I found this interesting.

https://wccftech.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-asobo-studio-invesment-preserve-creative-autonomy/

That IS interesting. And quite good news... I think?

This is new to me, thought they only focus on the Series X:

 

An Xbox One version has also been promised, but is currently without a launch window.

They were a Game Studio before MS approached them for MSFS, and still want to remain one by look of it on both Game consoles, they may when MSFS is finished turn to  payware for MSFS.  

3 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

They were a Game Studio before MS approached them for MSFS, and still want to remain one by look of it on both Game consoles, they may when MSFS is finished turn to  payware for MSFS.  

They never weren't a game studio.  A Plague Tale: Innocence (a great game) was released by another team at Asobo while MSFS was in development. They are just a third-party game studio with a lot of history of doing contract work for Microsoft - well before they landed the big contract for Flight Simulator.  Flight Sim is being worked on by the biggest team at Asobo, but Asobo is a large developer with more than one team.

If Asobo eventually makes MSFS payware, it'll just be a smaller team within the main MSFS team doing it in addition to their normal updates and eventual DLC expansions.  Good way to keep their artists and modelers and SFX people busy when there's nothing in the main sim to work on.

As for this news - if they wanted financial backing so they could remain independent, I'm happy for them.  I don't really think this is in response to the persistent speculation about Microsoft acquiring them though.  There was never any actual evidence to this effect, and while Microsoft might've kicked the tires... if a studio doesn't want to be acquired, it doesn't want to be acquired.  Moon Studios (makers of the Ori games for Microsoft) all but confirmed Microsoft expressed interest in acquiring them a while back, but Moon turned them down because they simply had no interest in giving up their independence.

13 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

As for this news - if they wanted financial backing so they could remain independent, I'm happy for them.  I don't really think this is in response to the persistent speculation about Microsoft acquiring them though.  There was never any actual evidence to this effect, and while Microsoft might've kicked the tires... if a studio doesn't want to be acquired, it doesn't want to be acquired.  Moon Studios (makers of the Ori games for Microsoft) all but confirmed Microsoft expressed interest in acquiring them a while back, but Moon turned them down because they simply had no interest in giving up their independence.

Indeed that is good news, I am pretty sure Phil Spencer on his mind want to acquire them especially after MSFS which it seems has met Phil's expectations. Being a Microsoft game studio, I could foresee will make them locked into only Microsoft world which I think they don't want that, a total freedom is important. Or it can be the opposite, Microsoft can give them the full autonomy like how they did with Github and Linkedin although I wouldn't think that.

2 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

Indeed that is good news, I am pretty sure Phil Spencer on his mind want to acquire them especially after MSFS which it seems has met Phil's expectations. Being a Microsoft game studio, I could foresee will make them locked into only Microsoft world which I think they don't want that, a total freedom is important. Or it can be the opposite, Microsoft can give them the full autonomy like how they did with Github and Linkedin although I wouldn't think that.

Xbox give all of their game studios wide latitude to preserve their own work culture and stuff these days.  This is in stark contrast to earlier Xbox days, where they literally made studios they acquire relocate to the Redmond area and work out of office buildings (such as Bungie).

I suspect they learned some hard lessons from the failure of studios like Lionhead, and the initial floundering of Rare.

Asobo I suspect Microsoft would be interest in both because they are managing Flight Simulator for them for the next decade anyway, but also because Asobo are a large, talented studio with lots of development capacity - and Microsoft wants that right now to feed Game Pass.  It's why they spent $7.5 billion dollars on Zenimax/Bethesda.

57 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

Xbox give all of their game studios wide latitude to preserve their own work culture and stuff these days.  This is in stark contrast to earlier Xbox days, where they literally made studios they acquire relocate to the Redmond area and work out of office buildings (such as Bungie).

I guess this is a general company's direction led by Satya Nadella's leadership style, to give teams and their subsidiaries full autonomy. I recall when they bought Github, there was this huge fuss in twitter people were cursing MS and migrating their repos to Gitlab despite MS commitment to not touch Github and guess what, over a year with Github owned by MS, I barely notice any changes between pre and post MS accusation, in fact things are getting better in Github due to the massive investment from MS into open source.

Good thing that Microsoft got rid of Steve Ballmer with his craziness lol 

 

Edited January 22, 20215 yr by omarsmak30

This is a very small video that highlights how Satya Nadella reshaped Microsoft's culture: