According to many sources Anthem is their final chance. That's sad considering the fact that this game is not a standard RPG. So BioWare's final chance is a game in which they don't specialize. Everywhere I look on the Polish gaming sites Anthem is heavily criticized. I don't know how it looks in the US, but the game won't achieve success here. Maybe with a little luck EA will give them a chance to do one more Dragon Age game. Maybe...

I believe it's too late. The current generation consoles are in the final faze of their lifespan. It won't be possible for Microsoft to make Xbox One competitive. They're too much behind. Acquisition of Ninja Theory and Obsidian won't change anything on this generation, but maybe it's a more perspective move. Probably in the year 2020 we'll see a new generation and the fight will start from the beginning.

I would love to know the secret financial success requirement EA attaches to games.

I've heard those rumblings as well, and they're usually with the commentary that had Inquisition not seen lucky success in a lean gaming year, they'd probably already be done and dusted.

As for the ObsidiSoft. I honestly don't care much what happens, but I just hope it doesn't see the death of Tyranny. I loved that game so much and really, really need to see a sequel.

Can't say I care much for the future of MS or the Xbox platform, but if they manage to release some successful single player games, that's good for all of us, as it would prove there's still a market for those, and not everyone wants to play competitive online games all day long.

On a side note, I don't think they will call their next console Xbox Two. That would make too much sense ( well, sort of ). It will probably be the Xbox 3000. Or Xbox XXX. Or maybe the Xbox Banana Split.

What about the Ybox...oh, I see.

I sympathize with these concerns, but you have to realize that Obsidian has had a long history of financial distress. They're one of the few game devs that has contracted with pretty much a new publisher for every single title they've released, and they turned to crowdfunding not because they wanted to (yours and my opinion aside) but because they needed to. Based on certain interviews it seems Obsidian always had the short end of the stick in their publisher deals. Ideally, their games would have simply been funded by deep pockets; it's operationally simpler, less stressful for the rank and file developers, and would overall let them focus more on making great games. There are many disparate sources of information concerning this topic- including Chris Avellone's interviews- but once you piece it together it seems as though fiscal health and operating costs have kept Obsidian from reaching their true potential.

I'm certainly worried too that Microsoft's corporate culture will impact the quality of their games. But I think if it was between closing doors and this outcome, I'd rather them get a few more opportunities to make classic RPGs without constantly being under a shadow of fiscal stress.

Pretty much this, Chris Avellone along with several other core employees (don't remember their names) have the company before even PoE2 was halfway done. (PoE2 is a great game regardless)

With the way the last 2 Dragon Age games were, I'd give that a hard pass. Same with Mass Effect. Both franchises started great and disappointed me very hard by the end.

Honestly, I think the continued success of both Sony and Nintendo proves that there's a market, and a strong one at that, for single player games. Microsoft will downplay those games, but it's only because they don't have any of them, stopped really getting them when Moore left and was replaced by Mattrick, who had NO place in the games industry to begin with and tried to push the Xbox into being a cable box.

I don't doubt they'll make at least one more Xbox. It's their ONLY avenue into the living room, but I don't see anything that suggests that, bar another Sony fuckup, they'll be any better off. At some point, they're going to have to give up like they did with Zune.

Well if you are in favor of new IPs then MS is the worst as Scalebound and Stormlands were new IPs they killed before releasing and Blue Dragon was a single release before a Japan-only 3DS game was made years later backed by a different publisher.

But hey, they turn out the most generic FPS in Halo and a new half-ass Forza every year.

Also, they killed a never-released IP in True Fantasy Live Online by developer Level 5 (Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy, Dark Cloud, Ni No Kuni, etc.).

But if they kill an IP its because they have some control over it, meaning it was most likely planned for a console release.
Who cares about console IPs? They are naturally dumbed down for the console market, its not like they killed anything important.

One thing they cant ruin is the genuine desire to create good games by passionate devs. The whole gaming industry could crash and burn and good games would still end up being created.

Are you talking about the game with Akira Toriyama designs and the boss music featuring Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan? Because that got two additional games on the regular DS that were both released in the US, the first of which only coming out like two years later and the second (EDIT: The second game is Awakened Shadow. GOG hates the link for some reason or another.) a year after that. There was also an anime around the same time, too.

I'm not disagreeing with your base point, I'm just saying specifically for this series.

Yes. And they were DS games and not 3DS - my bad. I guess they finally made it over to the US. I never saw them around me though as I would have picked them up. Still it was another IP that MS just dropped and refused to develop. And it got the anime because it was Akira Toriyama and Hironobu Sakaguchi and they had the pull and so it got a big push in Japan.