For what it’s worth I just don’t think capcom is on the menu at the moment. They have a good relationship with Nintendo and also are porting resident evil village to be able to play on iPads or some apple devices. I’d say capcom probably won’t get bought by anyone simply because they have a overall good relationship with everyone and Nintendo and now Apple I think would bid heavy to keep them at least out of Microsoft’s clutch’s.
Square enix from what I can tell is literally begging Sony to buy them.
IMO I don't think a company having good relations with all the platform holders prevents the possibility of them being acquired by one. It just comes down to if it makes sense for the money, and if they can integrate together culturally workplace-wise. Also other things, like what redundancies would have to be considered for phasing out and insurance/benefits being maintained or bettered for employed staff, stuff like that.
From a pure finances/revenue POV a company like Capcom doesn't seemingly need to be acquired, that's true. But they'll always be looking at how their revenue and profit margins are trending, relative to development costs, staffing costs, costs for maintaining insurance policies and equipment operations, distribution & logistics, you name it. If it starts looking too tight, that might make them more open to things like acquisitions, or possibly taking out a loan or two from a banking institution beforehand (or just opening up their stocks for buyers, tho I don't know how companies do that type of stuff on the Nikkei Index).
Yeah, the game market in general has grown 10 fold in the last 10-15 years and the budgets for AAA gaming have grown also. There was a time not too long ago when Final Fantasy and Metal Gear set the bar for cinematic games and they still only sold 4-6 million copies. Sonys big 1st party is doing that in preorders alone almost.
Ps4 only sold 10 million consoles in Japan, yet it went on to sell almost 117 million globally, now do the math. If the ps5 and to a far greater extent the xbox is struggling in japan now what do people think will be left of the gaming market there. Nintendo is going to carry the entire japanese development industry on its back with super outdated hardware?
Not only that but its not even completely certain what the next iteration of Nintendos console will be so 3rd parties aren’t gonna hitch their wagon to them. The future of console gaming in Japan is just looking bleak and the publishers that will survive will all continue to move westward. The smaller niche publishers maybe able to rely on nintendo but thats really it.
That's a good way to look at it tbh; for all we know, the Switch could be an anomaly. I'd like to think not, but it's definitely possible a Switch 2 could see a drop in overall install base. I think of something like going from the Famicom/NES to Super Famicom/SNES which by many accounts was not only a superior system tech-wise but also library-wise, but it still saw a drop of 11 million units gen over gen to the Famicom/NES.
How much of that can be put on performance of competitors or just a shifting trend in the console gaming market at the time, particularly in Japan, I don't think anyone can say. But it happened regardless. We kinda saw a similar trending down in their handheld sales; even excusing the DS for being a freak of nature, IIRC LTD for 3DS was roughly less than half that of the DS. The Switch is closing in on 100 million but would a more traditional Nintendo handheld & console-esque Wii U successor had done similar numbers combined or slightly more, or something less?
I kinda think that's one of the (among other) useful purposes of the Steam Deck; if Valve could pump up supply numbers by a few magnitudes we could gauge to some capacity what the market for a mainstream "second generation" Switch-like device could be once the novelty of a device's hybrid nature starts to wear off. Gotta stress "kind of" tho given Steam Deck isn't a hybrid in the fashion of a Switch, but it's still got a unique selling hook for a handheld device perhaps one that could be considered more restrained than that of the Switch's, however.
The main difference between now and during the PS4 launch is that -in addition to the current supply issue- is the digital spent on PS4 was 20% then and is 80% now:
Okay, didn't know the digital-to-physical ratio was that high already for PS consoles. That should be roughly within territory with where it is on Xbox platforms, no?
I think in light of that, it makes things like the UK physical sales charts look even more impressive. Those charts, FWIW, the actual volume of software being moved on shelves in those places probably isn't that much, but it's probably a good indicator that those same games are seeing exponentially more sales in the digital space on top of it.
