Xbox Game Studios announced a brand new acquisition during this year's Xbox E3 2019 press conference. This year's acquisition, in a major surprise, is none other than Double Fine Productions, the studio founded by LucasArts point-and-click veteran Tim Shafer. Double Fine will join the impressive line-up of recently acquired studios including Obsidian Entertainment, Playground Games, and Ninja Theory. Double Fine brings the number of studios under the Xbox Game Studios banner up to 15.

Double Fine is a San Francisco-based studio that's well known for its not-quite-indie-sized games, crowdfunding, and annual Amnesia Fortnite internal game jam. It defined the rise of Kickstarter with its "Double Fine Adventure" campaign which grew into the point-and-click Broken Age. And since it was founded in 2000 it has worked with 10 different publishers, including EA, THQ, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft, to create over 30 games. It survived independently for almost 20 years, making its acquisition the end of an era.

Alongside the announcement of the acquisition, a brand new trailer for Double Fine's in-development game Psychonauts 2 debuting gameplay was shared. The release of the trailer confirms that Double Fine will be continuing development on the highly-anticipated action-adventure game going forward. Furthermore, Double Fine confirmed that even with Microsoft's acquisition, Psychonauts 2 is still coming to all promised platforms including PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

As surprising as the Double Fine acquisition may seem, there were potential warning signs beforehand. For those unfamiliar, Double Fine's previous publisher for Psychonauts 2 was Starbreeze Studios. Starbreeze Studios, however, has gone through significant financial issues, confirming in May that it "lacked sufficient funds to continue operating for the next year." While what Starbreeze's financial issues meant for Psychonauts 2 were never clarified, the new acquisition could lend further insight.

Expect more news on Double Fine's future plans as part of Xbox Game Studios, as well as updates on the development of Pyschonauts 2, during E3 2019 and into the weeks and months to come.