Over the weekend Microsoft announced the purchase of two new videogame studios, Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth) and inXile Entertainment, makers of Bard’s Tale IV, Wasteland 2 and virtual reality (VR) title The Mage’s Tale.
The studios will join a selection of other developers brought under the Microsoft Studios banner “As part of our commitment to bringing a steady stream of new, exclusive games to our fans,” states the company in a blog posting.
While this will mean more security for these smaller studios when it comes to inXile Entertainment there’s now a question over its continued commitment to VR development, as the team had previously planned on porting The Mage’s Tale to PlayStation VR.
Back July 2017 the studio secured $4.5 million USD for equity and project investment from gumi VR Inc, revealing at the time planned work on an unannounced open-world VR survival role-playing game (RPG) which has yet to be announced.
This may still be going ahead, with Microsoft noting that: “They will continue to operate autonomously with their unique talents, IP and expertise. As part of Microsoft Studios, Obsidian and inXile will have the support and freedom to fully realize their creative ambitions on both existing franchises and new RPG projects.”
inXile Entertainment specialises in RPG’s, with 2017’s The Mage’s Tale being one of the standout adventures of the year for VR fans. VRFocus reviewed the title, giving it a full five-stars, remarking: “The Mage’s Tale is a really good magical adventure that really puts you into the heart of the experience. The story provides hours worth of gameplay and the potion creation side adds even more fun, mixing and matching various items to see what they do. If you’ve been looking for a decent fantasy RPG then you can’t go too far wrong with this.”
The studio released a short video (seen below) detailing what the new acquisition will mean to the company as a whole, stopping short of mentioning any VR plans. Hopefully, the studio will still be able to continue in the field of VR, when VRFocus has further information we’ll let you know.