If Tim Schafer is the face of Double Fine Productions, then you could think of Lee Petty as its spirit. The art director defined the inimitable style of Brutal Legend and Broken Age, and led production on Headlander, Stacking, and RAD – "Next to me, he's the person who made the most Double Fine games," Schafer tells me. So there was little hesitation when Petty approached the studio's founder with his next big idea, in the months following the acquisition into the Xbox Game Studios network in 2019. "We were like," Schafer continues, "'Well, what can we do now that we couldn't do before – now that we have support, resources, and a little more freedom?'"
You need only look at Xbox's 2025 output to see how the acquired studios have wielded these elements. id Software unleashed Doom: The Dark Ages, a shooter with wider combat arenas than ever before; Compulsion Games pursued South of Midnight, an action-adventure with a handcrafted, stop-motion inspired visual style; and Obsidian Entertainment is ready to deliver The Outer Worlds 2, an RPG overflowing with depth and detail. The keywords here are: Bigger, bolder, more ambitious.
