Microsoft announced the purchase of Obsidian and inXile
Microsoft has officially announced two major acquisitions at the X018 exhibition. She buys independent role-playing forges Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment. The transaction amounts are not called.
These are not the first significant Microsoft acquisitions in a year. Earlier this year, the company managed to acquire Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Compulsion Games and Undead Labs. In total, she now has 13 studios in her portfolio.
Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire (Obsidian)
The purpose of all transactions, including those that became known tonight, is to support the Microsoft ecosystem.
As part of the competition with Sony and Nintendo, the company, as we see it, wants to guarantee the availability of exclusives both on its console and in its Game Pass subscription service, which will also be available to the PC audience.
For Obsidian and inXile, who have been raising money for development and existence with the help of crowdfunding in recent years, the purchase could well be a salvation (at least from significant cuts). The last games of both studios failed.
According to the calculations of one of the investors Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire (Obsidian), sales of the game, despite warm criticism and a million copies of the first part, did not reach 110 thousand copies sold. This coincides with the evaluation of the SteamSpy service.
The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep (inXile)
The situation with The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep (inXile) is even worse.
The project, according to SteamSpy, could not even overcome the threshold of 30 thousand sales. And there is nothing surprising here. It came out raw and received low ratings from both journalists and players.
Microsoft has announced that it will not interfere with the work of studios. They will continue to function autonomously. Support for their future projects will be primarily financial.
The management of both studios stated that the takeover would allow them to concentrate exclusively on development.
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