Is this thread not essentially the same as the one we’ve had since August? Just seems like an unnecessary one when these very things are being discussed there.
I’m just speculating, but Nadella & the MS Board think the entire gaming sector might be 5x bigger by 2030 and if they can secure at 20% piece of that pie, it might mean increasing their currently quarterly EBITA from $10 billion to $15 billion just on the strength of gaming alone. That doesn’t even account for Surface hardware becoming a big hit and other things we can’t even imagine right now.
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Also it’s proven that Game Pass leads to some amount of permanent game purchases. This is inevitable.
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True. Because you can basically try out so many games for a $10 monthly rental. Love Game Pass!!!
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Traditional Music publishers tried to ignore streaming and now they have to beg to make peanuts off Spotify.
Traditional Cable channels tried to ignore streaming and now they’re all launching their own services, but Netflix has already taken a dominant lead
Traditional movie studios tried to ignore streaming and now they’re all launching their own services. From many reports Disney+ made good money off of Mulan so maybe they got ahead of the curve.
Now it’s gaming’s turn. Microsoft is making their bet. Seems likely others will follow, eventually.
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Which is even better than Netflix, which forces you to subscribe monthly for the entire catalog. You don’t get the option of buying individual titles.
They actually said in the CNBC interview yesterday that they weren’t touching ZeniMax because it works well as is. People just missed that in their rush to breathlessly tell us all how concerned they were about ZeniMax employees…
So concerned they rushed to Twitter to tell us about the concern instead of watching a 4 minute video.
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Not really a good comparison because Spotify is fucking trash for what they do to music artists. Disney is… Well, Disney. I get this is inevitable and gaming was next, but yeah, hopefully MS doesn’t end up like those two.
Agreed.
I don’t blame Spotify. I think the general public just doesn’t care for music like it cares about games. Basically the market value for music has gone down to zero.
This is another thing I learned about recently. Netflix also used to provide option to buy dvds and shit to “own” the shows or movies they had on. But look where it is now, only streaming. Games are a different beast and ownership here matters a lot more than movies or series. I can see MS just dropping the option to buy games permanently once Game Pass is big enough that they don’t need to rely on game sales anymore, but I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.
Sorry, no. Fuck Spotify. They pay pennies to artists and then come around and say artists should not be taking so much much time for releasing music.
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Yes there seems to be a big difference between when a streaming market is being controlled by a content creator (say Netflix or even Disney who have to keep creators happy to make quality content) or a non-content creator (Spotify who are ruthless with the artists).
With regards to gaming’s future that’s likely the difference between having a company that is heavily invested in creating actual gaming content (Microsoft) vs an outsider who is just in it for the market opportunity (Stadia).
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Also if the music industry operated the same way as gaming, music labels would have their own streaming services and digital stores. Yet non-content creators like Apple, Google & Spotify control the industry. SMH
That’s great imo
Brb going to become a game dev. Lol I want that MS money. 
Asobo and ??? are probably next.
I’d say DontNod especially since they’re apparently a large developer with several hundred staff and can probably work on a game per year.
We really should take a poll, would people rather MS buy a publisher ei Capcom Sega or buy a 4-6 independent developers
Pros with buying a publisher is the multitudes of IP’s you’d get as we’ve seen with Bethesda
Cons are the community would see you as a giant cuck and would get you negative press, also they’re far more expensive. I think MS is fine with Bethesda because its the first time they bought out a large publisher. But if they pulled this again with another large publisher they’d really get eaten alive by the media. Then again they already do get slammed over the dumbest stuff by journalist anyway.
I’d say go with 4-6 independent developers. Most of them have at least 1 IP and it’d be much easier to manage and grow them and integrate them into Xbox. Buying Asobo/Techland/IOI/Bloober/People can Fly sounds far more appealing then buying Sega, Capcom, Square Enix etc. Especially since those deals would probably be finalized faster, and they’d combined wouldn’t come any where near a big publisher price like Zenimaxx. Hell 4A only cost THQ 45 Million so even at 45 million a pop you’re getting a bunch of quality devs for under 300 million
Zeni was apparently in the works since 2018 and it still won’t be finalized until Summer 2021 so that’s nearly 3 years for this acquisition.
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" Xbox parent Microsoft generates about $1 billion of free cash flow each week, making its $7.5 billion deal for video-game publisher ZeniMax an easy call "
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For the meme I would say they should get From Software. I would want them to help out the smaller devs. Not many left and I think THQ is going to snap up more and more. I think Bloober would be a nice get for MS. I agree with buying another publisher would be a mistake but is there really another one that was on a game underperforming streak like Bethesda? Besides main titles in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. #SavePlayer1 for real this time 
I love how this just shuts down the desperate fanboy and gaming media narrative of how MS needs to release Bethesda games on other platforms to pay for the acquisition. Nah. MS is good.
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