Since being acquired by Microsoft, Psychonauts 2 developer Double Fine has been able to restore content that was previously cut due to budget constraints, including boss fights. Microsoft acquired Double Fine in 2019, with an announcement at that year’s E3 confirming that the developer was joining Xbox Game Studios.
After Psychonauts was released in 2005, Double Fine moved on to other projects including Broken Age before finally announcing Psychonauts 2 at The Game Awards 2015. The developer used crowdfunding platform Fig to raise $3.3 million for the game’s development, but updates have been slow since then. Following Double Fine’s acquisition by Microsoft, Double Fine founder Tim Schafer has announced that Psychonauts 2 gameplay will be ready to show off at Microsoft’s upcoming 20/20 Showcase in July. The game’s progress was initially going to be shown at E3 2020 before the convention was cancelled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
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While Microsoft buying Double Fine may have raised some eyebrows at the time, it seems like the partnership has been good for the developer so far. In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Schafer said that the studio was able to implement parts of Psychonauts 2 that had originally been cut from the game’s scope because the studio lacked the funds to finish them. That content reportedly includes all of the game’s boss fights, which Schafer says players would have missed if they had remained cut. According to Schafer, Microsoft hasn’t interfered with the production of Psychonauts 2 even as it provides the security needed to finish development.
Double Fine is just one of many developers that Microsoft has acquired in the lead-up to launching the Xbox Series X. By the time that deal was announced, Microsoft had already bought Obsidian Entertainment, inXile Entertainment, and Ninja Theory. Games from the developers that Microsoft has acquired will end up on Game Pass. While the studios will ultimately begin developing Xbox exclusives, their in-progress projects have maintained cross-platform status, meaning that Obsidian was able to release The Outer Worlds on multiple platforms, just as Double Fine will be able to do with Psychonauts 2.
Fans have had a long wait for Psychonauts 2, and while the wait still isn’t over, they’ll at least get a peak at Double Fine’s work soon at Xbox’s 20/20 Showcase. Given how long it’s been since the first Psychonauts, the pressure is high on Double Fine to deliver the best sequel it can, and it seems like its acquisition by Microsoft could be just what it needed to make that happen.
Source: Gamesindustry.biz