Kadokawa Corporation acquires ACQUIRE (Octopath Traveler dev).
- Thread starter Gamernyc78
- Start date
Last update from SE(Yuji Horii) is from December: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...e-is-now-being-playtested-says-series-creator
If I had to guess, we might see the game re-emerge with a trailer and release date at the rumoured Feb Nintendo Direct next week.
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No, I think Square liscenses out HD-2D. And for those wondering, Octopath 2 did, indeed, underperform.
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I mean, I agree, but only because I thought Octopath 1 wasn't good.
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Regulators weren't harsh when Microsoft bought Nuance despite being one of the largest cloud providers and having a monopoly on PC OSes.
Seriously, you make too much a fuss over this sometimes; of course Sony would face scrutiny just like any other company, for making an M&A. But it would not be nearly as harsh or impossible as you seem to think, even in spite of their market share in non-mobile gaming.
And, as seen with MS buying ABK, M&As aren't just about competing with other companies. It's also about expanding and diversifying one's revenue streams and market options. Regardless of what companies like MS do going forward, Sony still have a need for increasing their own revenue and profit margins in gaming. If an M&A could help with that, they'll consider it.
You're indirectly right in the matter that Sony don't want to pursue M&As that would step on the toes of favored 3P partners, which is probably at least part a reason they didn't pursue this given developer. But supposing they were interested in one that a favored 3P partner is not pursuing, they themselves would pursue it and would have a likely easier time than Microsoft had for ABK (it'd be at least at most as much scrutiny the Zenimax M&A saw, which was nothing in comparison to ABK) even if that M&A were a 3P publisher.
As long as it wasn't a giant publisher like Take-Two or EA, of course. At that point much more scrutiny would be had and the concessions Sony'd have to make to get the deal approved would likely not be worth the strategic effort unless it really were only about increasing gaming revenue & profits no matter what.
As happens in console, MS never has been market leader in servers. MS didn't and doesn't have enough market power to take monopolistic actions in the servers market, in the same way they don't have it in the gaming or consoles market.
Sony instead is a clear market leader in different gaming areas, as it's the case of consoles market (worldwide and EU in particular, and soon gaming as a whole).
Sony will pursue the acquisitions they consider make sense for them. And regulators will decide if they allow them to do so or not. I bet regulators would accepts small acquisitions like Arrowhead, Ballistic Moon, Kadokawa etc. But wouldn't allow things like EA, Take 2 and who knows if Square Enix or Capcom.
If MS goes out of the console hardware business, there will be only Nintendo competing indirectly via portables. And even more indirectly, also some PC stores. Not even MS and Nintendo could remain in the home console market against them, and if Sony acquires huge AAA publishers it would be even more difficult to other companies to compete in the home consoles market. Or console VR. Or console game subs. Regulators could say that Sony is already too dominant and that such big acquisitoin would prevent others to compete, so could be considered as a monopolistic action.
MS is a nobody in consoles, with a tiny market share. And ABK, even if it was the biggest 3rd party publisher, represented a tiny market share of the gaming or console business. So regulators were fine with it.
With how many assets the JP publishers, bar Sega, have in Europe I question how much power they would really have to stop such an acquisition. In Japan, I think, the courts will be very sympathetic to the argument that Switch is part of the same market.