Layoff hits Obsidian?

[NoMan2000]

MS also has a bunch of other high-profile Next-Gen games in development (Lionhead, Rare, Ryse from Crytek), why weren't those then canceled?

 

Pretty sure MS is gonna release the new console in Fall 2013, they already had the chip-tape out last December and are shipping out first DevKits as we speak. Would be a total waste of R&D money not to pull through the project now.

 

Apparently, you've never seen how many billions of dollars Microsoft will waste for no reason. BIng has been a money-suck for a decade now. Google is transitioning away from web advertising because people are now using Apps, Twitter, and Facebook for links, not search engines. So Google has been seeking new markets by making Android while Microsoft tries to jump into a dead one and didn't have a competing platform for over 3 years. On top of that, they keep going a step further and trying to buy out Yahoo for no reason except to waste an extra 15 billion. The R&D on a chip or any next-gen console wouldn't even be a dent on how much money Microsoft wastes any given year.

 

On a more practical note, the amount of money spent on R&D of anything is nothing compared to the costs of putting out a product that no one wants to buy. Ask HP and their smart tablet about that. Once the production line gets started and you put out millions of units expecting them to sale, you end up having to eat billions of dollars in useless equipment if it doesn't sale. This was the traditional reason Microsoft preferred being in the software business vs. the hardware business until Apple's vertical integration model killed them. Apple's Iphone app store is so successful it makes more money than all of Microsoft combined. Think about that for a minute and the fate of consoles for a company obsessed with profits.

 

The next-gen games in development from other companies like Lionhead are already owned by MS and the job they posted said they required skill working with DirectX 11. That's a PC or Next-gen console possible. Which sounds to me like they're hedging bets still by this ambiguity. They did this in Win8 where they didn't tell the developers what technologies they would support on Win8.

 

https://forums.silverlight.net/t/230725.aspx/184/10?Windows+8+apps+going+html5+wtf+part+2

 

There's a few thousand of those types of threads from developers asking WTF is going on at Microsoft and what technologies will be supported out of the ten million they added like WPF, Silverlight, XAML, C#, IronPython, IronRuby, F#, LINQ, LightSwitch, WCF, WF, and more. Studios Microsoft owns will keep developing and either release a PC-tablet only version, (if the market says no to Microsoft), or a possible console version if pans out. Even if they do release a console, they're going to play it safe and give us the safest games possible: "Halo 4: Has anyone noticed we can't even pretend to have a point anymore?"

[Morgoth]

Good point, NoMan2000.

[funcroc]

Creative designer Kathryn Susoeff

 

Obsidian Entertainment

Creative Designer

[C2B]

Can't imagine how this must suck for all the people who were brought on board for this game.

[sorophx]

interesting bit from an interview with Brian Fargo:

You would not believe the stories you hear about how developers are treated by publishers these days. It is abysmal. [...] It

[funcroc]

Robert Lee

 

Content Designer

ZeniMax Online Studios

March 2012

[funcroc]

Bree Maldonado's LI profile updated

2D Environmental Level Art Intern

Obsidian Entertainment

January 2011

[funcroc]

Carlos Rodriguez

[funcroc]

Nelson Plumey joins Treyarch

[funcroc]

Kristen Wong Altamirano is working at Spark Unlimited.

[cernex]

 

tl; dr: Lot's of speculation!

 

 

No offense, but the console market just isn't going anywhere for a while. iPads, iPods, and lots of iStuff are making a dent on the market, sure... on the "casual" market. As any guy who started on the 90s (or the 80s at that), ask any guy who likes to play Halo, Call of Duty, the self-called "Hardcore" gamer (the term on itself is silly, but that's another subject). Do you think they will change their 360s or PS3s for iStuff?

 

Short answer, no, they won't.

 

Same happens for the 3DS and Vita. Maybe if they weren't selling I would agree with you, but since they are, I think it's a little TOO soon to say the console market and the upcoming console wars are "dead".

 

Like I say, those are here to stay for quite a while.

 

Just my two cents, though.

[Nepenthe]

I started in the 80s, at the moment the only games I'm interested in (BGEE1&2) are coming to the ipad but not the consoles.

 

Ok, obviously if I buy the ipad version it's just gonna be a toy and the actual gaming is going to be done on the mac, but still

[Nathaniel Chapman]

That's the magic of forum-posters, we know everything. Thought ya knew foo'!

 

Cancelled games are always better than released ones

 

You said that Obsidian was gonna knock it out the park or whatever the idiom was! And now you're retracting it! I feel betrayed!

 

P.S. : To be less ironic, as much as Morgoth likes to troll, I think there's a point. Dungeon Siege 3 and South Park don't really seem to be the kind of projects Obsidian's audience expects. I guess that's just fair, since Obsidian's fans alone don't really make it financially viable for the company to survive, and I have high hopes for South Park (Dungeon Siege III has been treated fairly harshly, but besides some questionable design choices, its biggest fault was really just that it was merely decent in my opinion), but you can't blame people for being disappointed that projects that looked like they had the potential to be closer to what they wanted were canceled.

 

There's nothing fundamental about any game's concept or design that will spell out whether you guys (or anyone else) like it. Game development is 20% good ideas, 80% execution, and execution is basically impossible to judge on an unreleased project. If it helps you feel better about a cancelled game, realize that as cool as it may sound in design docs, it could always have fallen apart in development!

 

Not saying that Obsidian's cancelled games wouldn't have been awesome - but just, don't get overly bummed out about any particular cancelled project. If you give talented people resources, time and control they will make awesome stuff, regardless of IP or other constraints.

Edited April 5, 2012 by Nathaniel Chapman

[funcroc]

Trent Campbell

[Gorgon]

Did I understand this correctly. Microsoft wanted to put out a version of windows which doesn't allow you to install anything from disks, but makes everything an app store.

 

I don't see end users accepting that. For some reason they have with apple, but their windows PC, no.

Edited April 6, 2012 by Gorgon

[funcroc]

Adrian Rodriguez's resume

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Obsidian Entertainment / Irvine, CA / 09/2011

[Tigranes]

Did I understand this correctly. Microsoft wanted to put out a version of windows which doesn't allow you to install anything from disks, but makes everything an app store.

 

I don't see end users accepting that. For some reason they have with apple, but their windows PC, no.

 

Don't they realise the more they make Windows PCs Macs, I'll just go and buy a Mac?

 

Or Linux, finally.

[Tale]

Did I understand this correctly. Microsoft wanted to put out a version of windows which doesn't allow you to install anything from disks, but makes everything an app store.

 

I don't see end users accepting that. For some reason they have with apple, but their windows PC, no.

You're thinking of Metro. Which, and I don't recall the precise details, was more of a tablet thing. It was a part of Windows specifically intended for tablets.

 

Edit: Looking into it, it seems it wasn't only for tablets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Metro_UI

I heard the same rumor you did, so I don't know what's going on apparently.

[LostStraw]

Did I understand this correctly. Microsoft wanted to put out a version of windows which doesn't allow you to install anything from disks, but makes everything an app store.

 

I don't see end users accepting that. For some reason they have with apple, but their windows PC, no.

You're thinking of Metro. Which, and I don't recall the precise details, was more of a tablet thing. It was a part of Windows specifically intended for tablets.

 

Edit: Looking into it, it seems it wasn't only for tablets. http://en.wikipedia....dows_8#Metro_UI

I heard the same rumor you did, so I don't know what's going on apparently.

 

Both the tablet and desktop versions of Windows 8 will have the Metro UI. Metro specific applications will only be able to be installed from the app-store (unless you're a developer/enterprise user).

 

The version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM will only be compatible with Metro applications which means the only source of programs for that version will be the app-store.

 

The version of Windows 8 for desktop PCs will support regular windows applications which can be found and installed as normal. However, the app-store restriction on Metro specific applications still applies.

[funcroc]

OT: ex-OEI artist James Garcia's LI profile

 

I have been working in game art since graduating from the Art Institute of California, Orange County in 2004. I have worked on several games as a freelance artist, have taught, and have worked at two studios as a 3d generalist / environment artist. My professional credits include:

 

- Lost Planet 3 (X360, PS3)

- Project North Carolina (Cancelled)

- Fallout New Vegas DLC (PC, X360, PS3): Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road

- Fallout New Vegas (PC, X360, PS3)

- Alpha Protocol (PC, X360, PS3)

- NeverWinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (PC)

[C2B]

...

 

The one I feared most during the last month.....

 

George Ziets

 

Past

Lead Creative Designer at Obsidian Entertainment

Lead Writer / Quest Developer at Zenimax Online Studios

Lead Creative Designer at Obsidian Entertainment

 

(I hope I'm wrong on this as his LI profile still says Obsidian Entertainment in the title. But maybe he just hasn't changed it yet. Or maybe it was like this before. Or maybe I'm just making excuses up to feel better)

 

 

Edit: Nope, its changed recently. Damnit. :( :(

Edited April 11, 2012 by C2B

[MechanicalLemon]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

 

*sigh*

 

I hope he lands okay.

[Oner]

Must...refrain...from...helping...

 

Maryland - Dungeon Siege 3

South Carolina - Storm of Zehir

New Hampshire - Fallout New Vegas

 

 

That's as far as I can go...

 

/relaxes

 

Just curious, but what are you guys going to do when you run out of states?

 

And frankly combning Aliens and RPGs makes the game awesome even if it would've been crap. Like how AP is awesome despite the AI and animations.

 

Timely response FTW! \m/

Edited April 17, 2012 by Oner

[Amentep]

Just curious, but what are you guys going to do when you run out of states?

 

 

Well they have the territories (America Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and US Virgin Islands).

 

Then they have the short lived Nation-states / republics / nations within the US that didn't eventually get statehood (Franklin, Muskogee, West Florida, Indian Stream)

 

And then they have State Capitals.

 

And then they have former State Capitals.

 

...

 

Or they could do something completely different.

[Starwars]

Like forumites on the Obsidian board.