Microsoft Acquires Obsidian & inXile Entertainment

[Adarion]

I did not want to read this kind of news in the morning.
Why are so many indie publishers going down the drain? This kind of sellout usually leads to ugly products, less platform support and often they vanish entirely.

[ssokolow]

I'm not too choked up about this. I'm still waiting for them to stop charging boxed-copy prices for digital download copies of their existing titles.

[dungeon]

Don't worry people, we will play these games either by performance lag or lag in time or both... future is our, just todays are theirs

Also nothing will vanish, Sony will release PS Classic using GPLed emulator just 24 years later

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/ex...ation-classic/

MS also release DOS source just 38 years later If we don't touch their business, they won't touch ours and everything will be fine once patents expire

[Nille]

Added ExFAT patent grants to the patent truce.

They are in the Free Patents. The ONI and Microsoft say that exfat is coveret in the Patents for the ONI.

[brrrrttttt]

Here's some things they haven't done:
Expanded support for the .NET API for the cross-platform Xamarin variant, they acquired.

Xamarin is at least still actively developed alongside .NET Core. The Windows-only .NET Framework is effectively deprecated and will never implement the latest .NET Standard (2.1).

[kaprikawn]

...Right now Steam is still quite popular and the Windows Store somewhat unpopular. But that will change....

No, it really won't. Windows Store is garbage, games that are exclusive to it lose out massively on purchases. If a game is only on Windows Store, people just don't buy it for that reason.

Ubisoft has UPlay, EA has Origin, Activision has Battle.net, they're not going to make their games available to a store that has no users. And MS doesn't have exclusives like Half Life 2 to kickstart a massive userbase by brute force. Forza, Gears of War and Killer Instinct aren't enough of a draw to make people use the Windows Store. MS aren't infallible, the Windows Store is another Windows Phone, it's DOA.

[berillions]

Like kaprikawn said, Ubisoft/EA/Blizzard-Activision/Bethesda/Paradox have their own launcher so i doubt they'll go the MS Store ... Even if Ubi is the only in Steam yet.

[xiando]

If Microsoft manages to pull in the huge publishers, EA and Ubisoft, who still also publish on Steam, for example by offering them large discounts on the X-Box platform if they chose to not go on Steam, Valve might be done literally over night.

I wouldn't worry about that, not today anyway. PC gaming isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. The Praystation 4 won the console wars and it's outselling the XBox 2:1. Microsoft can outright buy game publishers and tell them what to do but they need to put up a large pile of cash to make publishers not owned by them go Microsoft-exclusive. PS4 is where it's at. Windows as a gaming platform isn't that important to Microsoft anyway and even if you think it is: Valve with their Steam store and some games is a minor player. They are tiny. Sony's got 120k employees. Microsoft's got 130k. Valve' got 360 people. Microsoft bought Obsidian & inXile as part of some strategy to pray on young children who are currently being prayed on by the Praystation. I'd be amazed if Linux gaming with that markets minuscule was taken into consideration.

[Dedale]

There goes my intention to buy neverwinter nights. My bad, they belong to beamdog. No reason to worry yet.

Oh well, i wouldn't have played it much anyway. Sad news.

[onicsis]

I wouldn't worry about that, not today anyway. PC gaming isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

[Tiny segment of] Linux gaming included in hier, a large one .