Microsoft is talking to japanese publishers about acquisitions. Let's guess the next big Xbox acquisition.
- Thread starter Sleepy Brown
- Start date
I THINK it has more to do with the way Sony operates as a Entertainment entity. They don't want to own too many studios where they can't manage them. Buying Square or Capcom though they would operate more than likely independently. It's hard to support such a large amount of people if they were to use internal tools Sony has.
Imagine Square using Decima and needing support from Guerilla? The language barrier alone would make progress and productivity be an issue.
Though I think Sony will put a ring on one of those companies, I think their influence would be purely marketing and backend stuff.
Got to think of all the employee's Sony will have to support. I think its inevitable. But I think Sony is trying to go as long as they can without needing to straight up buy them. Because the amount of money, support needed for integrating a lot of Square's stuff would cost a fuck ton on a yearly basis.
Sony would rather let Square/Capcom handle their own shit right now, until they are forced to.
It's happening, but Sony is in no hurry.
The publishers were talking about here are already doing well and self sustainable on their own. The worst for sony would be the acquisition price and legal fees. Too much upfront? Get a loan. Sell the cellphone division. Im tired of the excuses.
All of their other divisions are doing well. Got to understand dynamics of Playstation is run primarily from the West division wise. Its not the spending, its the support that would be needed. All of that takes extra money. So a lot of that is getting things in-line with what Square would want and what Sony wants.
Even in a situation like that, its not like Sony forces any of those teams to work on an engine here or there or something.
Consider Days Gone was made on Unreal Engine, so they'll likely allow them to create independently.
I also believe its inevitable. I wonder if that purchase will have to do with VR or a Portable or something they might be working on or just building a stronger base or something. A team like Square or Capcom could do fucking wonders if they ever want to get back into Portables. Not beating Nintendo, but making a real actual dent lol
Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Dragon Quest, Bravely Default, Final Fantasy etc. That would be a crazy lineup for some portable and would likely still be a deep fight with any Switch 2 type thing.
So I'm curious to see how this plays out and for all we know, the end up buying both Square and Capcom as they've worked closely with both before.
this.
it's clear that sony isn't going to buy a publisher unless it makes financial sense, and is a good fit for the company. for example, bungie was a synergistic acquisition to assist with gaas and their FPS void. they'll take calculated risks on studios (e.g. Haven) but I don't see them going after big publishers anytime soon.
acquiring a japanese publisher doesn't make sense for them. it's just more responsibility for the same outcome. also, while I think the activision deal goes through, i don't see regulators allowing microsoft to acquire another publisher in the near future. its more likely that tencent or the saudis continue to make investments in asia.
theres also no indication that any of the major publishers in japan (bamco, square, sega, capcom, konami, etc.) are facing major financial hardships or seeking to be acquired in the first place.
tldr; its not worth stressing about
Just a random thought, but the deal with Activision still hasn't gone through due to concerns by regulators, and yet you have the head of Microsoft and Xbox saying they want to buy more. Their lawyers have to be shaking their heads.
Or the lawyers know that the regulators are in Microsoft's pocket, so the deal won't be stopped.
I firmly believe that to be the case in the US, but I'm not so certain about the EU, UK or Australia.
I've heard supposedly under biden the ftc has gotten more strict, but don't quote me on that.
If that were the case FTC would have thrown a red flag at current Activision/Blizzard deal. They may be looking at things more closely but things are making it past first phase and into second with EU/UK being only regulating body that actually is stopping shit.
EU/UK were only body to stop Nvidia buying Arm for 40 Billion.
It probably would have been more accurate on my part to say " slightly more strict", but hey its a start.
Assuming companies dont want to be acquired is a sure fire way to lose out when they inevitably do get acquired. Im sure sony isnt so lax to have that mentality but they may not have the funds to make the difference.
I honestly think it's FUD and marketing tactics. It's how they keep the Xbox fanbase engaged, especially through their game drought. It also sows doubt in the minds of consumers who are on the fence. When people hear how Xbox could own Capcom or Sega, etc., the PS5 might become less desirable in their minds.
I agree alot with this statement. Articulates alot of what ive been thinking.
I could see MS buying Omega Force and asking them to make a Halo Mussou, Forza Mussou, Gears Mussou and Skyrim Mussou.
Or buying a dating sim dev to make Halo dating sims, Gears dating sims, Doom dating sims etc.
MS is very far from being market leader, have a pretty small market share and the acquired company represents a tiny portion of the market. To buy it wouldn't even make MS become market leader in gaming or in any gaming market.
I think all regulators will approve the ABK acquisition.
Or buying a dating sim dev to make Halo dating sims, Gears dating sims, Doom dating sims etc.
It was a different case because, unlike MS, Nvidia is a market leader with a huge market share and to buy ARM would give them too much control of their market, ARM is too important there.
MS is very far from being market leader, have a pretty small market share and the acquired company represents a tiny portion of the market. To buy it wouldn't even make MS become market leader in gaming or in any gaming market.
I think all regulators will approve the ABK acquisition.
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True, that is my assumption, but I'm sure Sony is doing their due diligence as well.
People underestimate Sony's clout in Japan. They're the the third largest Japanese corporation (#1 in tech). If Microsoft were trying to gobble up a Japanese publisher, not only would Sony know about it, they'd have the resources and government backing to fend it off. The same applies for Nintendo.
I think that's a major reason why we haven't seen many foreign investors try to penetrate that market.
Okay, so I've been reading some of the ResetERA posts in the equivalent thread and there are some REALLY stupid ones. However, I gotta single out this one from Gremlinz 1982 because of all the logical fallacies strewn in it. I'll doing it piece by piece (mods please let me post this; there are no personal attacks but there are some really important things I need to bring up that require the quotes for reference)
Because Sony cared enough to put up the money for them. Nothing stopped Microsoft from doing so other than lack of trying. How many more leaks of things like MS turning down Marvel, do you need to come out to prove that maybe Microsoft were the problem in enabling Sony to make many of these deals uncontested?
All rumors and speculation. Nothing substantial, yet you're trying to use them in an argument to substantiate Microsoft's acquisition strategy.
That's a nice way to spin the facts. A company that financially invests in content via comarketing deals or co-funding, isn't going to let loopholes pop up in contracts that allow a direct competitor to profit off their investment at similar or better rate while putting up no money of their own.
Why should Sony allow Microsoft to put a game Sony invests tens of millions into, in GamePass where people can play it for "free", and effectively neuter sales revenue of that title on PlayStation consoles which is the entire point of the initial investments in the first place?
Please stop and think.
You're being absolutely disingenuous with some heavy revisionists history here. Sony "bleeding" Microsoft out would've ended up playing out much the way they "bled" Sega out during 5th gen, which was actually a LOT of self-inflicted wounds from Sega themselves; Sony merely capitalized on what they could. Microsoft made a LOT of self-inflicted wounds during the tail-end of 7th gen and pretty much all of 8th gen, why would Sony have not capitalized.
To show just how ridiculous your argument is, put it in the context of nature. If a fool wanders into the desert with no supplies and gets stranded, why would a vulture not lap up the opportunity to kill off what is clearly a dying prey that put itself in that position in the first place!? Stop coddling Microsoft like they did absolutely nothing wrong in getting into the position they found themselves in; it's short-sighted and insincere AF.
Well it's almost as if had MS not languished in investing & growing their internal 1P teams over the past several years, they would've had the content to put into GamePass sooner. Whoops.
Again, you're trying to make it seem as though this is Sony's fault. Sony spent several years during the rough years of PS3 to rebuild goodwill among the gaming press AND gamers. That's why when they started doing timed exclusivity deals (and outright 3P exclusivity deals, quite a few were them FUNDING the game btw), gamers and the press were more receptive.
Microsoft basically squandered the goodwill they had with hardcore and core gamers during the closing years of 360 and moving into the XBO generation, so they lost the cache of relevance with the very people who became very vocal against them when they tried repeating the same 3P exclusivity deals (which btw, MS AGGRESSIVELY pushed with 360), and yet somehow this is Sony's fault?
That's funny, because you conveniently forget that Microsoft did ALL of these same things with the 360 against the PS3. And yes, you're right; you DO disrupt in order to try circumventing that...but not by trying to force adaption of a new market that barely accounts for a fraction of 4% of all console gaming revenue after 10 years of existence within the market.
No, you "disrupt" by doing the same thing other platform holders did in the past: Just. Make. Kickass. Games. That's it. It's that simple. Stop pretending like Microsoft had zero 1P studios before 2018. They had them, they just poorly managed a couple and did the bare minimum in growing the others. Microsoft HAD 3P exclusives in the works with multiple teams...then most of them got cancelled, and others released in a mediocre state.
But none of these facts are Sony's fault so of course you don't want to acknowledge them in these posts.
Oh, now we're pretending subscription services and cloud gaming are the great liberator for those "poor" people who were never able to experience what it's like to play a game before, right? C'mon. I don't know why you stopped yourself from mentioning groups in particular, I mean folks on Twitter with this line of argument have done so plenty of times.
People of virtually ALL walks of life income-wise, have always had access to games since the birth of the industry, let's get that straight right now. Whether through consoles, or the arcades, or microcomputers, or PCs. Be it Day 1, or a while later when consoles had their prices cut, or clone knockoffs (official and unofficial)...people of virtually all classes, ethnicities and nationalities have had access to video games one way or another, and that's before getting to the REAL modern era liberators like online web portals and mobile.
So save this disingenuous argument for someone who doesn't know any better.
Oh yeah, MS definitely "took advantage" of opportunities. Stealing the CP/M source code for DOS, pushing out the inventors of Zip compression, bullying and boxing Netscape out of the browser market, colluding with Intel to push Intel/Windows exclusivity deals and benefits for OEMs, buying and then killing Nokia...
...yeah, they "took advantage" alright.
Microsoft were also one of the same companies that publicly lambasted ABK's workplace issues, thereby potentially affecting the stock prices. Whether this was deliberate or not is unknown, but there was a cause and effect there.
Keyword was. As in past tense. That has nothing to do with Microsoft and ABK, why even bring it up?
Someone should REALLY tell Nintendo about that decades-old warchest then. Oh, wait, you mean this entire line you just said is basically BS and only very selectively applicable to specific companies depending on their overall corporate strategy, not some supposed catch-all that rings of pseudo-intellectual linguistic gymnastics? Color me surprised.
Be careful my guy, GamePass isn't that out-of-left-field sports sensation that everyone except you (conveniently) ignored in the junior leagues just yet.
There's levels to this.™
You say we had "consolidation as a constant", but then list (partially) the reason why this didn't ruffle feathers, pretend that your own explanation doesn't exist when stating people are having a contesting to the type of acquisition (and frequency) occurring in the industry now, and forget to mention that most of the earlier acquisitions didn't involve platform holders buying up huge 3P publishers and disrupting the very nature of the open, independent 3P market within the industry when it comes to IP availability, tech resource availability, labor force availability etc.
No one who's an enthusiasts console gamer cared when Tencent bought Supercell, a mobile games publisher. No one really cared when Embracer bought THQ, who were practically long dead by that point compared to their original incarnation. It'd of been like if Take-Two purchased Atari; it's not THAT Atari anymore, that classic company has been long dead and not relevant within the AAA console game industry for decades.
Pretending that modern relevancy of the companies being consolidated, their size into the market, and the nostalgia they may have based on past legacy and current output not only DOESN'T matter, but SHOULDN'T matter, and that people aught to take those emotional reads into these decisions out of the equation when it comes to their PERSONAL reactions, despite being human beings whom by nature are creature of logic AND emotion...is absolutely laughable.
You know what would've ensured they had more people on their platform prior to pushing for mass 3P consolidation? Getting their then-current 1P studios in order and getting their content up to par across the board during the rough years.
Oh, and not cancelling multiple 3P exclusives that were in the works. That would've helped, too. Just sayin'.
Which was mostly Microsoft's own fault. Nothing stopped them from competing with MS in getting 3P exclusive content, deals, marketing rights, etc. They did all of these things with the 360, their three biggest mistakes there being mostly apathetic to the ROTW, RROD, and pushing Kinect at the expense of core-orientated IP in the twilight years of that generation.
But yes, let's pretend that Sony invented this crazy aggressive model of competition that poor little Microsoft couldn't do anything about all of the sudden, and so they needed to reach in the cracks of their dilapidated Rent-a-Center couches and just stumble upon $80 billion. Hallelujah.
And their new take of "investing" has Saudi Arabia, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, even Sony etc. watching with bated breath. It's the green light for them. Rapid mass consolidation of remaining 3P publisher industry GO GO GO!!
Well, except for Google. They're pulling out. Hmm...wonder if certain concerns of regulators are going to be validated now and considered more deeply when looking into ongoing and future acquisitions
....
Because Sony cared enough to put up the money for them. Nothing stopped Microsoft from doing so other than lack of trying. How many more leaks of things like MS turning down Marvel, do you need to come out to prove that maybe Microsoft were the problem in enabling Sony to make many of these deals uncontested?
All rumors and speculation. Nothing substantial, yet you're trying to use them in an argument to substantiate Microsoft's acquisition strategy.
That's a nice way to spin the facts. A company that financially invests in content via comarketing deals or co-funding, isn't going to let loopholes pop up in contracts that allow a direct competitor to profit off their investment at similar or better rate while putting up no money of their own.
Why should Sony allow Microsoft to put a game Sony invests tens of millions into, in GamePass where people can play it for "free", and effectively neuter sales revenue of that title on PlayStation consoles which is the entire point of the initial investments in the first place?
Please stop and think.
You're being absolutely disingenuous with some heavy revisionists history here. Sony "bleeding" Microsoft out would've ended up playing out much the way they "bled" Sega out during 5th gen, which was actually a LOT of self-inflicted wounds from Sega themselves; Sony merely capitalized on what they could. Microsoft made a LOT of self-inflicted wounds during the tail-end of 7th gen and pretty much all of 8th gen, why would Sony have not capitalized.
To show just how ridiculous your argument is, put it in the context of nature. If a fool wanders into the desert with no supplies and gets stranded, why would a vulture not lap up the opportunity to kill off what is clearly a dying prey that put itself in that position in the first place!? Stop coddling Microsoft like they did absolutely nothing wrong in getting into the position they found themselves in; it's short-sighted and insincere AF.
Well it's almost as if had MS not languished in investing & growing their internal 1P teams over the past several years, they would've had the content to put into GamePass sooner. Whoops.
Again, you're trying to make it seem as though this is Sony's fault. Sony spent several years during the rough years of PS3 to rebuild goodwill among the gaming press AND gamers. That's why when they started doing timed exclusivity deals (and outright 3P exclusivity deals, quite a few were them FUNDING the game btw), gamers and the press were more receptive.
Microsoft basically squandered the goodwill they had with hardcore and core gamers during the closing years of 360 and moving into the XBO generation, so they lost the cache of relevance with the very people who became very vocal against them when they tried repeating the same 3P exclusivity deals (which btw, MS AGGRESSIVELY pushed with 360), and yet somehow this is Sony's fault?
That's funny, because you conveniently forget that Microsoft did ALL of these same things with the 360 against the PS3. And yes, you're right; you DO disrupt in order to try circumventing that...but not by trying to force adaption of a new market that barely accounts for a fraction of 4% of all console gaming revenue after 10 years of existence within the market.
No, you "disrupt" by doing the same thing other platform holders did in the past: Just. Make. Kickass. Games. That's it. It's that simple. Stop pretending like Microsoft had zero 1P studios before 2018. They had them, they just poorly managed a couple and did the bare minimum in growing the others. Microsoft HAD 3P exclusives in the works with multiple teams...then most of them got cancelled, and others released in a mediocre state.
But none of these facts are Sony's fault so of course you don't want to acknowledge them in these posts.
Oh, now we're pretending subscription services and cloud gaming are the great liberator for those "poor" people who were never able to experience what it's like to play a game before, right? C'mon. I don't know why you stopped yourself from mentioning groups in particular, I mean folks on Twitter with this line of argument have done so plenty of times.
People of virtually ALL walks of life income-wise, have always had access to games since the birth of the industry, let's get that straight right now. Whether through consoles, or the arcades, or microcomputers, or PCs. Be it Day 1, or a while later when consoles had their prices cut, or clone knockoffs (official and unofficial)...people of virtually all classes, ethnicities and nationalities have had access to video games one way or another, and that's before getting to the REAL modern era liberators like online web portals and mobile.
So save this disingenuous argument for someone who doesn't know any better.
Oh yeah, MS definitely "took advantage" of opportunities. Stealing the CP/M source code for DOS, pushing out the inventors of Zip compression, bullying and boxing Netscape out of the browser market, colluding with Intel to push Intel/Windows exclusivity deals and benefits for OEMs, buying and then killing Nokia...
...yeah, they "took advantage" alright.
Microsoft were also one of the same companies that publicly lambasted ABK's workplace issues, thereby potentially affecting the stock prices. Whether this was deliberate or not is unknown, but there was a cause and effect there.
Keyword was. As in past tense. That has nothing to do with Microsoft and ABK, why even bring it up?
Someone should REALLY tell Nintendo about that decades-old warchest then. Oh, wait, you mean this entire line you just said is basically BS and only very selectively applicable to specific companies depending on their overall corporate strategy, not some supposed catch-all that rings of pseudo-intellectual linguistic gymnastics? Color me surprised.
Be careful my guy, GamePass isn't that out-of-left-field sports sensation that everyone except you (conveniently) ignored in the junior leagues just yet.
There's levels to this.™
You say we had "consolidation as a constant", but then list (partially) the reason why this didn't ruffle feathers, pretend that your own explanation doesn't exist when stating people are having a contesting to the type of acquisition (and frequency) occurring in the industry now, and forget to mention that most of the earlier acquisitions didn't involve platform holders buying up huge 3P publishers and disrupting the very nature of the open, independent 3P market within the industry when it comes to IP availability, tech resource availability, labor force availability etc.
No one who's an enthusiasts console gamer cared when Tencent bought Supercell, a mobile games publisher. No one really cared when Embracer bought THQ, who were practically long dead by that point compared to their original incarnation. It'd of been like if Take-Two purchased Atari; it's not THAT Atari anymore, that classic company has been long dead and not relevant within the AAA console game industry for decades.
Pretending that modern relevancy of the companies being consolidated, their size into the market, and the nostalgia they may have based on past legacy and current output not only DOESN'T matter, but SHOULDN'T matter, and that people aught to take those emotional reads into these decisions out of the equation when it comes to their PERSONAL reactions, despite being human beings whom by nature are creature of logic AND emotion...is absolutely laughable.
You know what would've ensured they had more people on their platform prior to pushing for mass 3P consolidation? Getting their then-current 1P studios in order and getting their content up to par across the board during the rough years.
Oh, and not cancelling multiple 3P exclusives that were in the works. That would've helped, too. Just sayin'.
Which was mostly Microsoft's own fault. Nothing stopped them from competing with MS in getting 3P exclusive content, deals, marketing rights, etc. They did all of these things with the 360, their three biggest mistakes there being mostly apathetic to the ROTW, RROD, and pushing Kinect at the expense of core-orientated IP in the twilight years of that generation.
But yes, let's pretend that Sony invented this crazy aggressive model of competition that poor little Microsoft couldn't do anything about all of the sudden, and so they needed to reach in the cracks of their dilapidated Rent-a-Center couches and just stumble upon $80 billion. Hallelujah.
And their new take of "investing" has Saudi Arabia, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, even Sony etc. watching with bated breath. It's the green light for them. Rapid mass consolidation of remaining 3P publisher industry GO GO GO!!
Well, except for Google. They're pulling out. Hmm...wonder if certain concerns of regulators are going to be validated now and considered more deeply when looking into ongoing and future acquisitions
....
Hey I just like adding details to the proceedings that's all. You already know this from GAF
Plus with details clarity & context can usually be had which matters a lot to me personally, especially on topics like this where they practically beg you to sink your teeth into the details.
Basically. Just buying more and more isn't going to look as impressive as they might think it will. At some point flashing off your excess and it doing nothing for me at the end of the day is going to make me resentful, or at least ignore whatever it is you're trying to show off.
I think that's a general, and typical human reaction to excess actually. But I guess that'll be tested if MS jump into another major acquisition right after ABK closes or not. Kinda almost dare 'em to do it just to see xD.
I'm gonna have to look into these because tbh, after the probe in 1998 - 2000 I'd of thought MS wouldn't find themselves in anymore such cases but guess I was wrong xD.
Something to keep in mind that both x86 and Windows as an OS THRIVE off BC. It's how they've been able to remain so dominant over the decades. Businesses, medical, military, aerospace etc. institutions are all running programs that in some cases date back to the 1980s. Literal tons of legacy documents, code, information that would cost them a shit ton of money to migrate to a new, modern database or program.
That's why Windows and x86 are so rooted in BC. And yes, if companies like MS or whoever buy other companies, they inherit everything with them. The good and the bad. And they have to work with that.
Let’s try I guess.
Google at start took the WebKit code and created it own fork that is base of Chromium… with that and being good with everybody they entered the Browser market with some open ideias and so got the market share.
Today over 90% of the market is Chrome based (even MS had to drop it own tech and embrace the Chrome with the Edge you see today).
That was all good and the Chrome was good. Manifest and after Manifest 2 were created that is the base of how extensions works today.
But right now there is the new Google card, remember that Google is an advertising company at core, and so they defined the Manifest 3 for extensions of all based Chrome browsers.
You know what Manifest 3 do? In simple words it blocks the ability of any extension to do Ad block in a proper way… to the point that even know players like uBlock Origin can’t do nothing against it.
So they are basically blocking the ability of Ad blockers to block ads.
I wonder why?
You're giving me a lot of stuff to look into, that's for sure. I appreciate bringing these developments to the forefront. If this M3 stuff is true, guess I'm going back to Opera or Firefox. No way in hell I'm using a web browser without the ability to sandbox it with uBlock, Adblock, Twitch video blocker etc.
If these companies want us to watch their ads so much, give us rewards. I remember when you used to be able to earn bits on Twitch for watching a certain number of ads per day. That actually wasn't such a bad incentive, considering they limited you to only a certain number of ads rewarding with bits anyway.
See, personally I wouldn't have as much an issue with any if we were talking 2027 or so. At least enough time to see some results from the 2018-2022 acquisitions. But the way things are, MS would try and push one of those purchases through by 2024, and I simply can't rock with buy-buy-buy when there is so little to show ME as a gamer for it.
What I do know is that if Sony are aware or have strong enough suspicions that MS or another company that wants to try becoming a platform holder are going after one of those publishers (especially Capcom or Square-Enix), and don't make any moves, that tells me a lot about what prospects they have for themselves as a platform holder and I wouldn't see it as a vote of confidence.
Letting those kind of opportunities slip by is something a company looking to get out of the market as a platform holder would do. It's like when Sega passed on acquiring Lobotomy Software, when they had the money and might as well should have. But they decided to buy Visual Concepts instead and directly piss off one of their few remaining big Western 3P AAA partners, EA. Not the best move, even though VC made some pretty damn good sports games.