Twisted Pixel talks about their acquisition by Microsoft
The folks over at Gamasutra have posted an interview with Twisted Pixel’s Josh Bear discussing the recent acquisition of the company by Microsoft. Bear, the chief creative officer at Twisted Pixel, says that the move “made sense to both parties” given the number of releases the company has had for XBLA and with their recent Kinect title The Gunstringer. Of course, it wouldn’t be Twisted Pixel if he didn’t throw in a little of their trademark humor on the subject: “One night when we were all drunk at a party, Ted Woolsey of Microsoft tricked Mike [Wilford, co-founder], Frank [Wilson, co-founder] and I into signing papers that handed the company over to them for 1600 MS points, and a copy of Azurik for the original Xbox.”
Jokes aside, this is great news for the Xbox community. Twisted Pixel already has a number of smash XBLA hits in The Maw, ‘Splosion Man, Comic Jumper, and Ms. ‘Splosion Man, and while they haven’t announced the platform for their secret new title there’s no reason to think they won’t produce some more great XBLA content somewhere down the line. As Bear states, “Maybe they will be XBLA, maybe they will be retail. I think it will just come down to the idea and what we want to do with it. Microsoft has been great about letting us fit in where we need to…”
The article also discusses how the public will react to a well-known indie developer joining the Microsoft team. According to Bear, it’s a non-issue. “Honestly, I think [the indie] spirit is stronger today than it was even when we started,” he states. “I think that will be shown to an even greater degree once we unveil the next projects that we are working on — they are definitely ‘out there’ ideas in a really good way.” Bear goes on to say he is confidant that Microsoft will let them keep doing things the way they always have – after all, why else buy them but to assure their continued ability to produce Twisted Pixel games?
Head over to the article to see everything that Josh Bear had to say, and stay tuned here for all the Twisted Pixel XBLA news your brain can handle without ‘sploding.