Considering how little Microsoft thought of Baldur's Gate 3, are Obsidian/inXile screwed?

[scytheavatar]

Officially documents from Microsoft about their Gamepass plans. How much they expect the partners to ask for and how much hype there are for the games. Considering that by the time of the documents (May 2022) BG3 had already sold 1M+ in early access, the idea that the game is worth as much as Wreckfest 2 and Let's Sing ABBA is completely laughable. Yet it speaks volumes about how lowly Microsoft thinks about CRPG as a genre.

Which brings about the question as to what does that mean for the CRPG studios that Microsoft owns? Obsidian and inXile can only dream of making a game as successful as DOS2 without a third party license.

 

[sebas]

I'm not sure I can draw the same conclusions from that table.

We don't know what D&D, Med and Hub means and "second-run stadia" does not mean "second grade" game. Second run means that it will go onto Stadia after the initial launch. So I assume Larian had made a deal with Stadia to get BG3 onto the platform some time after the initial release.

If you think MS spent all that money aquiring RPG studios but consider them trash then I don't think you appreciate just how complex due diligence is in these aquisitions.

 

[Hellraiser]

Behead those that leak tables without column headers.

 

[Grauken]

then I don't think you appreciate just how complex due diligence is in these aquisitions

 

[Hellraiser]

then I don't think you appreciate just how complex due diligence is in these aquisitions

That and when you see this is on the list and how it is described:

You realize MS marketing suits are just, well, typical clueless suits.

Anyway now with the benefit of hindsight we can easily say that it is doubtful Larian would agree to roughly the same price as the above game for putting it on gamepass, if that is what those figures are. Hell D&D license alone for what it is worth would demand a higher asking price, since WotC is cutting into Larian's shekels.

 

[koyota]

Hell D&D license alone for what it is worth would demand a higher asking price, since WotC is cutting into Larian's shekels.

Remember that Dark Alliance was a Day 1 GP Release.... If we had what documents dating back to what they thought of that it would be so much more telling.

 

[just]

op please, at least post the full leaks

Spoiler

 

[just]

i find it really funny that sarah bond(she/her) is putting bg3 and lets sing abba on the same tier

 

[Hellraiser]

I have over a decade of working with corpospeak and with suits, and even I don't understand what the fuck some of those acronyms mean. A2N? Not sure what hub means, fodder/filler maybe?

Also even more hillariously this wimmin or her "analysts" thought Larian would take as much as this:



"Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence", in case you ever thought the state of gaming is the result of highly competent ruthless money-squeezing plans.

 

[Infinitron]

Yet it speaks volumes about how lowly Microsoft thinks about CRPG as a genre.

Strange thing to think for a publisher that bought up every major CRPG developer in the United States. Or are you referring to a specific variety of CRPG?

In any case, I suspect they've changed their mind now, for obvious reasons. But it'll take time before one of their studios can shift gears to making a "BG3 clone".

 

[processdaemon]

op please, at least post the full leaks

Whoever Sarah Bond is really she needs to stop proclaiming how much she 'loves' everything in work emails, especially when nobody else in the email chain is matching her energy

 

[Konjad]

Yet it speaks volumes about how lowly Microsoft thinks about CRPG as a genre.

Strange thing to think for a publisher that bought up every major CRPG developer in the United States.

They bought developers. To make games. But not necessarily RPGs. It's been a trend for a long time to buy RPG studios and make them make action games with RPG elements, not RPGs.

 

[Konjad]

Whoever Sarah Bond is really she needs to stop proclaiming how much she 'loves' everything in work emails, especially when nobody else in the email chain is matching her energy

She just wants to get gangbanged. "One team. Come what may"

 

[Hellraiser]

Also this Sarah Bond lady is the VP responsible for "business development" in gaming including the mentioned aquisitions for the last 3,5 years (so probably Obsidian and InXile? I think those were recent enough for her to be responsible).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahrbond/

Corporate Vice President | Gaming Partnerships & Business Development Corporate Vice President | Gaming Partnerships & Business Development

Led Business Development, Partner Management and M&A for the Xbox Division.
Executive Sponsor of Blacks @ Microsoft Employee Resource Group.

Yeah, looks like a diversity hire.

Also linkedin has horrible formatting once you copy and paste it, had to clean up all the weird dashes instead of proper line breaks and other encoded crap, fucking decline of websites.

 

[Karwelas]

Also this Sarah Bond lady is the VP responsible for "business development" in gaming including the mentioned aquisitions for the last 3,5 years (so probably Obsidian and InXile? I think thoise were recent enough for her to be responsible).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahrbond/

Corporate Vice President | Gaming Partnerships & Business Development Corporate Vice President | Gaming Partnerships & Business Development

Led Business Development, Partner Management and M&A for the Xbox Division.
Executive Sponsor of Blacks @ Microsoft Employee Resource Group.

Yeah, looks like a diversity hire.

Also linkedin has horrible formatting once you copy and paste it, fucking decline of websites.

Remember, no corporations.

No big surprise, these people put their grubby hands on a anything connected to stuff and hope it will magically make money by trashing it like any other corporate shit. They are bound by their own bubble.

 

[Konjad]

Executive Sponsor of Blacks

She certainly wants to get gangbanged.

 

[Hellraiser]

Executive Sponsor of Blacks

She certainly wants to get gangbanged.

She's black tho rather than another jungle-fever chaser.

 

[Konjad]

Executive Sponsor of Blacks

She certainly wants to get gangbanged.

She's black tho.

Stop being so racist. Just because she's black you would deny her a gangbang?

 

[whydoibother]

The owner and CEO and lead designer of Larian also underrated BG3's mainstream prospects

The game ended up having 9x as many concurrent players as he, typically a jolly optimist, predicted.
Therefore I wouldn't use BG3 as the spine of such an argument against Microsoft. Actually, the runaway success of BG3 probably means Microsoft will adjust their expectations for Obsidian UP, and therefore give them more time and money, and probably give them another more traditional RPG project to work on after they are done with their Skyrim action game thing.

 

[BruceVC]

I'm not sure I can draw the same conclusions from that table.

We don't know what D&D, Med and Hub means and "second-run stadia" does not mean "second grade" game. Second run means that it will go onto Stadia after the initial launch. So I assume Larian had made a deal with Stadia to get BG3 onto the platform some time after the initial release.

If you think MS spent all that money aquiring RPG studios but consider them trash then I don't think you appreciate just how complex due diligence is in these aquisitions.

Absolutely, I use to work for Microsoft and they make acquisitions based on the footprint and influence of a company and its overall profitability, its current financial health and its potential future revenue sales

And due diligence is done and its important. Mistakes can happen with any acquisition but thats normally because something fundamentally changes once ownership changes which can directly impact the predicted revenue stream

But companies like Microsoft are not stupid and they know which companies are worth owning and which companies dont align with there vision

 

[whydoibother]

We don't know what D&D, Med and Hub means and "second-run stadia" does not mean "second grade" game. Second run means that it will go onto Stadia after the initial launch. So I assume Larian had made a deal with Stadia to get BG3 onto the platform some time after the initial release.

Second Run here obviously means the game was already published by Google on Stadia, and now it will be re-published by Microsoft on their platform.
What isn't addressed is that Stadia published the EARLY ACCESS version of the game, which ran before any marketing campaign by Larian. As far as the full release, after the big marketing push, it wouldn't be a second run. Microsoft XBOX would've had it on the same day as PC, and (given circumstances unknown at the time) before Sony's PlayStation.
Big miss, in hindsight, but also without hindsight. Look at Divinity Original Sin 2 sales, increase them to account for the bigger licensed property. Its not a $5 million release. The scale of the mistake is amplified by hindsight, but the mistake itself should've been obvious at the time as well.

 

[0wca]

"So this is how gaming dies. With thunderous bestiality."

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Could D&D mean a physical release while Hub means Game Pass only?

 

[Hellraiser]

Could D&D mean a physical release while Hub means Game Pass only?

No, the header clearly states this is the gamepass release window, so it has to be something regarding timing. Acronym googling is not helpful with things like "death and dismemberment" or "decontamination and decommissioning" or "dinner and dance".

 

[Infinitron]