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Wait, did Microsoft recently get the James Bond license?

Shane M

Shane M

Avenger
Jan 1, 2018
683
Thorold, Ontario, Canada
I was looking at the Ultimate Edition of Forza Horizon 4 I pre-ordered back during E3, and I noticed a week ago there was a Best of Bond Car Pack added to this bundle: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/forza-horizon-4-best-of-bond-car-pack/9n5snd6k438q

What is Microsoft planning? Surely this must have been an expensive get. Is James Bond gonna be the theme of one of the expansions, like Hot Wheels was last time? Or could they be re-releasing a certain highly-demanded classic shooter made by one of their currently-owned studios? Are my hopes up way too high?
 
Adam_Roman

Adam_Roman

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,066
If they did I wouldn't be surprised. They'd be foaming at the mouth to do a GoldenEye remake not screwed over by Activision.
 
chanunnaki

chanunnaki

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,783
That's pretty cool. No idea if it means anything beyond this pack though. I'd be surprised if it had any major connection to other bond games getting a release/rerelease, but much stranger things have happened.
 
Ste

Ste

Banned
Jun 8, 2018
514
England
They have featured lots of cool or stupid things, depending how you see it like hot wheels, fast and the furious, movie cars etc so more than likely it's just a car pass.
 
APZonerunner

APZonerunner

Features Editor at VG247.com
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Oct 28, 2017
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SuikerBrood said:
Or it's just what it is. A car pack. :P
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I mean, they still need the license and EON's blessing to actually license it as a James Bond pack, which they're doing. Otherwise they'd have marketed it as "spy cars" or something. The Bond license is also presumably no longer with Activision, as it was one of those deals where it was they had to put out a game every [x] years to keep it rolling and Activision hasn't put one out for ages. So the license is out there. I'm guessing this is a one-time licensing deal for Forza rather than, y'know, MS picking up the Bond games license wholesale though.
 
GrrImAFridge

GrrImAFridge

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS
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Oct 25, 2017
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APZonerunner said:
I mean, they still need the license and EON's blessing to actually license it as a James Bond pack, which they're doing. Otherwise they'd have marketed it as "spy cars" or something. The Bond license is also presumably no longer with Activision, as it was one of those deals where it was they had to put out a game every [x] years to keep it rolling and Activision hasn't put one out for ages. So the license is out there. I'm guessing this is a one-time licensing deal for Forza rather than, y'know, MS picking up the Bond games license wholesale though.
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Acti licensed Bond in early 2006 until the end of 2014 but voluntarily terminated the agreement at the beginning of 2013 (i.e. upon transitioning to a new financial year), less than three months after releasing 007 Legends. I remember that day very well as the games weren't discounted during Steam's Winter Sale and I thought, "There's no rush. They won't disappear for another year." :(
 
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Deleted member 43

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Oct 24, 2017
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lodger said:
For Xbox, James?
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No, for Wii:

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ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,097
Microsoft does not have the Bond license, no. Or at least, if they do, this is not a reason to assume that they have and nothing of that sort has leaked out or been hinted at.

Here is what we do know more broadly:

  • The license deal with Activision expired in 2013
  • No other deal has been struck since then. If one is in progress, it has not been announced nor has it leaked
  • Danjaq (the holding company for the Bond rights more broadly) has been willing to authorize Bond videogames outside of the framework of an exclusivity deal - "World of James Bond" was released in 2015 to coincide with SPECTRE but it flopped and the servers shut down ~1 year later.
Microsoft licensing the cars is pretty cool, but not indicative of anything exclusive. It is likely that a large company could, if it wished, pursue either an exclusive deal or license games on an individual basis. The IP has evidently not been considered lucrative enough for any major company to seek a deal, at least one that Danjaq is willing to enter into. The idea of developing an AAA game without an exclusivity agreement seems foolhardy from a publisher perspective, since if you are successful there would be nothing stopping other companies from cashing in on your success. That's the sort of thing that mid-tier developers and publishers would be more willing to take a risk on, like how we get tons of low-mid budget Warhammer 40k games but nobody is bankrolling it at the AAA level.
 
APZonerunner

APZonerunner

Features Editor at VG247.com
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JaseC said:
Acti licensed Bond in early 2006 until the end of 2014 but voluntarily terminated the agreement at the beginning of 2013 (i.e. upon transitioning to a new financial year), less than three months after releasing 007 Legends. I remember that day very well as the games weren't discounted during Steam's Winter Sale and I thought, "There's no rush. They won't disappear for another year." :(
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Ah lordy, had no idea. Thought they'd just let it expire. Bond feels like the sort of license that in the wake of Spider-Man will be snapped up, though perhaps not until Craig is gone and the franchise is getting a hopefully exciting/invigorating reboot on film.

Hopefully the lesson learned from Spider-Man is that with a character like Bond the better thing is perhaps to not lean on the films and the current Bond - license the stuff like the Omega watches, the Aston Martin etc etc for authenticity's sake, but build your own Bond, or re-adapt Fleming's original work for a video game rather than do a shit movie tie-in.

This is why GoldenEye on Wii was the best of Activision's efforts - it re-adapted GoldenEye to better fit that sort of style of game in interesting ways and ways you could never do if you're trying to make a current film tie-in that closely follows or weaves in and out of the film plot. The same for EA's efforts - the best was From Russia With Love (for the same reasons as GoldenEye) and Everything or Nothing. I don't even think you need to get the likeness/voice of the current Bond though, as that's a mindfield (as Craig's deadpan, fucking boring give-me-my-paycheck performance in the Acti games showed) - better off to just cast an original Bond.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

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Nov 8, 2017
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DionardoLicaprio said:
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Ehh. What made EoN unique among bond games at the time was the third person perspective, cover system and melee system. I guess the story / cutscenes were pretty ambitious compared to Nightfire/AuF as well. However, all of those things have been dramatically refined since 2004. The GTA3 style 3rd person shooting gave way to Gears of War type cover systems + shooting. The Stealh and Melee systems from EoN can be seen as some of the predecessors for what we saw in the Uncharted games. The bar for storytelling has obviously been raised very high by a lot of different games.

A successor to EoN in these terms already came out in 2010, Bloodstone. The only thing I can think of that it doesn't have is the more unrealistic gadgetry (like cloaking devices and whatnot). It was a solid game, but I don't feel like the plot of EoN or any of the gameplay elements are really worth sinking a lot of money into redoing.

Some sort of remaster / rerelease, sure, mainly for the people nostalgic for it. I played through Agent Under Fire, Nightfire, Everything or Nothing and From Russia With Love for the first time this year (to clarify, I'd never beaten these games before although I had played all bar FRWL extensively as a kid). My overall impression is that Nightfire is the most playable, and FRWL is a lot more fun / less frustrating than Everything or Nothing is, but still very janky through a modern lens.
 
Paxton25

Paxton25

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May 9, 2018
1,898
So they set up the initiative and now this....I think you may be right ;) the boss of this studio does love a reboot *cough Lara Croft*
 
super moustique

super moustique

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Oct 31, 2017
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Maybe they said yes to Nintendo so that they could include GoldenEye in their upcoming N64 Classic Mini and thanks to that, MS can also do something with James Bond :P
 
saenima

saenima

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Oct 25, 2017
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They should take a look at Hitman and make a Bond game where every episode is a different movie. Start from the beginning and keep adding to it, there's a game for years to come.
 
Grimmy11

Grimmy11

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Oct 28, 2017
1,764
It's just Just a car pack

Unless Turn 10 is doing the driving sections for a new AAA Everything or Nothing style Bond game to compete with Uncharted for Microsofts new Studio they've formed?


No. It's almost definitely just a car pack
 
Evan

Evan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
922
I think its warranted, and could be a sign of future dealings between the two companies.

Then again, its a game set in the UK, so having Bond themed cars isn't surprising.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

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Nov 8, 2017
13,097
saenima said:
Huh i didn't know it was supposed to be an ongoing game. I thought Legends was just an anniversary one and done thing.

The more you know.
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I don't mean it was explicitly planned as such -like an ongoing service for years to come - but it probably would have had DLC episodes if it wasn't a flop and acti didn't terminate the agreement.
 
mindsale

mindsale

Member
Oct 29, 2017
5,911
Eh, MGM and the Ian Fleming Trust are pretty mismanaged, but not so mismanaged that they'd license out the whole Bond IP for one car.
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

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Oct 27, 2017
30,351
Yeah, you're looking too much into it. When Rocket League had the batmobile car it didn't mean they'd got the Batman license. They just had a licensed vehicle. It's just a car pack of 10 or so cars.
 

Deleted member 31133

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Nov 5, 2017
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Just a car pack.

I don't think anybody currently owns the 007 license, but a remastered Goldeneye would be a nightmare to license. Might be possible if Nintendo and Microsoft join forces and release it on Xbox and Switch with cross play.
 
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