Here’s a massive surprise. The iconic Double Fine Productions has been acquired by Microsoft and will fall under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella. Double Fine is best known for games like Grim Fandango, Brutal Legend, Full Throttle, Broken Age, Day of the Tentacle, and of course Psychonauts.
Speaking of Psychonauts, Psychonauts 2 was previewed with a first gameplay trailer, and it will now be published by Microsoft. Before you spittake tea all over the room, don’t worry, it will still be coming to all platforms it was originally announced for, so that’s Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, Mac, Linux, and yes, PlayStation 4. It will be out in 2020.
Here’s that new trailer for you:
Now excuse me while I get over the shock!
Update: One thing we started to wonder in the wake of this announcement was why it happened. The development of Psychonauts has been underway for quite some time with the majority of Double Fine now working on the game. However, the company will have been facing uncertainty from the collapse of Starbreeze, who had invested $8 million in the game to secure the publishing rights.
Whether or not this played into the decision of Double Fine to join Xbox Game Studios isn’t known, but Psychonauts will now by published by Microsoft, who have bought the publishing rights from Starbreeze for a quite sizeable markup.
Chris Dring of GamesIndustry.biz confirmed this moments ago:
Psychonauts 2 publishing rights has been sold to Microsoft for $13.2 million
— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) June 9, 2019
For more news from Microsoft’s Xbox E3 2019 Briefing and all the other shows at E3, make sure to keep tabs on our E3 hub.
