the thing about microsoft is that they& #39;ve always had like extremely, extremely good taste. like, o.g. xbox days, they had a shitload of sega games, halo, pgr, etc.

with 360, they partnered with mistwalker/epic/remedy

now we see them picking up a LOT of good rpg studios
the thing is, a lot of these games aren& #39;t really _event games_

like, I bought my 360 and x1 both for remedy games, because I love remedy games. I wanted an original xbox in part because of jet set radio future and panzer dragoon orta. but these aren& #39;t really, *gestures*
basically, they& #39;re driven by legitimately the most sophisticated and varied taste in gaming imo, because their partnerships are incredibly interesting, but microsoft has historically struggled on the & #39;event game& #39; front except for Halo and Gears
and Halo isn& #39;t Halo anymore and hasn& #39;t been since Bungie left, and Gears is like... great, but I don& #39;t know if it& #39;s the juggernaut it was when Epic was making it.
If you asked me what Microsoft needed, I& #39;d tell you & #39;event games,& #39; and I& #39;d point at third person action/adventure titles, especially open world games, as the studio& #39;s big weakness. Today, Microsoft still hasn& #39;t done that, but I mean

now they have TES6.
meanwhile sony basically does nothing but event games that copy movies. GoT is samurai movies, Infamous is superhero, Days Gone is Walking Dead + Sons of Anarchy, TLOU is Walking Dead + Children of Men, Uncharted is Indiana Jones, etc etc etc

that drives a LOT of casuals
sony is basically the cbs of game publishers; their library is like 80% CSI and NCIS and two and a half men. Very predictable, very lowest common denominator type stuff. Even when the quality is off the charts (Ghost of Tsushima) it& #39;s about hitting the broad, casual audience
TES6/Fallout 5/etc are gonna help MS out a LOT in that regard but I still think they need some big third person event game type shenanigans.
I think they tried this with Rise of the Tomb Raider, but that isn& #39;t their property. If Microsoft bought, say, Square Enix tomorrow and FFXVI + Tomb Raider filled that role, they& #39;d be in a REALLY good place, but that obviously isn& #39;t going to happen.
Microsoft has always laser-targeted my interests. I mean, I loved Marathon/Max Payne/Unreal Tournament so of course I loved Halo/Alan Wake/Gears of War.
They want to avoid being boring, so they go off and make extremely fun games like Crackdown 3 (which isn& #39;t like anything except the other crackdown games) but sometimes you just need like a boring-ass third person cinematic game.

That said?

TES6 is bigger than all of those
the zenimax purchase is really fucking interesting because zenimax isn& #39;t like anyone else out there. Someone there has really interesting taste too. See: Arkane, Id, Bethesda. Basically, lots of first person games that have a hefty dose of simulation mechanics and GREAT combat.
I think every other publisher would have tried to push Bethesda to make Fallout and Elder Scrolls into generic, character-driven cinematic event games, and Bethesda& #39;s just like "man we& #39;re making a fuckin weird janky first person simulation series that& #39;s extremely moddable."
I& #39;ve argued (and will continue to argue) that Bethesda& #39;s games are immersive sims, and of course Arkane is doing that in their own way as well.

Someone at Zenimax greenlights extremely interesting first person games.
(and I mean, that partnership with Tango??? they know their horror directors, fuck)

You won& #39;t see EA/Ubi/ATVI/2k greenlighting Deathloop/Dishonored/Skyrim/Fallout.

Someone at Zenimax has great taste too. And now MS has that.
So this is like, an extremely understandable microsoft purchase--it is a continuation of that "really fucking good taste" throughline. And it shores up the issue where all the studios they& #39;ve acquired so far are really interesting but haven& #39;t made Huge Hits.
(obviously mojang is the big exception here)

Obsidian has a lot of really good but not HUGE games, right? What was the last $60 game you remember buying at Gamestop from inxile? etc etc etc.

Very good devs but not like, Event Devs.
So basically Microsoft plugged in a hole by acquiring the most Microsoft-compatible publisher outside of Sega.
If I were at Microsoft, I& #39;d personally be eyeing Konami or Sega.

Sega gets you Yakuza and Persona, which is gonna appeal to the Japanese fans MS is missing. Konami gets you MGS/SH/Castlevania but also really solid earners like YGO and PES.
Square would be the biggest megaton but I don& #39;t think Square would eeeeeeeeeever sell.
Anyways I think MS still has some gaps in the portfolio (most notably my studio :P) but Bethesda plugs a lot of holes and is also the most on-brand purchase I can think of MS doing.

I& #39;m pretty sure I was tweeting about them buying bethesda two or three years ago.
You can follow @docsquiddy.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: