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Microsoft Xbox Game Studios acquires Double Fine Productions

In a stunning development at E3 2019, Microsoft announced that it had acquired Psychonauts developer Double Fine Productions.

Ozzie Mejia

June 9, 2019 1:51 PM

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Sunday's Xbox E3 Briefing moved forward with the reveal of a brand new partnership. And it's a partnership that nobody quite saw coming. Double Fine Productions is the latest development studio to fall under the Xbox umbrella.

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer took the stage to address the Xbox E3 audience. He proceeded to segue to the latest trailer for Psychonauts 2.

The Double Fine acquisition means that future games under the studio will come Xbox platforms exclusively. However, it should be noted that Double Fine has a number of games currently in development for multiple platforms. This includes RAD, which is being completed as part of a collaboration with Bandai Namco, and the aforementioned Psychonauts 2. There are a number of games that are also being brought out under Double Fine's publishing arm. The multiplatform deals for each of these games is expected to be unaffected by today's announcement.

Update: Sure enough, Xbox confirmed after today's E3 Briefing that the Psychonauts 2 multiplatform release is unaffected by this acquisition. The game is still slated to release on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in 2020. Meanwhile, the embedded video above goes into a little more details on what this acquisition means for Double Fine and its future game lineup.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?