Microsoft announced that it’s looking to add two more game development studios to its roster at the X018 conference over the weekend. The company intends to acquire Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment.
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Obsidian is best known as the creator of Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. The second studio, inXile, is known for games like Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Bard’s Tale IV.
At E3 earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it had acquired PlayGround Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, and Compulsion Games. Once the two new acquisitions go ahead, it’ll take Microsoft’s first-party developers to 13.
What all of this boils down to is more exclusives titles for Xbox and Windows from studios which have a pretty good track record. Given that the current generation of consoles has been pretty well dominated by PlayStation and its huge lineup of exclusive games, it’s awesome to see Microsoft gearing up for some undoubtedly big releases. We’re probably not gonna see them for some time (probably not until the next hardware release) but it’s good to know they’re around the corner.
Microsoft also announced last month that it has a new service in the pipeline called Project xCloud, which will allow users to run high-end games on just about any piece of hardware, smartphones included. Essentially, it uses cloud technology to run the games and simply displays them on a screen of your choosing.
There’s certainly a lot coming our way from the Xbox team. No doubt the next generation of hardware will be an exciting time for gaming.
