Microsoft Game Studios re-evaluates gaming lineup

Xbox News | Several titles kicked to the kerb.

Microsoft Game Studios, the division responsible for development and publishing of Microsoft developed titles on the Xbox, has announced several high profile cancellations.

The biggest suprise is the cancellation of the XSN Sports lineup for 2004. Pushed heavily at E3 2003 as a revolution in sports gaming, the XSN sports lineup was a retail failure across the board. While some of the XSN lineup was of a very high quality (Top Spin), Microsoft has cited quality as the main reason for spending an extra year re-developing their sports lineup. Only one XSN Sports title is scheduled for this year - the much awaited Rallisport Challenge 2. "We actually did think we had good games last year, but the market and the direct feedback that we have shows us that we fall short in a couple of areas to our competition," admitted XSN Sports studio manager Kevin Browne, speaking to IGN. "We think it's the best thing we can do, to take this year off, and to close that quality gap that we have in respect to the EA Sports and ESPN sports titles."

The next high profile cut is Oddworld: Steef's Oddysee. Most of you may remember that this game was first displayed on the Inside the Xbox documentary on the Discovery channel, and was to be the next game to come out of high profile studio Oddworld Inhabitants. However, earlier this week, information came to light that said Microsoft has ended their publishing agreement with Oddworld Inhabitants, and will not be publishing Steef's Oddysee. While the game is still under way at Oddworld Inhabitants, they are now without a publisher. It is possible that they may return to Atari for publishing, as they swallowed GT Interactive, who published the first two Oddworld titles, but only time will tell whether or not this is the case. One source has suggested that the game may not be picked up due to high budgets associated with Oddworld games, none of which have been a massive success.

The final cut that we've been informed of came through this morning. Tim Schafer, the man responsible for many of LucasArts' highly popular adventure games in the early 90's, and his new studio Double Fine have been hard at work on Psychonauts for a few years now. Unfortunately, PALGN has learned this morning that Microsoft Game Studios have axed their agreement with Double Fine to publish Psychonauts, effectively leaving the game in development hell. Double Fine are hard at work finding a new publisher, and still plan to display a playable demo of the game at E3. Speaking to IGN this morning, a Microsoft represenative said "Microsoft Game Studios has made the decision to end its publishing agreement with DoubleFine for the upcoming Xbox game Psychonauts. Microsoft Game Studios believes in the vision of the title and would like to see the game on Xbox. Microsoft is supporting Tim Schafer and DoubleFine in their search for a new publisher."

While it's not bad news all around, these high profile cuts show that Microsoft is beginning to get very serious about the level of quality featured in games published by their studio. With only a handful of highly successful titles coming out of Microsoft, one should be able to find it easy to see why these cuts are taking place.