Microsoft reportedly in “advanced talks” for another studio acquisition

Microsoft shook up the video games industry during the second half of the year by announcing acquisitions of no fewer than seven game development studios. As you may recall, five of those acquisitions were announced at E3 in June and the additions of Obsidian Entertainment and InXile Entertainment were revealed last month. This has more than doubled the number of studios operating under the Microsoft umbrella (counting The Initiative – a studio that is being built from the ground up) and it appears that the tech giant is not finished yet. In fact, Microsoft is allegedly in “advanced talks” with yet another studio about a possible acquisition and we may be in for a surprise when we find out who it is.

A game developer who goes by the screen name of Klobrille sent out a tweet this morning indicating that the studio in question is a mid-sized company and has worked with PlayStation in the past. It should be noted that this person correctly predicted the acquisition of both Playground Games and Obsidian Entertainment. You can have a look at the tweet below:

Let’s make this Monday a bit more interesting. I can say that Xbox is in advanced talks (a few months) with a mid-sized studio that historically worked together with PlayStation a bit. No name dropping because of ongoing negotiations for now, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

— Klobrille (@klobrille) December 3, 2018

These talks have apparently been going on for several months now and in all likelihood will not be completed until some time next year.

I am not going to speculate on which studio Klobrille is teasing because I do not want to contribute to any runaway hype trains. In fact, Microsoft is probably talking to several studios right now.

However, I will say with certainty that it is not Insomniac Games. They are doing quite well on their own.

Microsoft is aggressively pursuing game studios in order to ensure a constant stream of new titles for Xbox Game Pass – the monthly subscription service which allows users to access a curated library of over 100 video games.