what happened to the characters after Bulletstorm.

Looking forward to what they do next.

Hopefully its a new IP, the Coalition can do the Gears stuff.

Zero talent dev working with MS. Outriders was a pathetic game.

I liked Bulletstorm, as well as their Gears of War game, though never got into Outriders myself despite some dabbling. Anyhow, very curious what this will be.

Outriders was okay.. if i recall correctly, bugs and glitches plagued the game at launch and the end-game wasn't very good..

gave it a try on Game Pass, did some co-op with friends, but was done with it after finishing the campaign..

@hardwenzen: please, you never played it, you most likely watched someone else on Twitch play it like you always do and decided it was crap from there.

@Antwan3K: I didn't play it at launch, I bought it a year in on a whim, and didn't have any glitches from my time on it (not that I remember) which was over 100hrs, but I bought Worldslayer also.

Outriders? Bitch please, it shows your ass was banned here, and you didn't see me poopoo on the game while playing that POS, and posting screenshots on how god awful it looked.

@hardwenzen: So where are the screenshots? And graphics only make up a portion of the game, the gunplay was great, but you like playing with swords, so I wouldn't expect you know what great gunplay feels like 🤣

You're asking me where are the screenshots on a years old game?

The gunplay was a Gears wannabe, and done poorer than Gears 1 from 2006. The loot system was dogshit, and had the most pathetic looking skins in a loot based title i've seen since i don't know how long. Builds system was as generic as what you'd see in a phone game. Graphics and especially the art direction is the cheapest POS in an AA game that i have played in over a generation. There is a reason why over 90% of its playerbase stopped playing within a week.

It was garbage.🤣

I will tell you what great gunplay feels like, Aussie Man. All three Metro games, Escape From Tarkov, Bad Company 2 and TLOU2 to name you a few. You most likely haven't played any of these, so you wouldn't know.

@hardwenzen: You claim to have posted screenshots, well where are they?

I enjoyed Outriders and it was a good looking game.

Look at my posts from over 2y ago or whenever the game was came out.🤷‍♂️ Had a lot of talk about this game with the fellow rtx4090 owner Bassman

@Pedro: I thought the game looked good too, not going to win any awards, but gets the job done.

@hardwenzen: No, you claim to have posted shots, so you provide them. I'm not going through the swamp you call a post history 🤣

I have posted these shots years ago🤣🤣🤣Wake the f up, Last_Fap.

@hardwenzen: Until you produce them I'm just going ignore your opinion on it.

I don't care what you ignore, Last_Fap. You ask me to find pictures i deleted YEARS AGO because they have no reason to be on my ssd🤣Think what you're asking before you do.

@hardwenzen: No, you said you posted them, so they would still be in the thread here you posted them in or in still here under your profile. You make the claim, you provide the proof, that's how this works.

So pick or it didn't happen 😎

They are. Now search for that thread from years ago. Enjoy.

@hardwenzen: Pics or it didn't happen, just another Twitch story from wenzen.

Get back in time, and search for multiple threads i spoke about the game🤷‍♂️

Isn't MS always on a spending spree? Wasting money left and right not getting much done, except for buying up established IPs and finished games to bar them from the competition.

Now a tripple-A-lite with polish PeopleCanFly? A long term commitment outside the usual drabness? When was the last time that worked out well? Some time around 2008?

@palasta: I wouldn't speak too soon as it appears they might be working with Sony also lol.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/01/rumour-sonys-leaked-sci-fi-rpg-is-from-outriders-dev-people-can-fly

MS has been on a spending spree since they created Gamepass. All they do is bleed millions a year from that thing. Created with zero profit in mind lmao.

Ok? But Sony has a way better track record when it comes to "long term commitment".

One of the latest examples is Helldivers. A new IP aquired by Sony 10+ years ago, seemingly promising enough to elevate it from A to AAA and starting development of a successor shortly after the release of Helldivers1. There are enough examples where Sony was similarly invested. I guess one of the most prominent is Demon Souls. The one that spawned a new (sub)genre.

Microsoft on the other hand can't even handle consistency when it comes to their owned IPs/studios. Obviously, otherwise they wouldn't panic buy to get something of value associated with the xbox brand.

@palasta: And yet Sony buys up the most third party games in the industry, so they must be looking to find something of value for their brand even more so.

@palasta:

Talking of wasting money,hows forspoken doing,the game Sony spunked millions on for timed exclusivity..or the billions they overpaid for bungie?

Psycho Sony fannies would rage about anything Xbox related these days.😂

Project Maverick eh? Based in an Ip owned by the publisher eh?

....has to be crimson skies. Well I hope it's crimson skies.

It's probably not crimson skies.

Why doesn't Microsoft flex its financial muscles and just buy out Nintendo already. Cash out the $200-300 billion or whatever.

Its about time we get Zelda BOTW/TOTK (and others) with native PC (achievements etc) support and with the XSS as the lowest common denominator for future Zelda titles.

Sounds more like it'll be AA than AAA at that budget and if previous work is anything to go by.

AA budget is now 30-50 million? So, what is triple A budget?

OP and his ilk love the MS warchest. It’s the only way they have a chance at getting decent games on Xbox

@randy_lahey: And yet Sony pays for more than twice the amount of exclusives with its "warchest" so you're saying that's the only way Sony gets any decent games on PS.

And with 0 first party releases this year, so far Sony is relying on third party exclusives like Forspoken & FF16 from its "warchest" to get any good games on PS5, that is 100% fact 🤣

@Pedro: 150 million plus

@Pedro: talented developers like insomniac or playground could maybe get it done for 80 million, but at that money the cracks would start to show.

@eastland:You will need to provide data that the average triple A game cost 150 million to make.

According to a CMA report which was revealed in it's investigation into the Microsoft/ABK merger, AAA games typically receive development budgets of $200 million or higher (and as high as 1 billion for games like GTA) so I don't believe it's possible for any developer to create a true AAA experience on a budget of 50/60 million.