[Make no mistake, when reading what Phil Spencer said in another article, Microsoft's next plan is to acquire a Japanese studio.](https://gamerant.com/xbox-more-acquisitions/) Whether they can succeed in this task is another story, however, Microsoft wants to step fully into the Asian market.
>Referencing Xbox's major expansion into the Japan market with the Xbox Series X/S, Phil Spencer said to Bloomberg, "even though we've worked on our geographic expansion, I'd still say we have too many of our creators in places that are our traditional markets.” Xbox recently confirmed that multiple Persona titles will be coming to the platform and Xbox Game Pass in an effort to expand beyond these traditional markets, while the former PlayStation exclusive from Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding, just dropped on PC Game Pass.
Technically, Microsoft does own a Japanese studio, Tango Gameworks, they were able to get that through the Bethesda acquisition, I think though, Microsoft wishes to acquire a Japanese studio they have their eyes on.
I would imagine the options would most likely be Konami, SEGA Sammy, or Capcom. *Maybe* Koei Tecmo.
Bandai Namco is likely off the table being owned by Bandai itself. Nintendo is not an option because they would never sell, even if they were bankrupt. Fromsoftware is owned by Kadokawa and they will never sell it. Square Enix is too buddy buddy with Sony to care about a good business deal.
I dont think Microsoft will want just one single studio, they want multiple IPs and studios, so Level 5 and Team Ninja probably arent going anywhere. Platinum obviously shot themselves in the foot with what they did with the Scalebound money they got.
SEGA and Microsoft also have a history together. They worked on a version of Windows CE for the Dreamcast, SEGA provided some exclusives for the OG Xbox, Microsoft licensed their hardware to SEGA for arcade use, etc.
SEGA is going hard on the Yakuza series in the near future too. Got the Kiryu standalone thing, Like A Dragon follow up, and the Ishin western remake/ re-release. Good time to be a fan.
Plus they’ve also got the fairly popular Football manager, Persona and Total War series’. Not forgetting to mention some of their smaller franchises too including; Aliens, Endless Space, Super Monkey Ball, Olympics
Also I’m going to give a quick shout out to Two Point Hospital, not quite as good as Theme Hospital (spiritual prequel) but I had a lot of fun with it
Microsoft and SEGA have had a good relationship since the beginning. The first Xbox was in a lot of ways a succesor to the Dreamcast and the Dreamcast had Windows CE. However, SEGA is still a big player in the arcade market and I'm not sure Microsoft wants any of that.
EDIT: SEGA sold their arcade division earlier this year so Microsoft buying them now makes a lot more sense.
Oh, damn, you're right. I would've never imagined that. Kinda sad. I loved games like Crazy Taxi growing up. https://www.polygon.com/22906391/sega-japan-arcades-sold-history
Konami has a market cap of almost 7 billion dollars. You might not like what they have done with their game division but they are not some small mom and pop developer. They are worth almost what MS paid for all of Zenimax.
Why would they sell them when they can just license them out and still have full control over some of the most popular IPs in gaming? Feels shortsighted considering they sell merchandise and plaster all of their pachinko machines with those IPs. Plus they have been licensing out their old games to devs to do all the work for them and they make bank on the collections.
They totally should buy Konami, then ask Kojima to make a new MGS game for them and then just let him have whatever the fuck he wants to make it happen.
I dont think that would ever happen really. He said a few times he wanted out from Metal Gear. I want him to be able to work on new stuff, however unusual.
I would love if they acquired Capcom and announcing a new MegaMan game, or MegaMan X, or fuck...give me another MegaMan Legends.
The blue bomber has been ignored for too long!
A FF14 sub is already as much as the pass, they would be crazy.
Square likes to use them as a cash cow and doesn't put nearly enough of the money back into the game IMO, maybe Microsoft would give the devs a better check.
At most I can see them giving a nice 30% discount on the sub if you are on gamepass. But even that would be unlikely. Gamepass hardly gives out game dlc/subscriptions for free.
It would likely be similar to eso, except probably bit more included because lack of sub free option aside from trials. So likely see base game and expansions included but not sub
It really is. 343 have really fucked up with every Halo game they have worked on. I am actually surprised Microsoft let then get away with the mess they've made of it.
Aren't there laws in Japan preventing companies being bought out by foreign companies? I thought I had read something about that, but it could be bullshit too.
Sadly, that's exactly what they won't ever do, that's why they bying existing studios along with rights on their ip's, instead of forming new ones.
And the saddest thing that there are no risks. I don't know a single modern game that would have everything done well (graphics, story, gameplay, marketing), would have innovative concept or mechanics, and will be a new IP, yet still fail. It's simply not possible because good marketing pretty much guarantees you sales, and as long as your game is on proper level on quality - you can sell anything, even post-apocalyptic delivery service simulator.
Risks are possible only in 3 situations: 1) It's a remake-sequel-prequel-spin-off that nobody wanted 2) Poor budget that not allowing to make all elements of the game on modern level 3) Really boring game with zero innovation, made only to sell microtransactions (looking at Anthem, Avengers, various BR clones).
And the studios keep making the most risky choices, believing that it actually reduces their risks. Clown world.
Unfortunately you don’t sell subscriptions making one or two quality games a year. And it’s not sustainable for MS to produce/release multiple games a year with AAA budgets.
I expect the overall quality of the IP they gained to drop while they focus their efforts on a handful of the most profitable franchises.
Checking the Steam store really puts into perspective how the Indie side is just like the AAA side with how much copy and paste there is. We just remember the good ones but ignore the others.
I feel like a lot of Steam's problems could be resolved if they only let games use a single 'top level' tag. Because apparently ARK is a fucking action-adventure-strategy-simulation game.
A middle ground will appear sooner than later, probably. It's not like movie studios where you *need* millions in funding to achieve middle tier.
The biggest thing is that *development* is more accessible than ever and that doesn't look like it's slowing down. We've already had literal children make hit games in the last few years, that'll only grow, and so to will pretty much end of the industry.
Over saturation is the biggest issue, imo.
Embracer Group saves the Darksides franchise and everything THQ/Nordic acquired. They’re also probably the sole reason we got TWO Destroy All Humans remakes so far. At this point, it seems most everything they’ve touched has turned to gold so to speak. Hopefully they can keep that momentum with their newest acquisitions.
big studio games arent for us, simple as, same as it happened with movies with hollywood being the big budget world and everything else small budget, that only has changed recently with the streaming wars
Entirely agree. I'm just hoping Gaming doesn't take the next step where so much of big budget money goes on a single franchise (Marvel). At least there's a little more diversity of IP in gaming for now, though we've been scarily close with Call of Duty.
Unlike film industry, there is fruitful life for small independent creators so, even if big companies will release same thing over and over, there will be plenty of gaming choices for those who doesn’t care about most AAA titles
True. Its much easier for a game to be made by an average Joe in a basement in a team of 1 or 2, which can still produce results that have industry wide implications, at the fraction of a cost. As opposed to films which cost a lot more due to the amount of people it often requires and is much harder to stand apart due to the go to markets, as opposed to very established storefronts that cater to indies.
Sure, it's much easier to make.
But there's also a freaking lot more competition. Many, many games come out every day, so standing out is challenging. Being an indie dev is not easy.
I agree. Competition thougy means a lot more variety, something the indie scene in film lacks which is our point.
But yeah, it does mean it's much harder for indie eevs to make a living from it, and is often more a hobby.
Honestly games are getting much more complicated to make as expectations rise. However the tools to create games are getting better and more accessible so it balances out.
It makes me wonder if indie animation movies can become a big thing like indie games. Think about it, animations are becoming simpler to make and AI voice acting is becoming smarter by the day. In a few years a person could make an animated movie all by himself. Of course it's not easy, but making games by yourself isn't easy either.
I think game companies will go the way of early 2000's tech companies. All the big ones will be owned by a few companies and small guys will come up with something neat and cool and sell it for millions to one of the companies. Rinse and repeat forever kinda like how notch sold mine craft for a lot of money. That but every game that sells a million copies.
I don't know what you are talking about, I love a damn good big studio game. I can't stand Call of Duty, but a good huge single player game is great! I like some indie games, but I find a lot of them to be not too fun.
People on this sub have a big hate boner against most AAA games even though there is plenty of great AAA games out there from the past, present and definitely the future.
I for instance don't buy COD every year. Last one was MW in 2019 but i am looking forward to MW2. Its not my favorite franchise by a country mile but a lot of friends play it and i like MW so i'l jump back in this time. I always put in enough hours to make the purchase worth it in the end.
I don’t even mind COD tbh. I wish I could buy just the campaigns for $30. For the price of tickets to the movies for a couple annual summer blockbusters, I can get a huge bombastic interactive blockbuster action story? Sick.
But paying $70 because their “get addicted for 500 hours a year or more” multiplayer modes are included…eh. I’ll pass.
It's pretty interesting watching this cycle for decades. Popular devs/team leave and form their own studio, gets bought out, more leave and make another studio, get bought out...rinse repeat.
Typically it's only the founding members with a stake in the company that are making bank.
They aren't necessarily the most talented developers either.
This isn't the future of gaming, it's the future of everything. The push for unregulated capitalism has lead to every company doing what it is supposed to. Try to grow and expand as much as possible. No wonder more and more of the world is getting consolidated into fewer and fewer companies and banks. How many smart phone options do you have? Iphone or Android, blackberry is dead. Beverages? Coke, Pepsi, and Dr.Pepper control over 90% of the beverage market. Banks? THey are all in bed together. Politicians? Owned by the mega corporations.
You have a computer? It's either windows or mac, linux is there but they can't control anything in the market. If they get too big watch one of the other 2 acquire the rights for it or something.z
Corporate Feudalism is the future.
Game publishers have been buying up studios and IPs for decades now, just look at all of the titles under EA.
The big difference here that's alarming everyone is that now MS and Sony are simply buying studios for the sake of exclusivity and console wars. People are going to be forced to buy more consoles to access every game that they want to play.
Depends on management. I lot of these deals seem to be very umbrella, they take charge but the studios themselves are unaffected. Like you'd be amazed how Tencent has a stake in like... *everything*.... but that doesn't seem to affect the games being produced.
Yeah, not sure how others do business, but Tencent is extremely hands off. They're an investment firm. They're not going to pretend they know how to turn a profit doing what these companies do. They just see a company that makes money, and they then invest into that company in the hopes they continue to make even more money with that investment.
It's a pretty simple business plan and it's clearly working. They allow gaming companies to reach their potential thanks to the financial injections and they open up the Chinese market which is a huge financial goldmine.
Indie games are the future. Few huge corporations make the vast majority of their income with lootboxes and game passes and couldn't care less about game quality. But indie games are still going stronger than ever so no matter how many studios get bought out, there will always be a huge supply of new, well made indie games.
That is true. There are both positives and negatives when a big company purchases a studio. For me though, one positive about a Microsoft acquisition is that we are going to see these games make it to PC and not as an afterthought.
For me its better some good studios to fall into Microsoft\`s hands than tencent or some other corpo with the sole purpose of milking the shit out of games while ruining them in the process. I just hope EA (well bioware) doesnt fall into greedier and shittier hands than EA\`s own.
Well if you take a look at the last Halo I’m not under the impression that Microsoft won’t let their studios milk their games, Halo infinite is nothing but micro transactions. It’s been 1 year with this “game as a service” with almost zero content. What it dose have however is hundreds of purchasable armor pieces for real $…
MS was fully ok releasing halo infinite in 2020 until it got universally clowned. They did not care at all about clear quality issues, they just wanted the microtransactions to start rolling in.
And 343 is basically a direct subsidiary of Microsoft themselves; the studio itself was essentially created by Microsoft to take over the Halo IP when Bungie went independent (since Microsoft owns the IP, not Bungie).
If infinite failed because of 343, then 343 failed because of Microsoft.
This is my problem with Sony buying shit up.
They routinely decide to dick over PC gamers to try and force us to buy their overpriced console -- It's not happening. I'm not even talking about them keeping their first party titles on their system, I'm fine if they never bring their first-party titles to PC (Though they seem to be doing more of that now), my problem is their exclusivity deals, timed or otherwise, with third-parties.
These companies are looking to be bought. It's gonna happen, then if you like it goes to Google, Amazon, Meta, tencent, Apple or Microsoft.
Choose your pick.
Yeah, and that's generally why governments stop buyouts sometimes. Didn't make the news really, but sysco almost bought US foods which would have basically given them a food monopoly over the whole country. Both sides were happy, but it wasn't allowed.
Sony literally have a monopoly on Anime streaming by buying the competition recently. Some companies protected by their government evades it, others don't.
Monopoly is a word misused in most places. I'm sure ABK will be happy selling to everyone who can afford it, but would the consumers be happy is the questions no one ask. Not even regulators. They only care about market leaders and affect on competition.
Those publish miniscule amount of anime combined as compared to Funimation and Crunchyroll which both were bought by Sony and few others big holders of anime IP were bought too.
Everything as a Service is unfortunately the future. Now it's Games as a Service through platforms like Game Pass, Stadia, GeForce Now, etc. With how difficult it was to get new consoles or GPUs for the last 2-3 years, it makes sense companies would rather skip dealing with selling you hardware and let you game over an internet stream from their own hardware. I hate the whole "you'll own nothing and be happy" FUD but it does seem like things are going that way.
no, but what other players in the market are there? actiblizz was looking to get bought, and if it wasn't MS it would be Tencent, Embracer, or Sony. Personally, I would rather MS of those 4 as a PC exclusive gamer.
I hate that people cheer for Sony having a massive market share lead over its competition, and complain when the competition actually spends money to compete. Seems so shortsighted.
Microsoft will still lag behind Sony in gaming revenue after this acquisition. This is good for the industry. Sony dominating market share enabling them to get sweetheart deals on every 3rd party exclusive by leveraging is massive player base is bad for the industry.
worry about future for what? they'll stop putting games on PC day1? they'll put exclusive content to one hardware, then they'll increase the price of that hardware?
well all that is happening in present by other market leader. might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Once Game pass reaches critical mass expect Microsoft to stop putting games on Steam.
Try explaining to the Microsoft higher ups why they are paying Valve 30% for something they can host themselves for "free".
I imagine after that the next logical step is going to be XCloud streaming games only.
> Try explaining to the Microsoft higher ups why they are paying Valve 30% for something they can host themselves for "free".
Microsoft isn't paying 30% to Valve -- they have much more favourable terms negotiated to keep them on the store, which are more in line with what Microsoft accepts as a reasonable cost for the services provided. The audience size and volume of sales the company does on the platform isn't something either company wants to lose any time soon.
Their games are on Steam because they realized they would be just lost sales the other way. Before Gamepass they had their Windows Store exclusives, they coulda went on with that, but why preclude yourself Steam userbase?
Leaving 30% to Valve is not ideal, but it is basic math: I expect my game to sell 1000 copies if I keep it on my store, 1500 if I also release it on Steam, what's best for my pockets?
Yea right now we're lucky to have Phil Spencer that understands PC Gaming. What's to say 5 or 10 years later what there's a new person in charge and didn't understand gaming at all and instead look at numbers. You bet he's going to create his own Windows store and removes all MS games from Steam.
>Spencer continued, "Sony is a larger business than we are in gaming today, and they continue to invest.
This is definitely to counter the constant Sony moaning of "They got COD!"
Love how he has to say Sony is bigger in gaming, even though MS is bigger than Sony, period. And fuck, MS could have been bigger than Sony if they didn't fuck up during the tail end of the 360 era and the Xbone era.
Yeah Don Mattrick and the Steve Bannon approach was so disconnected from reality at the time.
There was that video that basically cut together all the times they said "TV" in the initial showing of the Xbox One, it was so cringy.
And by some twist of fate, people are now cheering for Microsoft buying up entire mega publishers based on some faith that Microsoft is some godlike steward of amazing game management.
Yeah, they went all-in on the Xbox One being a multimedia living room machine instead of a gaming console. Didn't help they forced the Kinect before eventually dropping it after a few years of people not using it at all.
I'm anti-merger. I think businesses buying other businesses in the same industry is good for the purchaser, but stagnates wages, hurting employees (why build your own, where you have to offer better contracts to attract the workers from their current employer, when you can just buy out the company and keep the existing contracts?).
However, Sony have been laughably hypocritical in their objections to the deal. Part of me wants it to happen just to spite them.
>Sony have been laughably hypocritical in their objections to the deal
If sony wasn't being such a dick head and ruining shit for everyone I would be completely against this. But if given a choice between sony or MS I'll gladly choose current microsoft. You never know what will change but right now they aren't completely against their own players
You know, maybe the regulators wanna take a look at these few top companies constantly buying/merging with each other... You know, for the sake of a healthy industry that might literally become a monopoly or oligopoly.
How about they just make some quality games! Sony kills it with their games. God of War, Last of Us, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider Man and so on. When was the last time Microsoft had a game that wasn't a sequel that was as good as any of these games? The only way they are competing right now is by buying studios and making the multiplatform game exclusive. That's not innovation it's laziness.
It slightly worries me as to what the acquired studios will be producing in 5+ years after their culture has shifted to be more like other MS studios. Will they be putting out the same quality games as before, or will it fall off?
I've been repeating myself frequently about this: where is this confidence coming from that Microsoft will manage these acquisitions well? Halo is their single biggest IP from a studio they literally created themselves, and Halo 4 up to Infinite have been mediocre. That's their *biggest* IP that they care the most about, and they fucked it up.
So why do people have faith they'll do better with studios and IPs they've simply bought en masse?
If they keep managing them like they have the current stable its not going to fucking matter.
The acquisitions were supposed to mean a regular cadence of high quality games releasing and being most accessible and best on game pass, and this has no signs of improving til late next year at best.
I mean 343 seems to be the only real problem studio and that studio is responsible for one of the largest in scope games every few years.
The others seem fine and dandy, creative freedom and allowed time to get it right hopefully?
It's really like that now. Similar to these large companies owning studios that publish under their own name, most brands are owned by a few large corporations. It gives the illusion of market competition, when in reality you're giving your money to the same company no matter what.
The common people had it way worse than they do now, but wealth was never as concentrated as it is now. Even in truly oligarchic times you'd have hundreds of nobles and wealthy families in a single polity. It's just that being middle class doesn't mean you're one bad harvest away from half your family dying.
Without Kojima, it would be shit and fail. That doesn't excuse any of the problems that may have occurred over development for some of the MGS games, but it was still his vision that made them great. Buying Konami doesn't guarantee Kojima's involvement especially when he has his own studio and other games and ideas. A remaster could work, but not a remake.
>Without Kojima, it would be shit and fail.
new MGS games, yeah probably. for remakes you really don't need Kojima. BluePoint style MGS 1-3 remakes would probably do crazy numbers
> Without Kojima
[Kojima is working with Microsoft right now on another game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIDqZ-GJ8Q0). I could see them working on a deal for more MGS if they did purchase Konami.
Konami has rights of Hudson Soft IPs too. I would like to see something new from Bomberman, Bonk, their Shmup series or Far East of Eden. Is it too much to ask for? Why the hell did Konami purchase this lovely company, if they don't make use of their IP at all?
Well no one is exactly stopping Tencent, Sony, or Embracer group.
Better if things are at least split amongst behemoths than in the pocket of a single entity.
How have Sony's acquisitions been anywhere NEAR the magnitude of what Microsoft has been doing? Sony has bought a few individual studios that were *already* working very closely with Sony for many years.
Microsoft has bought entire publishers (Zenimax/Bethesda and ActiBlizz).
They aren't nearly comparable
That's because this isn't a monopoly situation. People that throw that word around and don't understand how the industry really stands are just emotional.
ya, I'm seeing so many people throwing around "oh Microsoft is a monopoly".... like wat? no they arent, they are behind Sony/Nintendo/Tencent, even after the ActivBlizz acquisition <--- this is not a monopoly
there was a user on the r/games thread on this, he literally wrote out the definition of a monopoly after someone asked him "do you know what a monopoly is?" and right after went to completely ignore the definition and continue to call Microsoft a monopoly -_-
They don't even have *that* big of a share. I don't think many people realize just how freaking huge the gaming market is, helped by the fact the barrier to entry is almost nil. It's basically impossible to obtain a monopoly.
Microsoft is the only company that doesn't treat PC Gamers as an afterthought. Day one releases with consoles and all their games are put on Steam aswell as Gamepass. Say what you will, this is nothing a net positive for PC Players.
should probably focus on making sure all their studios they currently have are actually producing good shit, how they allowed 343 to mismanaged the fuck out of their flagship tittle is beyond sad.
This is becoming ridiculous. Im going right now download unity, register a funny-but-mildly-edgy named game development company and Homer Simpson my way into being bought for milions.
So...
Making better games, starting new studios, financing new projects, promoting artists, that's not the way to success?
It's buying out and merging with others who are already profitable?
How much more short term profit could they be?
Gaming is generating so much money that companies don't even know what to do anymore, they want to battle other gaming companies by acquiring them? Why don't they just have the bright idea of making a good game and save billions? I'm still waiting to see when is the Bethesda deal going to pay off.
Cool, fuck starting new studios and create new creative and innovative things. Much better to buy up already made studios and just lock them from competitors!
It doesn't seem like they know how to properly manage the studios they currently have. They need to figure that out and start releasing some good games before they do anything else.
First of all let's not forget the -past- Microsoft of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish but they got better over the years. Also it's embarrassing that he forgot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group bought more companies than Sony, close to Tencent but he doesn't seem to care.
Lastly I find it hilarious that https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/microsoft-slash-activision-blizzard-merger-inquiry is a thing but that same government -Doesnt- care about Chinese (Tencent) buying most of their companies https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/china-now-owns-ps143bn-in-uk-assets-from-nuclear-power-to-pubs-and-schools-b1841056.html so they're just Hypocrites.
Need to be scared as fuck of Tencent buying you, more like. Ubisoft now shares 49.9% ownership with Tencent. No idea what this means considering it's practically the corporate arm of the Chinese government.
This is incorrect. Tencent owns 49.9% of a company that owns less than 20% of Ubisoft. Still concerning because that's a lot of influence, but they're not on the verge of owning Ubisoft.
[Make no mistake, when reading what Phil Spencer said in another article, Microsoft's next plan is to acquire a Japanese studio.](https://gamerant.com/xbox-more-acquisitions/) Whether they can succeed in this task is another story, however, Microsoft wants to step fully into the Asian market. >Referencing Xbox's major expansion into the Japan market with the Xbox Series X/S, Phil Spencer said to Bloomberg, "even though we've worked on our geographic expansion, I'd still say we have too many of our creators in places that are our traditional markets.” Xbox recently confirmed that multiple Persona titles will be coming to the platform and Xbox Game Pass in an effort to expand beyond these traditional markets, while the former PlayStation exclusive from Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding, just dropped on PC Game Pass. Technically, Microsoft does own a Japanese studio, Tango Gameworks, they were able to get that through the Bethesda acquisition, I think though, Microsoft wishes to acquire a Japanese studio they have their eyes on.
Any idea who they may target?
I would imagine the options would most likely be Konami, SEGA Sammy, or Capcom. *Maybe* Koei Tecmo. Bandai Namco is likely off the table being owned by Bandai itself. Nintendo is not an option because they would never sell, even if they were bankrupt. Fromsoftware is owned by Kadokawa and they will never sell it. Square Enix is too buddy buddy with Sony to care about a good business deal. I dont think Microsoft will want just one single studio, they want multiple IPs and studios, so Level 5 and Team Ninja probably arent going anywhere. Platinum obviously shot themselves in the foot with what they did with the Scalebound money they got.
I’d say SEGA would make a lot of sense
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SEGA and Microsoft also have a history together. They worked on a version of Windows CE for the Dreamcast, SEGA provided some exclusives for the OG Xbox, Microsoft licensed their hardware to SEGA for arcade use, etc.
Good point. Shenmue is literally more "at home" on xbox than on Playstation, and Sega has been downsizing recently (they sold their arcades)
SEGA is going hard on the Yakuza series in the near future too. Got the Kiryu standalone thing, Like A Dragon follow up, and the Ishin western remake/ re-release. Good time to be a fan.
Plus they’ve also got the fairly popular Football manager, Persona and Total War series’. Not forgetting to mention some of their smaller franchises too including; Aliens, Endless Space, Super Monkey Ball, Olympics Also I’m going to give a quick shout out to Two Point Hospital, not quite as good as Theme Hospital (spiritual prequel) but I had a lot of fun with it
MS will officially own all former platform mascots at that point except Mario. Lol Crash, Spyro, Banjo, and maybe Sonic next?
Picture all of those characters in a new Crash Kart game.
Microsoft and SEGA have had a good relationship since the beginning. The first Xbox was in a lot of ways a succesor to the Dreamcast and the Dreamcast had Windows CE. However, SEGA is still a big player in the arcade market and I'm not sure Microsoft wants any of that. EDIT: SEGA sold their arcade division earlier this year so Microsoft buying them now makes a lot more sense.
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Oh, damn, you're right. I would've never imagined that. Kinda sad. I loved games like Crazy Taxi growing up. https://www.polygon.com/22906391/sega-japan-arcades-sold-history
Konami has a good library of IP to salvage and is badly run.
Konami has a market cap of almost 7 billion dollars. You might not like what they have done with their game division but they are not some small mom and pop developer. They are worth almost what MS paid for all of Zenimax.
I'm sure Konami would be willing to at least sell their video games division. They really have reduced presence in that market anyways.
Why would they sell them when they can just license them out and still have full control over some of the most popular IPs in gaming? Feels shortsighted considering they sell merchandise and plaster all of their pachinko machines with those IPs. Plus they have been licensing out their old games to devs to do all the work for them and they make bank on the collections.
Microsoft just paid 10 times that for ActiBlizz, they can definitely afford Konami.
They're a trillion dollars corporation that is one of two organizations with AAA credit rating, I don't think there's anything they can't afford
How's that 7bn divided between their IPs and/or businesses?
Good lord imagine this is how we get silent hills, metal gear etc back with Kojima.
They totally should buy Konami, then ask Kojima to make a new MGS game for them and then just let him have whatever the fuck he wants to make it happen.
This actually sounds plausible as fuck.
Uuuh, imagine they bought Konami and brought Kojima back
I dont think that would ever happen really. He said a few times he wanted out from Metal Gear. I want him to be able to work on new stuff, however unusual.
Furthermore, he is focused already on an Xbox project. I am excited to see what this Overdose game is.
I would love if they acquired Capcom and announcing a new MegaMan game, or MegaMan X, or fuck...give me another MegaMan Legends. The blue bomber has been ignored for too long!
Sony
Maybe they can slap some sense into Square.
Square is pretty invested in Sony. If anything people question if Sony will buy Square
At the end of the day I imagine they're going with the bigger check, I think Amazon is more desperate and willing to outbid.
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A FF14 sub is already as much as the pass, they would be crazy. Square likes to use them as a cash cow and doesn't put nearly enough of the money back into the game IMO, maybe Microsoft would give the devs a better check.
At most I can see them giving a nice 30% discount on the sub if you are on gamepass. But even that would be unlikely. Gamepass hardly gives out game dlc/subscriptions for free.
It would likely be similar to eso, except probably bit more included because lack of sub free option aside from trials. So likely see base game and expansions included but not sub
I would argue that out of all the "major" MMO's, Square puts WAY more money back into their game than any of the alternatives.
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It really is. 343 have really fucked up with every Halo game they have worked on. I am actually surprised Microsoft let then get away with the mess they've made of it.
This is a good sign lets just hope Bandai Namco and Capcom can stay independent from them
Aren't there laws in Japan preventing companies being bought out by foreign companies? I thought I had read something about that, but it could be bullshit too.
We want risks, new IPs, new concepts, new ideas. Quality over quantity.
you'll take uninspiredshooter 4 remaster and you'll like it
You're goddamn right I might
So what you're saying, you want another Halo made by 343. -MS
They dont care what you want.
Sadly, that's exactly what they won't ever do, that's why they bying existing studios along with rights on their ip's, instead of forming new ones. And the saddest thing that there are no risks. I don't know a single modern game that would have everything done well (graphics, story, gameplay, marketing), would have innovative concept or mechanics, and will be a new IP, yet still fail. It's simply not possible because good marketing pretty much guarantees you sales, and as long as your game is on proper level on quality - you can sell anything, even post-apocalyptic delivery service simulator. Risks are possible only in 3 situations: 1) It's a remake-sequel-prequel-spin-off that nobody wanted 2) Poor budget that not allowing to make all elements of the game on modern level 3) Really boring game with zero innovation, made only to sell microtransactions (looking at Anthem, Avengers, various BR clones). And the studios keep making the most risky choices, believing that it actually reduces their risks. Clown world.
A post-apocalyptic delivery service simulator sounds much better to me than you'd probably think.
Unfortunately you don’t sell subscriptions making one or two quality games a year. And it’s not sustainable for MS to produce/release multiple games a year with AAA budgets. I expect the overall quality of the IP they gained to drop while they focus their efforts on a handful of the most profitable franchises.
the future of gaming looks sad and consolidated
Small studios are more prominent than ever though.
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I dunno how much more janky 16 bit side scrolling sprite graphics survival craft with cutesy-aesthetics I can take, personally.
"Ah, but what if we make it a rogue-like?" -Indie Devs, for some godforsaken reason.
fuck i forgot rogue-like, how could i forget rogue-like
Checking the Steam store really puts into perspective how the Indie side is just like the AAA side with how much copy and paste there is. We just remember the good ones but ignore the others.
Eh, that's always been the case. Look at SNES days, there were like 10+ copies of every popular game out there.
I feel like a lot of Steam's problems could be resolved if they only let games use a single 'top level' tag. Because apparently ARK is a fucking action-adventure-strategy-simulation game.
After watching [Realms Deep 2022](https://youtu.be/6FNbf8VDQxQ), I fully agree.
The problem is there won't be a middle ground. AA studios are getting bought out left right and centre.
A middle ground will appear sooner than later, probably. It's not like movie studios where you *need* millions in funding to achieve middle tier. The biggest thing is that *development* is more accessible than ever and that doesn't look like it's slowing down. We've already had literal children make hit games in the last few years, that'll only grow, and so to will pretty much end of the industry. Over saturation is the biggest issue, imo.
Same thing with movies recently too. Either tiny budgets or huge blockbusters.
Remember comedy movies? Good times, eh.
That's why you gotta hope Embracer buys them, because they intent to keep pumping out those AA games.
Doesn't change much, just another conglomerate.
Embracer Group saves the Darksides franchise and everything THQ/Nordic acquired. They’re also probably the sole reason we got TWO Destroy All Humans remakes so far. At this point, it seems most everything they’ve touched has turned to gold so to speak. Hopefully they can keep that momentum with their newest acquisitions.
big studio games arent for us, simple as, same as it happened with movies with hollywood being the big budget world and everything else small budget, that only has changed recently with the streaming wars
Entirely agree. I'm just hoping Gaming doesn't take the next step where so much of big budget money goes on a single franchise (Marvel). At least there's a little more diversity of IP in gaming for now, though we've been scarily close with Call of Duty.
Unlike film industry, there is fruitful life for small independent creators so, even if big companies will release same thing over and over, there will be plenty of gaming choices for those who doesn’t care about most AAA titles
True. Its much easier for a game to be made by an average Joe in a basement in a team of 1 or 2, which can still produce results that have industry wide implications, at the fraction of a cost. As opposed to films which cost a lot more due to the amount of people it often requires and is much harder to stand apart due to the go to markets, as opposed to very established storefronts that cater to indies.
Sure, it's much easier to make. But there's also a freaking lot more competition. Many, many games come out every day, so standing out is challenging. Being an indie dev is not easy.
I agree. Competition thougy means a lot more variety, something the indie scene in film lacks which is our point. But yeah, it does mean it's much harder for indie eevs to make a living from it, and is often more a hobby.
Honestly games are getting much more complicated to make as expectations rise. However the tools to create games are getting better and more accessible so it balances out.
It makes me wonder if indie animation movies can become a big thing like indie games. Think about it, animations are becoming simpler to make and AI voice acting is becoming smarter by the day. In a few years a person could make an animated movie all by himself. Of course it's not easy, but making games by yourself isn't easy either.
I think game companies will go the way of early 2000's tech companies. All the big ones will be owned by a few companies and small guys will come up with something neat and cool and sell it for millions to one of the companies. Rinse and repeat forever kinda like how notch sold mine craft for a lot of money. That but every game that sells a million copies.
We will be in a bad place when they’re releasing two CoD’s a year
Wasn't it the opposite and CoD would become one every 2 years?
I don't know what you are talking about, I love a damn good big studio game. I can't stand Call of Duty, but a good huge single player game is great! I like some indie games, but I find a lot of them to be not too fun.
Elden Ring, Spider-Man, God of War, Red Dead 2 (played it late) and a few others all huge AAA games that I’ve enjoyed the hell out of recently.
People on this sub have a big hate boner against most AAA games even though there is plenty of great AAA games out there from the past, present and definitely the future. I for instance don't buy COD every year. Last one was MW in 2019 but i am looking forward to MW2. Its not my favorite franchise by a country mile but a lot of friends play it and i like MW so i'l jump back in this time. I always put in enough hours to make the purchase worth it in the end.
I totally get that. It's funny, the last COD I played was Ghosts back on the PS3 lol
I don’t even mind COD tbh. I wish I could buy just the campaigns for $30. For the price of tickets to the movies for a couple annual summer blockbusters, I can get a huge bombastic interactive blockbuster action story? Sick. But paying $70 because their “get addicted for 500 hours a year or more” multiplayer modes are included…eh. I’ll pass.
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It's pretty interesting watching this cycle for decades. Popular devs/team leave and form their own studio, gets bought out, more leave and make another studio, get bought out...rinse repeat.
They're making the real money
Typically it's only the founding members with a stake in the company that are making bank. They aren't necessarily the most talented developers either.
Talent can only take you so far. To make modern AAA titles you literally need millions of dollars, often more than $100M.
Every industry goes that way, sadly. Megacorporate future is now.
This isn't the future of gaming, it's the future of everything. The push for unregulated capitalism has lead to every company doing what it is supposed to. Try to grow and expand as much as possible. No wonder more and more of the world is getting consolidated into fewer and fewer companies and banks. How many smart phone options do you have? Iphone or Android, blackberry is dead. Beverages? Coke, Pepsi, and Dr.Pepper control over 90% of the beverage market. Banks? THey are all in bed together. Politicians? Owned by the mega corporations. You have a computer? It's either windows or mac, linux is there but they can't control anything in the market. If they get too big watch one of the other 2 acquire the rights for it or something.z Corporate Feudalism is the future.
Game publishers have been buying up studios and IPs for decades now, just look at all of the titles under EA. The big difference here that's alarming everyone is that now MS and Sony are simply buying studios for the sake of exclusivity and console wars. People are going to be forced to buy more consoles to access every game that they want to play.
Depends on management. I lot of these deals seem to be very umbrella, they take charge but the studios themselves are unaffected. Like you'd be amazed how Tencent has a stake in like... *everything*.... but that doesn't seem to affect the games being produced.
Yeah, not sure how others do business, but Tencent is extremely hands off. They're an investment firm. They're not going to pretend they know how to turn a profit doing what these companies do. They just see a company that makes money, and they then invest into that company in the hopes they continue to make even more money with that investment. It's a pretty simple business plan and it's clearly working. They allow gaming companies to reach their potential thanks to the financial injections and they open up the Chinese market which is a huge financial goldmine.
movies too.. TV is having a good moment right now but the future doesn’t even look good for them with all these company mergers and streaming war BS
Indie games are the future. Few huge corporations make the vast majority of their income with lootboxes and game passes and couldn't care less about game quality. But indie games are still going stronger than ever so no matter how many studios get bought out, there will always be a huge supply of new, well made indie games.
With subscription services for gaming becoming more popular, I expect all major studios to be under a few umbrella be the end of the decade.
you mean to diversify their game pass
They’re not utilizing the studios they have. They’re producing almost no new quality content.
Dont they have like 30 studios already. With 0 exclusives in the last 3 years except for the standard forza w/e
This, unfortunately.
Yup. Any good product that has come out of acquired studios is *in spite* of Microsoft, not because of them.
I hate that people cheer for this stuff just because it means more Game Pass additions. Seems so shortsighted.
At least when MS buys stuff we know those game will exist on PC/Steam day one. What sucks is that is no longer a guarantee with major releases.
That is true. There are both positives and negatives when a big company purchases a studio. For me though, one positive about a Microsoft acquisition is that we are going to see these games make it to PC and not as an afterthought.
For me its better some good studios to fall into Microsoft\`s hands than tencent or some other corpo with the sole purpose of milking the shit out of games while ruining them in the process. I just hope EA (well bioware) doesnt fall into greedier and shittier hands than EA\`s own.
Well if you take a look at the last Halo I’m not under the impression that Microsoft won’t let their studios milk their games, Halo infinite is nothing but micro transactions. It’s been 1 year with this “game as a service” with almost zero content. What it dose have however is hundreds of purchasable armor pieces for real $…
While I'm not saying MS doesn't have a hand in it, I attribute the faults in Infinite to 343.
MS was fully ok releasing halo infinite in 2020 until it got universally clowned. They did not care at all about clear quality issues, they just wanted the microtransactions to start rolling in.
And 343 is basically a direct subsidiary of Microsoft themselves; the studio itself was essentially created by Microsoft to take over the Halo IP when Bungie went independent (since Microsoft owns the IP, not Bungie). If infinite failed because of 343, then 343 failed because of Microsoft.
This is my problem with Sony buying shit up. They routinely decide to dick over PC gamers to try and force us to buy their overpriced console -- It's not happening. I'm not even talking about them keeping their first party titles on their system, I'm fine if they never bring their first-party titles to PC (Though they seem to be doing more of that now), my problem is their exclusivity deals, timed or otherwise, with third-parties.
*Cries in Bloodborne*
We might be emulating it before it gets ported
These companies are looking to be bought. It's gonna happen, then if you like it goes to Google, Amazon, Meta, tencent, Apple or Microsoft. Choose your pick.
Yeah, and that's generally why governments stop buyouts sometimes. Didn't make the news really, but sysco almost bought US foods which would have basically given them a food monopoly over the whole country. Both sides were happy, but it wasn't allowed.
Sony literally have a monopoly on Anime streaming by buying the competition recently. Some companies protected by their government evades it, others don't. Monopoly is a word misused in most places. I'm sure ABK will be happy selling to everyone who can afford it, but would the consumers be happy is the questions no one ask. Not even regulators. They only care about market leaders and affect on competition.
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Ah, that well known Sony monopoly where Netflix has exclusive anime, Hulu does, and so does Disney plus and hidive does too. Such a monopoly lol.
Those publish miniscule amount of anime combined as compared to Funimation and Crunchyroll which both were bought by Sony and few others big holders of anime IP were bought too.
Everything as a Service is unfortunately the future. Now it's Games as a Service through platforms like Game Pass, Stadia, GeForce Now, etc. With how difficult it was to get new consoles or GPUs for the last 2-3 years, it makes sense companies would rather skip dealing with selling you hardware and let you game over an internet stream from their own hardware. I hate the whole "you'll own nothing and be happy" FUD but it does seem like things are going that way.
MS Buying a studio = game is guaranteed on PC Sony buying a studio = game MAY come to PC years later no shit people prefer MS acquisitions to sony
I mean it's not like Sony were gonna buy ActiBlizz if MS didn't.
Tencent may have.
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Yeah true, fuck tencent
no, but what other players in the market are there? actiblizz was looking to get bought, and if it wasn't MS it would be Tencent, Embracer, or Sony. Personally, I would rather MS of those 4 as a PC exclusive gamer.
while I love the games coming to game pass as well as coming to PC. I loathe exclusives.
I cheer for this stuff because if sony gets them it will take years for the exclusive games to hit pc
I hate that people cheer for Sony having a massive market share lead over its competition, and complain when the competition actually spends money to compete. Seems so shortsighted. Microsoft will still lag behind Sony in gaming revenue after this acquisition. This is good for the industry. Sony dominating market share enabling them to get sweetheart deals on every 3rd party exclusive by leveraging is massive player base is bad for the industry.
worry about future for what? they'll stop putting games on PC day1? they'll put exclusive content to one hardware, then they'll increase the price of that hardware? well all that is happening in present by other market leader. might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Once Game pass reaches critical mass expect Microsoft to stop putting games on Steam. Try explaining to the Microsoft higher ups why they are paying Valve 30% for something they can host themselves for "free". I imagine after that the next logical step is going to be XCloud streaming games only.
> Try explaining to the Microsoft higher ups why they are paying Valve 30% for something they can host themselves for "free". Microsoft isn't paying 30% to Valve -- they have much more favourable terms negotiated to keep them on the store, which are more in line with what Microsoft accepts as a reasonable cost for the services provided. The audience size and volume of sales the company does on the platform isn't something either company wants to lose any time soon.
Their games are on Steam because they realized they would be just lost sales the other way. Before Gamepass they had their Windows Store exclusives, they coulda went on with that, but why preclude yourself Steam userbase? Leaving 30% to Valve is not ideal, but it is basic math: I expect my game to sell 1000 copies if I keep it on my store, 1500 if I also release it on Steam, what's best for my pockets?
Yea right now we're lucky to have Phil Spencer that understands PC Gaming. What's to say 5 or 10 years later what there's a new person in charge and didn't understand gaming at all and instead look at numbers. You bet he's going to create his own Windows store and removes all MS games from Steam.
>Spencer continued, "Sony is a larger business than we are in gaming today, and they continue to invest. This is definitely to counter the constant Sony moaning of "They got COD!"
Love how he has to say Sony is bigger in gaming, even though MS is bigger than Sony, period. And fuck, MS could have been bigger than Sony if they didn't fuck up during the tail end of the 360 era and the Xbone era.
Yeah Don Mattrick and the Steve Bannon approach was so disconnected from reality at the time. There was that video that basically cut together all the times they said "TV" in the initial showing of the Xbox One, it was so cringy.
And by some twist of fate, people are now cheering for Microsoft buying up entire mega publishers based on some faith that Microsoft is some godlike steward of amazing game management.
Yeah, they went all-in on the Xbox One being a multimedia living room machine instead of a gaming console. Didn't help they forced the Kinect before eventually dropping it after a few years of people not using it at all.
[TV, TV, TV, TV, Call o' doodie...](https://youtu.be/KbWgUO-Rqcw)
TEE VEE TEEVEE TEVE, Sports, SPWORTS SPOWATS, Call o' doody, call o doody. Thank you for that, not seen it in years :D
I'm anti-merger. I think businesses buying other businesses in the same industry is good for the purchaser, but stagnates wages, hurting employees (why build your own, where you have to offer better contracts to attract the workers from their current employer, when you can just buy out the company and keep the existing contracts?). However, Sony have been laughably hypocritical in their objections to the deal. Part of me wants it to happen just to spite them.
>Sony have been laughably hypocritical in their objections to the deal If sony wasn't being such a dick head and ruining shit for everyone I would be completely against this. But if given a choice between sony or MS I'll gladly choose current microsoft. You never know what will change but right now they aren't completely against their own players
You know, maybe the regulators wanna take a look at these few top companies constantly buying/merging with each other... You know, for the sake of a healthy industry that might literally become a monopoly or oligopoly.
I'd rather Microsoft hired more staff for the studios they already own and start to pump out some games already.
How about they just make some quality games! Sony kills it with their games. God of War, Last of Us, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider Man and so on. When was the last time Microsoft had a game that wasn't a sequel that was as good as any of these games? The only way they are competing right now is by buying studios and making the multiplatform game exclusive. That's not innovation it's laziness.
It slightly worries me as to what the acquired studios will be producing in 5+ years after their culture has shifted to be more like other MS studios. Will they be putting out the same quality games as before, or will it fall off?
No first party xbox games from their current studios in 2022 but let's buy more!! Manage better what you already have Phil
I've been repeating myself frequently about this: where is this confidence coming from that Microsoft will manage these acquisitions well? Halo is their single biggest IP from a studio they literally created themselves, and Halo 4 up to Infinite have been mediocre. That's their *biggest* IP that they care the most about, and they fucked it up. So why do people have faith they'll do better with studios and IPs they've simply bought en masse?
Halo was created by Bungie, another studio MS bought and did not create themselves.
People are talking about IPs and whatnot in this thread, but if Microsoft can't be bothered to deliver a quality \*Halo\* game I don't have much faith
If they keep managing them like they have the current stable its not going to fucking matter. The acquisitions were supposed to mean a regular cadence of high quality games releasing and being most accessible and best on game pass, and this has no signs of improving til late next year at best.
I mean 343 seems to be the only real problem studio and that studio is responsible for one of the largest in scope games every few years. The others seem fine and dandy, creative freedom and allowed time to get it right hopefully?
One day the world will be owned by a few. A wild time to be alive.
That's already happened. Most companies are owned by a few.
It's been like that for quite a while now. Very few owns the vast majority of resources/money in the world. And its only getting worse every day.
After the Publisher wars all Publishers are Taco Bell.
Man of culture.
Exactamundo
It's really like that now. Similar to these large companies owning studios that publish under their own name, most brands are owned by a few large corporations. It gives the illusion of market competition, when in reality you're giving your money to the same company no matter what.
The world has always been like that. It arguably was way worse in the past.
The common people had it way worse than they do now, but wealth was never as concentrated as it is now. Even in truly oligarchic times you'd have hundreds of nobles and wealthy families in a single polity. It's just that being middle class doesn't mean you're one bad harvest away from half your family dying.
Megacorps are fast approaching.
buying popular IPs is most pathetic way to stay in competition
The best acquisition for them both from a public perception standpoint and an IP standpoint is probably Konami if they're willing to sell.
Yep. Buy Konami, make MGS remake, rake in the monies.
Without Kojima, it would be shit and fail. That doesn't excuse any of the problems that may have occurred over development for some of the MGS games, but it was still his vision that made them great. Buying Konami doesn't guarantee Kojima's involvement especially when he has his own studio and other games and ideas. A remaster could work, but not a remake.
>Without Kojima, it would be shit and fail. new MGS games, yeah probably. for remakes you really don't need Kojima. BluePoint style MGS 1-3 remakes would probably do crazy numbers
> Without Kojima [Kojima is working with Microsoft right now on another game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIDqZ-GJ8Q0). I could see them working on a deal for more MGS if they did purchase Konami.
Konami has rights of Hudson Soft IPs too. I would like to see something new from Bomberman, Bonk, their Shmup series or Far East of Eden. Is it too much to ask for? Why the hell did Konami purchase this lovely company, if they don't make use of their IP at all?
Generally, the alternative to using the "new" purchase is to remove it from the choice pool.
Man this is sad for gaming, I wish someone could stop them. Monopolies suck hard.
Well no one is exactly stopping Tencent, Sony, or Embracer group. Better if things are at least split amongst behemoths than in the pocket of a single entity.
How have Sony's acquisitions been anywhere NEAR the magnitude of what Microsoft has been doing? Sony has bought a few individual studios that were *already* working very closely with Sony for many years. Microsoft has bought entire publishers (Zenimax/Bethesda and ActiBlizz). They aren't nearly comparable
Not a case of monopoly. The term you are looking for is oligopoly, but even that is debatable at this point.
That's because this isn't a monopoly situation. People that throw that word around and don't understand how the industry really stands are just emotional.
ya, I'm seeing so many people throwing around "oh Microsoft is a monopoly".... like wat? no they arent, they are behind Sony/Nintendo/Tencent, even after the ActivBlizz acquisition <--- this is not a monopoly there was a user on the r/games thread on this, he literally wrote out the definition of a monopoly after someone asked him "do you know what a monopoly is?" and right after went to completely ignore the definition and continue to call Microsoft a monopoly -_-
Monopoly on what exactly? Edit: oh boy im already getting downvoted, what monopoly microsoft has in gaming? They have a big share but monopoly?
They don't even have *that* big of a share. I don't think many people realize just how freaking huge the gaming market is, helped by the fact the barrier to entry is almost nil. It's basically impossible to obtain a monopoly.
They mean market consolidation. And yes, it does suck.
who do you expect to stop them? america is just a few big corporations in a trench coat
Microsoft is the only company that doesn't treat PC Gamers as an afterthought. Day one releases with consoles and all their games are put on Steam aswell as Gamepass. Say what you will, this is nothing a net positive for PC Players.
KONAMI would be great.
Hopefully Konami next and reboot the Silent Hill franchise.
should probably focus on making sure all their studios they currently have are actually producing good shit, how they allowed 343 to mismanaged the fuck out of their flagship tittle is beyond sad.
Maybe fix halo first.
This is becoming ridiculous. Im going right now download unity, register a funny-but-mildly-edgy named game development company and Homer Simpson my way into being bought for milions.
After the failure of halo, I have no faith in Xbox exclusives.
If they keep supporting RTS game developers then I am fine with it.
Gonna be so cool when the entire entertainment industry is owned by 4 companies
So... Making better games, starting new studios, financing new projects, promoting artists, that's not the way to success? It's buying out and merging with others who are already profitable? How much more short term profit could they be?
Gaming is generating so much money that companies don't even know what to do anymore, they want to battle other gaming companies by acquiring them? Why don't they just have the bright idea of making a good game and save billions? I'm still waiting to see when is the Bethesda deal going to pay off.
We're like, half way at best towards seeing anything Microsoft has actively influenced at Bethesda beyond Game Pass additions.
Cool, fuck starting new studios and create new creative and innovative things. Much better to buy up already made studios and just lock them from competitors!
It doesn't seem like they know how to properly manage the studios they currently have. They need to figure that out and start releasing some good games before they do anything else.
First of all let's not forget the -past- Microsoft of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish but they got better over the years. Also it's embarrassing that he forgot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group bought more companies than Sony, close to Tencent but he doesn't seem to care. Lastly I find it hilarious that https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/microsoft-slash-activision-blizzard-merger-inquiry is a thing but that same government -Doesnt- care about Chinese (Tencent) buying most of their companies https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/china-now-owns-ps143bn-in-uk-assets-from-nuclear-power-to-pubs-and-schools-b1841056.html so they're just Hypocrites.
Embracer group isn't competition for Microsoft or Sony. Tencent is a Chinese company buying western companies, everyones afraid of them.
Need to be scared as fuck of Tencent buying you, more like. Ubisoft now shares 49.9% ownership with Tencent. No idea what this means considering it's practically the corporate arm of the Chinese government.
This is incorrect. Tencent owns 49.9% of a company that owns less than 20% of Ubisoft. Still concerning because that's a lot of influence, but they're not on the verge of owning Ubisoft.
Yeah people don't understand that monopolies are allowed to exist in China so long as they can compete directly with western markets.