A new rumor suggests that Microsoft is pursuing a solution to their perennial problem of a lack of first party games.
As reported by Windows Central, they have formed a new studio made up of King developers, to make smaller scale, AA games. In particular, they are going to making smaller scale games out of Activision’s and Blizzard’s biggest franchises.
They believe that these games are meant to be for mobile, but it isn’t out of the question that they could be brought to consoles and PC. We think there’s a huge case to pursue smaller games for console and PC, without mobile in the equation.
In terms of scale, it would make sense that mobile games could also be brought over to more robust platforms. But mobile gamers are entrenched in the free-to-play model, to the point that Apple’s prestige couldn’t’ convince their own consumers to buy ports of AAA console games on their platforms.
If the idea is to monetize their franchises more, this could have been a move in the works from even before Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King. But if Microsoft is looking to make use of this to bolster their game schedule, they will want to teach these mobile developers to make at least some of those games for console too.
It cannot be a coincidence that word about this is coming out a few days before August 7. That happens to be the official shutdown date of Mighty Doom, one such initiative by Microsoft’s other big acquisition, Zenimax, to cater their Doom franchise to mobile. Whether Microsoft inherited this initiative or came up with it in the past few months themselves, they know that they do not want to repeat mistakes made there.
And that’s where it would make sense to at least explore separate AA projects for console and mobile games. As for what shape those games could be, our source points to creative smaller games like Balatro and Grounded, but AA actually refers to titles like Darksiders, Helldivers 2, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and Still Wakes The Deep.
These games can be visually impressive, and even large in terms of playtime. But we can see that they just fall short of being true AAAs, from how they don’t endeavor to push graphics on modern platforms to their limit, and there’s also things they don’t do that we are used to from the bigger games.
The real clincher is that these will potentially be $ 50 games or cheaper, if they won’t be free-to-play. Microsoft could easily justify greenlighting a dozen of these games to fill out the rest of Xbox Series X|S’s lifecycle. The pressure won’t be there as much for failure and success, since if they all fail, those devs can just go back to King. It’s a calculated risk with a lot of upside, and we hope to see the fruits of this initiative sooner rather than later.
