When the Heroes of the Storm development team first designed Gazlowe (or Tinker, as he was initially called), the game was completely different than it is now. What heroes could do, how maps were designed, and how the game was "meant" to be played has changed dramatically over the years. So when Gazlowe was introduced into the title back in 2014, his kit worked well for the time period. He could split push lanes, clear mercenary camps efficiently and his team-fighting ability wasn't that bad. Fast forward to the year 2020 (and two reworks later), the development team felt it was time to give his kit another look after his most recent overhaul in 2017.
Former Deviation Games developers have formed a new studio at Sony Interactive Entertainment in order to work on a brand new PlayStation IP.
Well that's an awesome and very surprising turnaround. Cheers to the new studio and what they'll build!
That's..... confusing, so shut down but just reformed and same employer 🤔 sounds like pretty much what happened to Japan Studio basically just being rebranded as Asobi
It is odd one I don't know how business deals work or the law of that kind of stuff. But is it possible Sony reached out and said hey we want you apart of Sony but don't want to purchase you for what ever reason. How about use disband and we will open a studio and hire you guys type of thing. Is that even possible?
I guess the deviation team fell apart and didn't deliver good progress on what they pitched (they overhyped themselves when the team was announced)so Sony shut them down. They regrouped with a new team and a new pitch so Sony is giving them another shot.
And this time they are keeping it quiet to keep pressure down on the team. So people aren't asking everyday what deviation(or whatever the new team is called) is doing.
Edit: Also Sony never owned them. They just ended their partnership with them. Deviation decided to close on their own.
Good point. You know, i was thinking of Days Gone too. They pitch an idea to Sony for Days Gone 2 but Sony didnt like it do they scrapped the whole thing. Maybe if a good pitch came by...they'd reconsider it.
To be fair, Sony didn't shut them down. Devation was independent. Sony pulled funding on the project they were working on. As a result, they couldn't run so Devation decided to close on their own.
Good for them that they were able to work it out. Hopefully they're developing something interesting.
Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that "there's more to come".
There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future . Xbox has to pay Microsoft back. It might take two decades to do that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xbox IS microsoft so there’s no “paying back “.
And MS gross profit in 2023 was over 140 billion dollars so forget your 2 decades.
Unless you mean the money MS invested in Xbox (acquisitions included) and the time it will take for xbox as a brand to gain that money back on it’s own, then yeah, that could take a while.
The better term to use might be return on investment, xbox is simply a division of Microsoft one that MS can easily do away with if profit margins are not met. So in that regard he's right, if xbox isn't showing the expected return on investment the higher ups are expecting than it's unlikely Microsoft will acquire any other studios any time soon, especially if they are spending billions buying developers just to shut them down in the end.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit here. You buy these companies just to put people out of jobs. And it’s not like something happened to derail their plans this WAS the plan. Microsoft has no business in this space at all.
Microsoft has been doing this for years. They simply want the IPs. Look at Nokia. Look at Skype. This time it simply expanded to games. Gaming is not as important to Microsoft’s executives as it was to the founders too. Bill Gates was willing to sell the og Xbox at a loss. Steve Balmer approved the red ring of death fiasco. This CEO isn’t really a gamer.
Maybe it's time though to put a stop to it and use a big giant like Microsoft as a huge example to the rest of these big companies.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
People like the FTC and the like went against Microsoft yet their Actvision deal was still allowed to go through yet look what's happened...it's not even Acitivisions studios aswell, it's Bethesdas.
Ninja Theory, Perfect Dark, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Wolfenstein 3, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake... something tells me that bad things are going to happen to these entities under Microsoft.
Microsoft & Xbox have shut down Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks to lay off more workers, insinuating that they're not in the game anymore.
They're headless for a long time because closing tango isn't exactly a good move
“Acquisitions always come with cuts”
343 trillion points shield activated
343 trillion percent damage negate activated
All damage reduced to 1 for 343 trillion turns.
MICROSOFT DEFENSE FORCE IS A GO
Especially for Microsoft, when Booty pretty much said they didn't know how to handle that many studios.
Why even make the acquisition then.
Didn’t they make the swipe for Bethesda when Sony wanted like 6 months exclusiveness for Starfield
It’s like…chill, you got Rise of the Tomb Raider for a year.
Do they always come with senseless cuts becasue that's exactly what cutting Tango was, senseless.
Everyone's acting now that game companies care about games and Xbox is committing the Ultimate betrayal, they are all like this and you have just been quiet about it for far too long
I wonder if Microsoft do pull out of the console market that it might open the door for valve to relaunch the Steambox. Competition is good for the industry but Microsoft don't even seem to be trying anymore.
Steam / Valve are one of the few truly pro-consumer bright spots in gaming right now. Thankfully.
“Your game has won some pretty significant awards and is a show piece for where we want to go in the future.”
1 hour later.
“We’re gonna have to let you go. You can’t cover our 100 billion dollar acquisition. Oh and take your awards too 👍🏾”
