sponsorship

With two of the company's biggest allies announcing plans to develop for other consoles, which companies are left to pick up the slack?

While Microsoft is riding high on the runaway train of Halo 3 sales (and to a far lesser extent, Project Gotham Racing 4 sales), the company hasn't had its best weeks behind the scenes lately. After the news that Bizarre Creations, developers of the Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars series were bought out by Activision, Microsoft lost its most valuable first-party developer when Bungie announced its independence today.

While the announcement was mired in "yeah, but"'s and "sure, if"'s, the fact of the matter is that, while Halo may still be under Bungie's wing and in Microsoft's hands, there's nothing stopping the greatest console first-person shooter developers from working its magic on competing consoles. Similarly, Microsoft may have the rights to Project Gotham, but there's nothing stopping Bizarre from creating a similar IP for Activision, to appear on all new-gen consoles. While Microsoft may have the lion's share of amazing exclusives this holiday season, let's take a look at the remaining first and second-party developers dedicated solely to Microsoft Game Studios:

ACES Game Studios: Developers of Flight Simulator series, ACES has been primarily dedicated to developing for the PC. If Microsoft can't find suitable replacements for Bizarre and Bungie, will it depend on ACES to bolster its Xbox 360 lineup.

Carbonated Games: While Microsoft may be smarting from the loss of the developers of Geometry Wars, it can remain confident in the fact that the Carbonated Games, developers of Xbox Live Arcade megahits UNO and Hexic will continue to push out casual-gamer friendly fare.

Ensemble: Ensemble is hard at work at one of 2008's most anticipated games, Halo Wars. Additionally, the company has a strong portfolio of real-time strategy titles in the Age of Empires series. If Halo Wars can be the gateway drug that gets console gamers into RTS titles, Ensemble could find a lot more work on the Xbox 360.

Lionhead: Lionhead has only developed one title for Xbox consoles and has one known project in developement: Fable and Fable 2, respectively. While Fable 2 will be a flagship title for the Xbox 360 next year, the company is going to have to follow up with another strong IP. W

Rare: The most experienced of Microsoft's internal studios, Rare has been developing games for MGS for over four years now, with hit or miss results. While games like Kameo and Viva Pinata have been generally well-received, the company has had it's share of disappointments too. Rare is set to resurrect the Banjo-Kazooie franchise for the 360, but you can bet Microsoft is banking on the company returning to more mature fare like the Conker or Perfect Dark franchises.

Turn10: Softening the blow of Bizarre's departure is the fact that Turn10, developers of Forza Motorsport, is still dedicated to producing fine racing titles. Heck, if Microsoft can put the money behind it, what's to stop this company from working on the Project Gotham series as well?

Others: Wikipedia lists two developers without strong credentials--Hired Gun; the developers of Halo 2 Vista, and Wingnut Interactive; Peter Jackson's development studio that is planning on developing a new Halo game with Bungie. Hired Gun has yet to announce another project, and nothing much has been seen of Wingnut's title, which we're sure is still very early in development, if at all, given the stillborn nature of the Halo motion picture.

While Microsoft still has a few capable companies at its beck and call, its going to have to unsheathe its mighty wallet to get some big developers to promise exclusivity. It should be interesting to see whats on the company's Christmas list.

games

Comments [ 3 ] Post your comment subscribe to this rss feed

^ back to top of comments ^

Post Your Comment

Games.net's Countdown to...