Episode 700: Seven Zero Zero

The TD Gaming Podcast reaches its big 700th episode milestone, but unfortunately it covers some boring industry news about Microsoft, Activision, Lies of P, and giantesses in Baldur’s Gate 3.

The news items include:

  • Microsoft closes $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard
  • Phil Spencer: Activision Blizzard games are not coming to Game Pass until 2024
  • Cities: Skylines 2 performance has “not achieved the benchmark we targeted”
  • Cities: Skylines 2 won’t use Steam Workshop for mod sharing
  • Lies of P passes 1 million units sold

Let us know what you think.

[Music by Mr SoundX Studios]

0 thoughts on “Episode 700: Seven Zero Zero”

  1. Hi guys.

    Thank you for the episode and congratulations to number 700 …. What an amount of episodes!
    I respect your work, even if am not able to listen to every episode. Thank you so much for hundreds of hours of entertainment!

    Regarding this special episode I can’t say so much sadly 🙁

    I don’t play and I never played any COD or guilty gear … so … can’t say anything about that :/
    About modding: I never cared about any mods for any game. Normally I buy games because I like them the way they are and not because I can or have to mod them.

    The only game I played the last weeks was some magic the gathering. I downloaded some smaller games to my switch cause I am flying to Miami next week, so I needed something for the flight 🙂
    The only game i am looking forward is Silksong … everything else did not catch me at all :/

    Sorry for not commenting really constructive or interesting …

    Keep on the good work and please stay healthy!
    Greetings from Germany,
    Ralf

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In 1995 Ensemble Studios formed as an independent studio and kicked out a little game franchise known as Age of Empires. The title has received many accolades from the first in the franchise extended out to all the Age of Empires releases and spin-offs, all-in-all selling millions of copies.

Ensemble Studios had a mission “to create great games and a great place to work,” says Bruce Shelley from Ensemble Studios. Bruce Shelley also helped design Sid Meier’s Civilization and Railroad Tycoon with MicroProse prior to his work at Ensemble Studios. Now, however, he’s a bit upset at the closing of Ensemble Studios because they were profitable, created top-quality titles and had a great working environment.

Ensemble Studios, from his perspective at least, was a place you’d go to work and be happy with what you’re doing. When you’re working along nicely and become blind-sided by the news, it’s not surprising he didn’t take it lightly.

“Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.” (ensemblestudios.com)

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