Why XBOX ONE Launch Game was Cancelled - Obsidian

Sounds like what happened to Scalebound as well.

Personally, I think MS is treating the gaming division way too "business-y". I understand that the gaming division ultimately has to make money and report to the share holders, so games that went over budget get cut.

But there is a art form or creative side to the gaming business that cannot be projected or budgeted right from the start of the project. We saw the successes of TLG and FFIV even after the extended development cycle.

Even if it both games were mediocre, fans do appreciate that the games were eventually made, and not cancelled midway through development. This feeds to the goodwill of the company, and fans are possibly more forgiving and willing to support their new projects.

Source

Tyranny is the reworked Stormlands

microsoft had an Obsidian rpg exclusive in the works and they pulled the plug?

jesus christ..I can't even..

"Urquhart went on to explain that when you're making a big-budget game, "there has to be someone at the publisher" who can defend the project and assure the higher-ups the game is going to be good. In the case of Stormlands, unfortunately, Obsidian didn't have someone like that to champion the game at Microsoft.

"There has to be someone with that attitude and the ability to defend the game," he added, using Baldur's Gate as an example of how important it was for them to have someone to champion the game at Interplay when poor European sales forecasts were going to negatively impact its success in American markets. "For a game to truly be big, it often has to be pushed and it has to have ads and PR," he explained.

Urquhart concluded by saying: "Why did Stormwinds get canceled? Stomwinds got canceled because we didn't have an advocate."

Simple answer: MS cancels things. It's just what they do.

"It's business" as the Lems religiously say. Too bad, part of that business means attracting people to your platform with games. Last gen, I railed on here how MS treats gamers like a strip mine. They came into this generation doubling down on that mentality and the company that kept projects like The Last Guardian alive came and ate their lunch.

You would think some lessons would stick since the 1980's but a certain fanbase absolutely insists that they know everything about the future of gaming while doing jack goddamn shit in the present and never challenging their plastic box overlords to do better by them.

Well that makes sense, if Microsoft is unsure about the product, it's not shaping up properly, and they're unsure if they should expend more money to finance it, and no one is defending it...

Cancelling the game is the obvious choice, that's like someone sitting at a parole board trying to get out and no one is there to advocate for their release...

Did an xbox fanboy piss on your dog or something?

CancelBone strikes again.

Scalebound

Obsidian RPG

Halo Megabloks

Phantom Dust

Fable Legends

They have cancelled more games this gen than they've released lol.

Math is hard

Halo Megabloks wasn't a real game, only a prototype.

So Tyranny is the reworked Stormlands, which is sitting pretty decent at metacritic right now.

Shame because that prototype looked more fun than garbage they've actually released this gen like Recore and Quantum Break.

An Obsidian RPG would have made me jealous, but still not enough reason to buy an X1.

Both of which you have not played.

Microsoft keeps duking Lemmings and all they do is spread their cheeks harder.

TLG was not a financial success. Now you can praise the scoring all you want but it did not make much money.

And you're right. MS runs things like a business, period. I also prefer to do business with game companies, not romanticize my interaction with them. MS provides some things I wish to make use of. Sony provides some things I wish to make use of. Its business, not personal.

Sounds like they get a budget for the game and instead of maintain their budget they went over and wanted an increase because they had seen it happen before. So they expected more money

So much for lems stating that MS has all this cash for games. MS was dumb not getting behind Obsidian, they would of gotten a lot of us PC gamers to buy the xb1.

There's a reason why MS has massive cash at bank i.e. controlling their cost with a fix budget.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/why-microsoft-with-100-billion-is-borrowing-to-buy-linkedin

LOL @ the Pathetic MS shills making excuses for MS cancelling new IPs. Are you guys even gamers?

This is wholly ironic coming from a person like you.

Weren't they working on that shitty Alien RPG that got pulled? I didn't even read the sauce but it was probably for the best not to let them taint the launch line-up.

Probably better for Obsidian too, the bias gaming media would have shit on anything they put out if it were an Xbox exclusive, even if it (and I doubt it) turned out to be good.

How is MS gonna provide you things you can make use of by cancelling games?

WTF?

Nobody noticed that the DEV cancelled the game.............NOT Microsoft?

They were trying to get MS to publish the game.

MS didnt cancel it.......

But hey, you have an exclusive game mode in FIFA!

SnowFlakes vs RealWorld?

You can only one. :P

@navyguy21: Ssshhh don't use facts and logic on this forum. It's frowned upon.

@navyguy21:

How did you conclude that? The interview clearly implied that MS cancelled it.

@navyguy21:

So the devs canceled the game and idiot Sony trolls and fanboy in here trying to push this on MS LOL.

This is the best post of the day so far and it's still early. Plus, I love how they talking crap about MS running their company like a "business" as if Sony is their BFF LOL.

@NathanDrakeSwag:

Phantom Dust wasn't canceled.

Sony Fan continue to be the clowns of SW.

M$ is bad for gaming. They're wasting the time, resources and mental health of great devs just to cancel games or release crap. Please let the cancer known as M$ disappear from gaming for gamers and games sake.

lol :P

@SecretPolice: Ha! So true.

I would like to know the specific reason each of these projects where canceled. It's a shame because it looks as though there was real potential behind some of these games.

These types of topics either invite people who don't understand capitalism or are just young. Look I hate when a game gets cancelled as much as the next person but when you are making a product and it is being funded by others and not you personally people expect a nice return on investment. Yeah there is the creative side that want to make a great game and that is all well in dandy but someone somewhere has to care about cost. As entertainment as a whole continues to move forward the industries are going to naturally split themselves into two: Big Budget vs Indie. There will be a day when there is no in between.

None of that is true. The article starts with:

"Obsidian Entertainment was developing a role-playing game called Stormlands for the launch of Xbox One that was ultimately canceled, and studio CEO Fergus Urquhart has come forward to reveal why Microsoft scrapped the project."

He goes on to explain that MS didn't have the budget for their game and they couldn't negotiate with them properly to get them to keep funding it. The devs totally wanted to keep making it. I don't know how @navyguy21 got that conclusion.

EDIT: If you follow the links to Kotaku, you'll find this:

"in March of 2012, Microsoft cancelled the RPG they’d contracted Obsidian to make for their new Xbox, which was then called Durango. Obsidian was calling the game Stormlands, according to a source, and they’d designed it to be one of the Xbox One’s premiere RPGs, but Microsoft axed it during a final greenlight meeting."

Nothing about Obsidian scrapping it.

Read the article.

They wanted MS to publish the game but they said they didnt have an advocate at MS.

MS had contacted them to do a game for them and had a meeting to present what they were working on.

What they presented wasnt good so MS didnt publish it.

They eventually reworked the game and released it under a different name

It happens all the time.

Sony did the same thing with RIME and it ended up being picked up elsewhere

That's still MS cancelling it. Not Obsidian.

MS decided not to publish vs MS canceled the game. Pick only one please. :P

Considering that the CEO of Obsidian, IGN, and Kotaku are using the word "cancelled" I'm going to go ahead with MS canceled the game, since it's also implied that they were funding the game at some point.

So are you saying that when a publisher is presented with a subpar game...............and they dont want to move forward................its the same as them cancelling the game?

You'd have to add a TON of cancelled games to every publisher out there, including Sony and MS.

Cancelled game usually refers to titles that have been greenlit, are in development, and then are scrapped.

Not titles scrapped because the publisher didnt like the product being presented.

I'm going to go with the Fact the game was released under a new name. Those dirty dogs at MS Canceled the original name of the game by deciding not to publish I guess,

Get Mad, I am, perhaps we should riot, loot and burn things down over this. . lolololol :P

Of course you will, it fits the narrative.

Hmmmmmmmm

After reading the article now it does bring up the question of,

How do you cancel something you decided you didn't want???????? You seem to be right about that navyguy.

That's like someone coming to me and saying I got a hot blind date for you and I look her over and I say I'm not interested and then all of a sudden the narrative is I broke up with her LOL.

How did I break up with her if we was never together?

Thats different from what you initially said. You said that the dev cancelled the game, which is simply not true.

MS contracted Obsidian for a XB1 launch game, and dropped it at the final greenlight meeting. The game was eventually was reworked to Tyranny which was pretty well received critically. Given the context, I do consider it as MS cancelling the game.

What narrative? Look I don't think this is a big deal. There's no need to spin this. MS canceled the game after they funded the game's development. You have yet to back up your claim that Obsidian cancelled the game. But now you're accusing me of having an agenda?

I'm not mad at all. This is not a big deal and there's no need to spin this at all.

The one thing you're omitting is that MS paid them to develop the game and then decided not to publish it. That means they cancelled the game. I'm not saying MS was right or wrong for it. That's not my argument.

"Cancelled game usually refers to titles that have been greenlit, are in development, and then are scrapped."

That's literally what happened.