According to Kotaku, Microsoft is close to buying Obsidian

Quoting: Kingtabbycat

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: KingtabbycatThe chances for a native version of KOTOR just dropped a drastic amount (not to say they were high in the first place!) :S:

KOTOR was developed by Bioware, KOTOR 2 was developed by Obsidian and already has a native release.

My bad

Ha, well to be fair, that means KOTOR is owned by Electronic Arts, and us getting any Linux native games from them is less likely than MS porting stuff... We already have a few native Microsoft Games Studio games, but I don't think we have any Electronic Arts ones at all.

Quoting: tmtvlkotaku lol.
So chances of MS actually buying Obsidian are like... what, ~3%?

Except that we're talking about a Jason Schreier article ... you know the guy who barely publishes rumors like these unless he is sure that his info are correct. So yeah Kotaku I don't trust in general except when it's Jason reporting because this guys has good sources and is rarely wrong...

Quoting: GuestI still think Valve should release a SteamOS/Linux exclusive title, say, for a month, before hitting losedoze. If you want to play it within the first month you'll have to do it on SteamOS/Linux. Would shake things up a bit for sure.

More than anything, it would be a shot across the bow that doesn't just threaten the Windows/Microsoft Store's potential monopoly, but would threaten Windows' existing monopoly itself if any AAA title was a SteamOS/Linux exclusive.

Granted, I know most people hate platform/OS exclusives. But literally everyone else has done it except SteamOS/Linux (ok, excluding the small FOSS games out there). What better way to show the market potential; or better, to show that for many gamers, there's no such thing as platform/OS loyalty if there's an awesome game out there to be played.

Fairly soon, there'll be a day where enough devs use cross-platform tools and APIs. Compilers and Debuggers will work the same for all targeted platforms, API calls work the same across all platforms (Vulkan<3<3<3). Middleware won't rely on some archaic, unstable and proprietary framework that is only supported on the big OS.

We're not there yet, and have a ways to go. But look at how far we've come?

A better idea, and not against Valve's 'exclusives are bad' statement; Bundles! If they can sort out a single model of Steam Machine (maybe something like the Atari VCS, but better hardware...) and sell it as a bundle, so you get the system, with the game for free. People buy stuff like that all the time when they want a console.

I'm so tired of hearing about Microsoft buying everything...

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMind you, I have to admit there's something fitting about Microsoft owning Tyranny.

Luckily, like shmerl wrote, they don't own Tyranny. The IP is owned by Paradox.
Sadly that might also mean we won't get another Tyranny game anyways, since it did not seem to much of a commercial success making Paradox reluctant to invest into the IP.

Quoting: GuestIt is so sad Obsidian didn't have a strong publisher behind them when they created games like KOTOR 2, NWN2, New Vegas, Alpha Protocol. All of those games were really great but were rushed and unfinished. There was great potential in there. Perhaps with Microsoft's vast bank account they could potentially create a new masterpiece.

KoToR 2 was published under LucasArts, NWN2 under Atari, New Vegas under Bethesda and Alpha Protocol under Sega... They might not be Microsoft but they were definitely not small.

I saw this rumour some time ago in Reddit... and my original thoughts still stand, not a good time for RPG gaming on Linux once this happens. True, as discussed in the OIN post, Microsoft is not the same than 15 years ago but still has a very well defined agenda to control the market and close content to their platforms as always did.

Quoting: KimyrielleThe bigger overall concern about this is why, as a society, we think market concentration is a good thing and accept it so readily, when everyone who ever read past the preface of a economics textbook knows that market concentration is bad?

I don't get that.

Companies buying other companies should be something that's allowed only in exceptional circumstances.

But hey, we don't seem to have a problem with a half dozen mega-corporations pretty much controlling Earth's food supply, so video games are probably fine to be controlled by a monopoly, too.

*shrug*

Well if you want to panic Nestle/coca cola control 85 percent of the worlds water supply and the ceo of nestle say water is not a human right. But apart from that depressing fact mergers happen because its human nature, people say no why did you do that well greed and the desire to look out for number 1.
Picture yourself a manager of obsidian your games are critically well recieved but niche games with some exceptions, you have a great reputation for crafting a world but making buggy games. The last two kickstarter games barely got made(underesitmation of costs) and strong sales kept the studio open Your creative team don't want to do another sequel you cant find a publisher willing to fund your development teams you realize without outside investment you are going to be out of work and your team is going to be out of work.

MS pops up with big bags of cash tells you you will have a senior role in MS games division unlimited resources and you can keep your team together and they look forward to hearing your ideas because MS is desperate for exclusives for the next XBOX. So in that case not only do you make a profit for yourself and perhaps a pay bump you secured massive resources for your studio and you secured the jobs of your development staff. It's cost you being an independent studio fans will be pissed on the internet but that wont last since people get bored if a news story goes on for more than a day and actively attack people that bring up x company did something shitty because they are bored of hearing about it.