Nintendo tried to merge with Bandai in 2002 and were denied. Why on earth would the JP regulatory bodies not let Nintendo be the big spoon to Bandai but let it get brought by Sony instead? Would actually probably not pass anywhere as that would be a horizontal merger of console manufacturers too.
That was 2002, and you don't know the conditions in which that merger attempt were operating under. Again, I am talking about a merger, not an acquisition. Mergers can be structured differently, there are a variety of options there. Even more than with acquisitions, even.
You can argue the MS/ABk deal is a horizontal merger of game software publishing labels. XGS is a publishing label under Microsoft Gaming, as is Zenimax. Now soon will be ABK. And what we've seen with this deal is, if you throw enough weight around and make your BS smell good enough, you can get any big gaming deal passed through regulatory bodies. Microsoft have set up a blueprint of sorts for other companies, including their own competitors, to effectively utilize.
But at the end of the day this Sony/Nintendo merging stuff is nonsense talk. Not for the reasons you want to specify, but because I feel corporate culture differences between the two companies would prevent such a deal from going down. That's between Sony and Nintendo themselves; nothing with regulators per se.
Can we not use Xbots, Ponies terminology?
This poster on Gaf basically sums up how I feel on the current discourse of gaming and why im not posting as much anymore:
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So can we stop with the dumb xbot/Pony stuff? If you want to be like that there's discord channels where you can let everything fly. Ask someone here for the offical Icon era discord if you are interested. Some good peeps over there.
But on this forum we really should be above all this dumb stuff. I know its hard because of the environment that we have noted above. But I don't want new people being pushed away or laughing at this place everyone built being passionate fans. Regardless of what you prefer.
WRT the "Game Pass" arguments...when I bring it up, it's generally very reasonable and basic things. Something Microsoft wants to push as the future of the industry, but they're too scared to talk revenue numbers of the service itself? If it's the future of the industry, theoretically, ANY player in the industry should be able to turn to that type of model. And if you are claiming to be the leader of said model, then I would think you display that by touting your numbers. Do you "want" such a future for the industry because you feel it's something the industry is naturally trending towards, and you feel confident enough to lead that pack? Or do you "want" such a future because you know you are the only game in town that can sustain the losses of such a model and want to trick competitors into bleeding themselves out of the market trying a similar approach, leaving you the only player left due to your sheer size in other areas generating vast bulks of revenue that more than offset your gaming losses?
Microsoft's actions on that note speak much louder than their own words, and the only truthful words we've gotten from them about Game Pass as a model have been through redacted court documents. Those words...have been terrible to say the least. If you like Game Pass because it gets you games for cheap, cool. But I'm not going to let some anecdotal takes stop me from seeing the larger picture, and seeing the hypocrisies and doublespeak from Microsoft on the topic.
As for "consolidation"...I don't see how anyone can genuinely think mass consolidation is a good thing for the health of the market. We have lost a lot of potential Fox productions in their being acquired by Disney, as just one example in a different market. Having a very small block of big companies controlling the suppliers and supply of most of the biggest 3P IP, tech, services etc. in the industry is a bad future. However, I think it's okay to have a purely idealistic view on acquisitions & consolidation while balancing it with a more realist viewpoint on those same things.
Saying Sony, for example, will have to do some notable consolidation of their own to ward against potential further big consolidation by Microsoft and other companies isn't so much me being a hypocrite, but acknowledging the reality of the market we are in. And me saying I would trust Sony with acquisitions much more than Microsoft isn't simply born out of stupid fanboyism; it's actually based on seeing the results of 1P & 3P co-developed content curation and studio growth, and the results thereof, we've seen between Sony and Microsoft over the past 15 years. One of them has a
MUCH better track record there, and it's not Microsoft.
www.ft.com
