The Verge: Microsoft considered acquiring Bungie and Sega to bolster Xbox Game Pass, internal emails show

[Lord Mittens]

No, directly from FTC trial website

https://files.cand.uscourts.gov/files/23-cv-02880_FTC_v_Microsoft/RX1141%20REDACTED.pdf

Gah damn, information overload

 

[Mobile Suit Gooch]

Can't beat them? out buy them.

 

[Dabaus]

No, directly from FTC trial website and posted on Era

https://files.cand.uscourts.gov/files/23-cv-02880_FTC_v_Microsoft/RX1141%20REDACTED.pdf

Was the Matt booty email about spending Sony out of business also on the ftc website?

 

[Dabaus]

They also tried Square around the same time as Sega. Phil is trying to pass this as PC/mobile to dimwit Nutella but we all know the real target is to choke Sony out of important IPs and force people on Xbox.

Where does it say they tried square?

 

[Danja1187]

They were also interested in Ember Lab after they worked with Sony for Kena. Also Team Cherry Hollow Knight.

Why hasn't Playstation bought Embers Lab tho??.

 

[Satoru]

Hello Games lmao. They don't want there to be any competition out there for No Man's Skyrim.

They couldn't buy them so they just plagiarised the game

 

[Nhomnhom]

They couldn't buy them so they just plagiarised the game

Just like what they did with BioShock then.

 

[Satoru]

Just like what they did with BioShock then.

Yep. Disgusting behaviour. Reminds me if all those shitty modern pop musicians that sample the crap out of old songs, steal entire vibes and ideas, but change just enough so that they can get away with it in court.

 

[BigMclargeHuge]

I imagine Sega and or the Japanese government told them to fuck off.

 

[Gods&Monsters]

I imagine Sega and or the Japanese government told them to fuck off.

I don't think so. Sega probably already accepted the offer and they got Rovio so Phil could sell it better to Nadella. The target is Sony but Phil uses PC/mobile as a front forcing Sega to buy Rovio.

Atlus RPGS and Yakuza are a tough sell on mobile. That Rovio acquisition was so random for Sega but now it makes sense.

 

[VillaiN]

So they want to buy every1.

Just lol. Not happening. AB better stay independent so ms gets put in its place.

 

[Yobo]

Why hasn't Playstation bought Embers Lab tho??.

Cause who says they want to sell at this point?

Kena was their first game

 

[BigMclargeHuge]

I don't think so. Sega probably already accepted the offer and they got Rovio so Phil could sell it better to Nadella. The target is Sony but Phil uses PC/mobile as a front forcing Sega to buy Rovio.

Atlus RPGS and Yakuza are a tough sell on mobile. That Rovio acquisition was so random for Sega but now it makes sense.

Doubt it,but okay.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

Don't forget, they apparently made Square-Enix an offer, too.

Out of the Japanese publishers the only one they would have any realistic shot with is Sega-Sammy, but even there we are talking a less than 5% chance. What idiot cheerleaders for MS's mass consolidation strategy don't understand is, these deals are about WAY more than what amount of money Microsoft can flash in the face of a publisher.



The timing for this actually lines up with your claims, as the email was November 2020, and clearly continues off from the 2019 email oh I mean "thought experiment".

MS likely approached Bungie with an offer for acquisition, and Bungie rejected. They might've then told Sony about that offer, and Sony made their own with Bungie stipulating certain conditions such as continued multiplatform support, and Sony agreed.

I'm very certain Bungie made those same stipulations to Microsoft, who very likely rejected them, and thus the deal fell apart. What we've learned what MS wanted to do with Minecraft all along more than supports that theory, too.



Major Nelson still posts there so you likely aren't far off.



Yeah. The theme seems to be, they initially did smaller studio acquisitions thinking XGS management was sufficient. Instead most of the games from those studios are taking forever or have ran into a lot of problems. Perfect Dark, Everwild, Fable, State of Decay 3 just to name a few. Rather than firing Matt Booty and getting someone else in charge, MS just wrote out an email part of a plan initialized in 2019 to "put PlayStation out of business".

And that plan obviously includes attempts to acquire 3P publishers with the strongest relationships to Sony. That's why they approached Square-Enix with an offer. That's why they were trying to do the same with Sega (when that one failed, it rolled into a strategic partnership with the Azure department, with Xbox getting obvious benefits). It's why they purchased Zenimax off the rumor a paywall-locking unconfirmed source of Sony looking to do some type of deal for Starfield.

These publisher acquisitions, for MS, are really about a combination of locking 3P support into their ecosystem over all other competitors through the surefire means of just outright buying them, and fully controlling "the supply and the supplier", the supply being the 3P games and the supplier being the 3P developer & publisher for that developer. Every additional 3P publisher they acquire is one less a competitor like Sony can rely on towards working on software, partnerships etc. to the benefit of the PS platform and its customers.

More 3P publishers under MS's belt also allows them to leverage their IP, technologies and resources to force competitors into lopsided agreements with questionable terms, force competitors to relinquish on the few remaining distinguishing factors that give them a competitive advantage (such as certain confidential hardware design plans, if the competitor needs software to be ready for it Day 1, as MS can just access those design & market plans through their studios, kind of like copying someone else's homework to cheat), and create a dynamic where competitors are heavily dependent on another direct competitor for content access.

If Microsoft didn't have a history of leveraging their money advantages and software advantages to squeeze competitors out through anticompetitive practices like predatory pricing and price shifting, didn't violate behavioral remedies rather regularly, and didn't have a 2019 email stating a plan to drive PlayStation out of business backed up with big 3P publisher acquisitions (plus talk of buying more after ABK, and new evidence showing other targets they approached before and would very likely attempt buying again in the near future), then maybe these concerns wouldn't need to exist. However, the reality is that MS have done those things, and there's way more reason to suspect they'd do it again versus just suddenly stopping.

After all, it's in their corporate DNA.

I jumped in the comments section of some Xbox YouTuber today and it felt like MS was the victim in all of this.

These people seem to think that Phil has some deep connection with gaming and he is sincere for some reason. Obviously, MS is just doing whatever Sony was attempting to do to them, which makes no sense, there has never been an attempt to consolidate the industry anywhere close to this, like imagine if Sega had tried to buy Capcom, Konami, Namco, EA, Hudson and Square, along a few more, between 1989 and 1992 so they can control which third party games are coming to the SNES or TG-16?...

 

[Nhomnhom]

One thing absent in all these email exchanges is any form of self-reflection or mention about doing a better job producing games. It's all about shortcuts they could take and paths to becoming dominant/relevant in the gaming market without having to make good games.

 

[Dabaus]

I keep seeing people say they tried to buy square but I haven’t seen it in any of the revealed emails? What happens now?

 

[Nhomnhom]

I keep seeing people say they tried to buy square but I haven’t seen it in any of the revealed emails? What happens now?

They just listed Square as one of the options they were looking into like they listed Nintendo and Sony and people are probably extrapolating from that.

SE would damage PlayStation a lot more then Sega but MS probably just couldn't make it happen.

 

[Gods&Monsters]

They just listed Square as one of the options they were looking into like they listed Nintendo and Sony and people are probably extrapolating from that.

SE would damage PlayStation a lot more then Sega but MS probably just couldn't make it happen.

No, there was an email from Phil with the same title as the one for Sega, asking to enter in M&A Strategy with Square. Idas talked about it.

I think the email was redacted but we saw the one for Sega so it must be similar.

 

[Nhomnhom]

No, there was an email from Phil with the same title as the one for Sega, asking to enter in M&A Strategy with Square. Idas talked about it.

I think the email was redacted but we saw the one for Sega so it must be similar.

Even worse then, they are completely out touch.

 

[Dabaus]

They just listed Square as one of the options they were looking into like they listed Nintendo and Sony and people are probably extrapolating from that.

SE would damage PlayStation a lot more then Sega but MS probably just couldn't make it happen.

Can anyone post a link to this? I’ve yet to have seen it for myself.