Latest news with #Pentiment
Metro
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Candy Crush developers replaced by the AI tools they helped make
Concerns that Microsoft's layoffs at Xbox would lead to developers being replaced by AI seem to have been proven true, starting with mobile developer King. Science fiction has been warning about the dangers of AI for decades and while emotionless robots taking over the world isn't currently a problem, soulless company executives replacing all their staff with incompetent AI tools definitely is. Of course, that's not quite how they put it, especially Microsoft, which is obsessed by the technology and insists that it can help gaming as much as anything else. After the most recent round of layoffs, many suspected they were intending to replace the thousands of vacated positions with AI tools and that's now been confirmed at Candy Crush Saga developer King. Despite being highly profitable, King was one of the first studios to report layoffs, earlier in the month, and now former staff have described how the AI tools they helped train have now replaced them. Around 200 staff are believed to have been cut at King, which has offices in Stockholm and London, with many developers currently in 'limbo', as the company negotiates with union representatives. An internal survey reportedly describes morale as being 'in the gutter', with website implying that dissenting voices are specifically being targeted by HR. Reportedly, the majority of cuts are in middle management, UX (user experience), and narrative copywriting. At the same time, Farm Heroes Saga, which is made in the UK, has lost half its staff, including level designers and user research – which adds up to around 50 people on its own. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Many other staff have also been told their jobs are at risk, most of which have spent the last few years training AI tools to do their jobs. This has apparently worked well enough that they are now being replaced by those same tools. More Trending 'Most of level design has been wiped, which is crazy since they've spent months building tools to craft levels quicker,' one former employee is quoted as saying. 'Now those AI tools are basically replacing the teams. Similarly, the copywriting team is completely removing people since we now have AI tools that those individuals have been creating.' 'The fact AI tools are replacing people is absolutely disgusting but it's all about efficiency and profits even though the company is doing great overall,' they added. Microsoft took control of King in 2023, when they acquired Activision Blizzard, and previous to that claimed that King and mobile gaming was the primary reason for the purchase, more so than Call Of Duty. There's since been no sign that's true, much as Microsoft's claims of wanting to support the Nintendo Switch have so far led to only two games (Pentiment and Grounded) in 2024 and nothing being announced for the Switch 2. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: An amazing John Wick video game you've never heard of will be delisted this week MORE: Fallout 5 may not be made by Bethesda as Elder Scrolls 6 enters 'playable state' MORE: Islanders: New Shores review – a cosy city builder at a budget price
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Obsidian became Xbox's most prolific studio: "There's not a lot of studios at Microsoft that have an entire external developer making the whole game for them"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. 2025 is the year of Obsidian Entertainment. Formed 22 years ago, the legendary RPG maker responsible for Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol and countless other video games is on something of a hot streak. Microsoft Gaming purchased Obsidian in 2018, folding the team into the Xbox Game Studios group. Since then it has wrapped production of The Outer Worlds; released Grounded, supporting it through years of early access and regular content drops; released Pentiment in 2022, and Avowed in 2025 following a short delay; and managed to bring Grounded and Pentiment to PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch as part of Microsoft's multiplatform initiative. If that weren't enough, it also has The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2 set to release this year. It's a lot, particularly for a first-party studio operating within the Xbox ecosystem. I was keen to understand how the studio has managed this flood of new releases, and thankfully the teams at Obsidian Entertainment were only too happy to answer. When Xbox revealed Grounded 2 at the Xbox Showcase, it announced that "Obsidian and Eidos Montréal have joined forces to bring you the next chapter with even more depth, danger, and discovery to experience." The way development responsibilities have been split between the two award-winning teams says a lot about the flexibility Obsidian has been afforded by Xbox Game Studios. "Grounded 2 is actually a good example of our growth as a developer. We could not do what we're doing right now if we didn't have great development partners and co-dev partners," says Feargus Urquhart, studio head and CEO at Obsidian. "That's one of the big transitions for us" Urquhart says that it has long been his ambition for Obsidian to scale beyond the boundaries of a traditional studio, simply shifting from one project to the next. "With Pillars of Eternity 2, we signed up a publisher late because we really wanted to start publishing games ourselves. We didn't really have the people internally, so we hired some people in but it didn't really work out. So unlike CD Projekt RED, BioWare, and others who were on the cusp of becoming publishers we weren't getting there." "We wound up talking to Eidos about some other stuff and it turned out that they had a small team who absolutely loved Grounded" Chris Parker, game director "This isn't me saying that Microsoft is allowing us to become a publisher," he laughs. "It's more that the acquisition has allowed us to become a more multi-faceted developer, which is what I've always wanted to do." This is a key component behind how Obsidian has been able to scale so quickly, and maintain such a rapid-fire release schedule. Urquhart adds: "It's allowed us to sign up external teams. There's not a lot of studios at Microsoft that have an entire external developer making the whole game for them." Grounded 2 has been in development for just under two years, meaning it entered production around a year after the release of Grounded 1.0 and a year before the survival-adventure made its way to PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. Around this same time, Obsidian was juggling development of Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2. Grounded attracted over 25 million players into the backyard, it's popular and there were demands for more; but how could Obsidian have possibly squeezed in a sequel? "The Grounded team was relatively small, it maxed out in the 20s," says Chris Parker, Obsidian co-founder and Grounded 2 game director. "When we started thinking about doing Grounded 2 it was fortuitous how it worked out, actually, because we wound up talking to Eidos about some other stuff and it turned out that they had a small team who absolutely loved Grounded. They were almost pitching us on the sequel." From there a "significant team up at Eidos" and a "relatively large group at Obsidian" came together to push Grounded 2 through production. Grounded 1's game director Adam Brennecke, its lead programmer Roby Atadero, art director Kazunori Aruga, along with six other principal leads and a small internal steering group at Obsidian joined Parker to collaborate closely with Eidos. "We are constantly at each other's offices. We're talking about stuff daily. It's a really healthy relationship. And because they actually love the game at Eidos, it's not like this dispassionate contractor that we've hired. They are bringing all their own stuff to the table," says Parker. Grounded 2 producer Miles Winzeler adds: "Obsidian and Eidos have similar design goals as studios. We mesh really well together. It's also the difference between the two of them that's been a big strength. It means Grounded 2 will feel like its own piece, as they are able to flex what they're best at, too." Urquhart uses Voltron as his point of reference to describe how external teams join together with Obsidian to create something bigger, more powerful. He tells me that before the 2018 acquisition into the Xbox Game Studios group, Obsidian largely handled work in-house outside of VO, QA, and localization departments. But support from Xbox has allowed the studio to expand here in all areas of design, and reconnect with friends and former developers from across the years. Obsidian is collaborating with Aspiring Unicorn, UI and UX experts working across The Outer Worlds 2. There's a relationship with Digimancy Entertainment, founded by Obsidian veteran George Ziets, and with Beamdog – co-founded by Trent Oster of BioWare, who Urquhart first encountered while working on Shattered Steel at Interplay two decades ago. Urquhart is quick to shout about these relationships (and plenty more of them). Both as an example of the ensuring legacy of Obsidian and how the studio is able to grow the scope of its projects without growing the studio too quickly. "The idea is not to be doing way more than what we're doing right now" Feargus Urquhart, studio head and CEO Still, I wonder whether an increasing reliance on co-dev and outsourcing risks diminishing the identity of an Obsidian game. Urquhart says it's better to think of it as augmenting. With the right people in place, scaling this way is only to the benefit of the games coming out of the studio. "The person in charge of the day-to-day collaboration with Eidos Montreal is Chris Parker, right. He was the producer on Baldur's Gate 2 and he has this length of experience working with external developers. It comes back to this question of, 'What are our strengths?' 'Do we have the people who do these things?'" "The idea is not to be doing way more than what we're doing right now, but I think we've hit a really good size and a really good amount of things we can do. I can still be involved in all of it too, and not lose my mind – at least no more than I already have," he laughs. "You know, Obsidian was founded by three producers, a designer, and a programmer. The intent was always to do this with our projects. Back then it was a little bit more for survival, now it's because I think it makes us better game makers." Working with external development partners is one piece of the puzzle, but not the entire picture. One way Obsidian is able to unleash Avowed, Grounded 2, and The Outer Worlds 2 within a single year is partly because of its ethos as a group: "Perfect is the enemy of the good," says Urquhart. "Our job is to make amazing games, not perfect games." In a world where six-to-eight years is threatening to become the standard timeframe for AAA, first-party game development, seeing Obsidian become so prolific has been great to watch from a distance. Taken at an individual level, the studio is delivering exceptionally fun titles that share a consistent quality – they aren't necessarily changing the video game industry in a fundamental way, but then I suspect that they aren't supposed to. "We've made sure to never lose the muscle memory of having multiple teams, and of having the teams build off of each other" Justin Britch, executive producer "There was a big push for a long time of everything needing to be bigger, better, and perfect, and 'ahhhh'," screams Urquhart, before chuckling: "hey, you know what 'ahhhh' means." What he's saying here is that this need for first-party studios to be operating on a level above the rest of the industry "can lead to trying to move on too many fronts at once." He adds: "That's the biggest thing for us, identifying what we are good at, what we can do with the time that we have, and then just focus on the content that we're creating – because that's what the player actually plays!" The sentiment that "our job is to make amazing games, not perfect games" feels like a healthy outlook to have. The industry is in a bit of a difficult position right now. The cost of video game development is spiralling, with some of that cost starting to come back on the consumer – The Outer Worlds 2 will be Xbox's first game priced at $80. The playerbase is increasing, albeit focused on a smaller selection of titles thanks in no small part to the live-service explosion in 2017. And it seems like we're barely able to go a month without some prominent, legendary development studio suffering layoffs (something the Xbox Game Studios group hasn't been immune to either). Is there not a pressure to deliver "perfect" in this environment? "Nobody at Xbox is putting that pressure on us," says Marcus Morgan, executive producer of Grounded 2. "But it's there in the back of our minds, right? It's something we think about, and something we talked a lot about early on. There were even some moments of like, teenage years, growing through becoming a first-party studio where we wrestled with that pressure." "In one of the first meetings that we had with [Matt Booty, president of game content and studios] and the rest of Xbox after the acquisition, they asked us to continue being true to who we are and they have given us the space to do that. We've made sure to never lose the muscle memory of having multiple teams, and of having the teams build off of each other. We haven't lost that rhythm post-acquisition," adds Justin Britch, executive producer of The Outer Worlds 2. "Every studio has its own role to play in the industry, and its own role to play within the organization that it's in… We want to make games that we're really proud of and get them out into the world. That's our role, and we've been really fortunate to be able to do that within the Xbox ecosystem." Both Morgan and Britch point to Obsidian operating with multiple teams shifting between projects as a point of pride. "We've always been a multi-project studio," says Morgan. "We always have multiple teams working on multiple games, which is somewhat unique – especially in the first-party ecosystem." This way of operating, Britch tells me, intersects directly with another focus for Obsidian: "We have a principal at the studio about building on past success. Some of the studios who I really admire have this iterative approach and keep building on a formula. We try to do the same. We try to keep pushing things forward while recognizing what really worked well; we don't need to reinvent the things that really matter." "That's a component of how we're able to ship multiple games and keep shipping them, because we're so focused on building on our past successes, making them better while making sure that we aren't throwing everything out and starting over every time, because that can make it take a really long time to bring out new games," he adds. "We're just becoming what we've always wanted to become" Feargus Urquhart, studio head and CEO at Obsidian "Another major thing is that you learn when you ship," says Urquhart, speaking to Obsidian's dedication to shorter development cycles. "Not only do you learn because you actually finish a project, but you learn because your game goes out there and people tell you what they really think of it. The longer you go between those cycles, the less you're learning." At this point Urquhart points to Baldur's Gate 3 as an example, something that happens countless times during our conversation – clearly the Larian RPG is on the veteran RPG maker's mind. "The only reason Baldur's Gate 3 can exist is because Divinity Original Sin 2 existed. If Larian took 10 years to develop Original Sin and then 10 years to develop Original Sin 2, then there's no Baldur's gate 3. That's what's super important to me. The idea is that when we ship, we learn; the pursuit of perfection leads to not shipping." A phrase that Urquhart likes to wheel out is "constraints breed creativity." What's interesting here is that, for Obsidian, the constraints seem self-imposed. There's a strong impulse to continue iterating on its foundations, rather than rip them up to try and build something more audacious. A desire to work with external developers and partners rather than grow too quickly, a mind-share of expertise internally and across the industry. And it's in the combination of all of these things which has allowed Obsidian to become the most prolific studio within the Xbox Game Studios group. "Remember, even the work that's done outside of Obsidian comes back inside the building, and that builds on what we're doing" says Urquhart. "There's technology from Grounded that's in Avowed, technology from Avowed that's in Grounded 2, and so on. I'm super thankful that Microsoft has allowed us to build out this group of developers and support networks, and that it just lets us be… Obsidian. We're just becoming what we've always wanted to become, which is this more well-rounded group who is able to take on a lot more of the stuff that we've always wanted to do." The upcoming Xbox Series X games lineup includes Grounded 2, which launches into Game Preview, Game Pass, and Steam Early Access on July 29, 2025. It is followed by upcoming Obsidian game The Outer Worlds 2 on October 29, 2025 where it will release for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Game Pass. Avowed launched on PC and Xbox Series X on February 13, 2025. Exclusive | Inside Xbox Play Anywhere: As Xbox Play Anywhere takes center stage, the future of Xbox has never been clearer. To learn more about the initiative, we spoke to leaders from across Xbox Game Studios: "Our plan is to keep making amazing games and have them reach as many players as we can"Gears of War: Reloaded campaign preview: If playing this classic campaign co-op with one player on a PS5 and the other on an Xbox Series X is wrong, then we don't want to be right. This is shaping up to be the terrific and loving re-release that builds on the success of Gears' 2015 Ultimate of War: Reloaded multiplayer preview: Both the best and worst thing we can say about returning to the multiplayer mode that once defined our lives is – it's still Gears of War. Chunky, uneven, and punishing. It's a tricky proposition in 2025, but we're so glad Gears is back in Gaiden 4 hands-on preview: It's clear from slicing and dicing waves of enemies that, yes, the joys of the best 3D games in this series are back (and yes, we did manage to beat the boss fight). Talking to the devs, we reflect on the evolution of the action game genre over the last Gaiden 4 interview: Team Ninja and PlatinumGames say that "Soulslikes have kind of taken center stage" since the last installment to the Ninja Gaiden series, but the devs promise that "we are going against the trend in that way" with the upcoming 2025 release of Ninja Gaiden 2 hands-on preview: 30 minutes with a survival game like Grounded 2 is just scratching the surface, but we are already hooked. Talking with the devs, they explain why now was the right time to jump into a full, numbered Grounded 2 an Xbox exclusive? Obsidian won't rule out bringing Grounded 2 to PS5 and other platforms in the future (just as its predecessor did in 2024), but says that this initial release is "all about being in Game Preview and Early Access"Grounded 2 player count: Everything is bigger in Grounded 2, but Obsidian never considered stretching beyond four-players. Speaking to GR+, the studio says doing so "would have undermined what Grounded was really about."Grounded 2 roadmap: Obsidian is targeting updates every "four to five months" after the studio learned the hard way: "When we started with Grounded 1 in early access we were trying to do monthly updates – that was a hassle and it didn't work"ROG Xbox Ally X hands-on preview: With its first handheld, Xbox's 'Play Anywhere' strategy is coming into sharper focus. And I'm not saying I regret buying a Nintendo Switch 2 at launch... but the ROG Xbox Ally X is almost everything I want from a new Xbox Outer Worlds 2 hands-on preview: This sequel feels like one of our favorite RPG devs (they also made Fallout: New Vegas and Avowed) finally got the resources to make a new sci-fi adventure with the scope they deserve. Full of details, choices, and great action, this is shaping up to be Outer Worlds 2 exclusive interview: With The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian Entertainment is dedicated to making sneaky playstyles truly viable in its upcoming sequel: "We have a strike team going room-by-room to see if we can stealth properly through each location"The rising cost of video games: The Xbox Showcase confirmed that The Outer Worlds 2 will be the first video game out of Xbox Game Studios in 2025 to cost $80. Obsidian Entertainment says we don't set the prices for our games" and wishes "everybody could play" its new RPG.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Obsidian Has Quietly Become Xbox's Secret Weapon
In 2022, Obsidian Entertainment was the only first-party Xbox studio to ship a new game, Pentiment. And in 2025, the Microsoft-owned studio has already launched one big RPG, Avowed, and is set to release a second one, The Outer Worlds 2, later in the year. If it wasn't clear before, it is now: Obsidian has quietly become one of Xbox's most important and valuable studios. Let's flash back to E3 2018. During Microsoft's big showcase that year, Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced that the company had purchased four different independent game studios: Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Undead Labs. Spencer also confirmed a new studio called The Initiative had been created which, we would later learn, was charged with rebooting Perfect Dark. Later in 2018, Xbox announced it was buying two more studios: InXile and Obsidian. Finally, in 2019, Xbox bought Double Fine. After the Xbox maker's studio shopping spree, it had a massive stable of in-house developers. Flash forward to today, almost seven years later, and while all of those studios still remain, they haven't released that much. Here's where they stand as of February 2025: The Initiative - Has yet to release a game. Working on Perfect Dark. Double Fine — Last game released: Psychonauts 2 (2021) - Production began before Xbox acquisition. Compulsion Games - Last game released: We Happy Few (2018) - Production began before Xbox acquisition. South of Midnight is coming this year. Undead Labs - Last game released: State of Decay 2 (2018) - Published by Xbox Studios. InXile Entertainment - Last game released: Frostpoint VR (2020) - A VR shooter that barely lasted four months. Not published by Xbox. Playground Games - Last game released: Forza Horizon 5 (2021) - Published by Xbox. Fable reboot set for this year. Ninja Theory - Last game released: Hellblade 2 (2024) - Also released Bleeding Edge in 2020 under Xbox. Obsidian Entertainment - Last game released: Avowed (2025) - Set to launch Outer Worlds 2 this year. Previously, under Xbox, launched Grounded in 2020 and Pentiment in 2022. It's clear, when looking at that list above, that Obsidian is the outlier. Most of the studios Xbox bought or created around 2018 have only shipped maybe one game, and some of those were in development before the Xbox deal. Other studios, like Compulsion, are finally releasing something after seven years of Xbox ownership. And if you look at other Xbox studios, things aren't much better. The Coalition hasn't launched a new Gears game since Gears 5 in 2019 and Rare hasn't made a new game since 2020's Battletoads. (Though the studio does a lot of support on Sea of Thieves.) Meanwhile, Obsidian has shipped three games since 2018 under Xbox and has another big RPG landing later this year. And it released Outer Worlds in 2019, a game which started production before the Xbox deal and wasn't published by Microsoft, but was yet one more big RPG from the company in a relatively short span of time. And there are rumors of the company already working on a new project, too. So how did the studio reach this point? Well, during a talk at DICE Summit earlier this week, Obsidian Entertainment VP of operations Marcus Morgan and VP of development Justin Britch talked about the company's philosophy of staying lean and making smart investments in medium-sized games that don't take a decade to make. The studio heads also emphasized keeping headcount low and aiming for as little turnover as possible to help the studio gain more institutional knowledge. The goal: The duo want Obsidian to last 100 years. Really. When asked about the goal of keeping the studio around for 100 years, long after they are dead, they said: 'Are we serious? … Yes.' And honestly, I think Obsidian can pull it off. It clearly has a team of people who understand how to build properly scoped games using relatively small teams while managing multiple projects at once. In an industry where some studios lay people off all the time and spend five to seven years working on one game, Obsidian has gone a different path. And the end result is one of the most productive and successful studios around. I bet Microsoft is happy they snagged the place up back in 2018. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nintendo Switch 2 may be getting more Xbox titles as Phil Spencer is "really looking forward to supporting them with the games that we have"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Nintendo Switch 2 was announced recently, and Xbox boss Phil Spencer says he congratulated the company's president following the reveal. Speaking on GamerTagRadio, Spencer says he exchanged some emails with Shuntaro Furukawa and "gave him a big congrats and said my old eyes appreciate the larger screen. I know how simple that is, but it's not always true that I can read all the text." Most excitingly, Spencer added he was "really looking forward to supporting them with the games that we have." This seems to confirm Xbox will be looking to port its games over to the Switch 2 once it comes out. Xbox has already been putting its exclusives on other platforms for some time, like Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be coming to PS5 and PC sometime this spring, and Spencer even says there's no guarantee Starfield remains an exclusive. While the Switch has many great games, it's the least powerful console out of the big three, but the Switch 2 should be closing that gap somewhat, so even more PlayStation and Xbox games could be making the move. As for why Xbox would want its games on a rival platform, "I just think they're such an important part of this industry," Spencer says of Nintendo. "Who would ever bet against the success of that team? They're masterful at what they do. Switch is a massive success and I think Switch 2 will be as well." Given Xbox's recent 'This is an Xbox' marketing strategy and the company's push into cloud gaming over the last several years, it makes sense that Spencer would want the company's games on as many devices as possible, even rival platforms. While you're here, check out the best Xbox Series X games you can play right now.
