Gaming News & Discussion

I had to triple check this to make sure I was seeing words the right way. MFer really said it.

Edit: Sorry for the post title mistake, the article was written by Ash Parrish. My apologies!

Today, one day after Microsoft announced that it would shut down four of its games studios, Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, held a town hall to discuss the division’s future goals. “We need smaller games that give us prestige and awards,” Booty told employees, according to internal remarks shared with The Verge.

One of the first FPS was doom. You could pick up all the weapons at the same time. 1 for melee. 2 for a pistol, 3 for shotgun, 4 for MG, and 5+ for heavy weapons like the rocket Launcher. We see this as a standard even today.

But then came Halo: combat evolved. The first time I realized you could only hold 2 weapons at a time I was stunned. Just 2? That's so lame? Why? I have to choose which to keep, and that choice matters. It also makes sense from a realistic view not to carry 8 weapons somehow. I later came to appreciate it, and even today most games have just 2, a primary and a sidearm to choose from.

Any other games that started a precedent that became the norm rather than the exception?

Josh Sawyer, director of Fallout: New Vegas, still works at Obsidian - therefore working under Microsoft's umbrella. He just shipped Pentiment to overwhelmingly positive reviews; They literally have an RPG master who directed the crowd-favorite Fallout game RIGHT THERE in house, and they're looking for help on Fallout 5.

…Is this not an extremely obvious decision to make? I know the fans would go crazy for this, but I feel like I've heard zero buzz from you guys LATELY. Surely I'm not the only one who sees how perfectly lined up this is.

It's the fact that I haven't heard anyone else in the community realize this that makes me confused. I'm sure everyone will say "Microsoft sucks, so they would never make a good business decision," or "Todd Howard hates Obsidian/New Vegas," but is there anything that's not just a knee-jerk, oversimplified response that I'm missing? It's Microsoft's decision at the end of the day, and Josh still loves the franchise, so it could happen.

*To be clear, I'm not suggesting Obsidian should take on this huge project rn (prob not big enough/too split up on other projects), just that they should commission Josh to whatever working body they end up making.

From Jason Schreier:

• Xbox still isn't done cutting costs, sent voluntary buyout offers to some Zenimax staff.  Others across the Xbox organization have been told that more cuts are on the way.

• Why were Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks closed? Bad timing, perhaps

• Activision purchase has ramped up scrutiny on Xbox

I got right to very final form of the last boss of Persona 5 and died... had 120 hours in it at that point but it had long stopped being fun, so I stopped playing despite being so close to the end. I can't think of another game where I did that, I normally power through if I'm so close to the end