During the 2018 E3 Microsoft conference, Phil Spencer took to the stage to announce that Microsoft has acquired not one, two, or even three, but five studios to hold in their Xbox first-party hand.
The first of these studios announced is a brand-new studio called The Initiative. This studio is based in Santa Monica and will be creating new exclusive titles for Microsoft in the coming years. At the time, no game from The Initiative was announced, teased or even hinted at. Simply put, we have no idea what this studio is working on but considering it’s a new studio, it’s safe to assume it will be a while until we see what The Initiative has up their sleeves.
Following that announcement, Spencer announced that Microsoft has acquired Undead Labs, the studio behind the recently-launched Xbox One exclusive title, State of Decay 2. We recently reported that State of Decay had over one million players in the game’s first two days.
After that, Spencer announced three more studios that Microsoft was taking under their wing: Playground Games, Ninja Theory and Compulsion Games.
For those unfamiliar, Playground Games is the studio behind the popular Forza Horizon series. Spencer also teased that the studio is working on something new, something different from Forza Horizon. What that game is though, only time will tell. We do, however, know that this game is an RPG if recent hires have anything to say about it. Ninja Theory is the developer behind last year’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Oddly enough, Hellblade released to PS4 originally and only just released to Xbox One a few months ago. Finally, Compulsion Games is the team behind We Happy Few. This game was announced for PC, Xbox One and PS4 years ago and despite now being owned by Microsoft, Compulsion Games’ We Happy Few will still be releasing on PS4.
