Not sure if they need to acquire movie studios, but definitely investing into movies and series. These have a broader appeal that might get more people into games.
But not a fan of yet another streaming service. Would love to see them on Netflix / Amazon Prime Video instead.
A Halo Series, a Fallout Series, a Gears of War movie and a Minecraft movie are already in production. Microsoft should just continue to outsource their IP’s to movie studios. No point in trying to enter a super saturated market as the movie industry.
They don’t need to react at every move (we’ve seen Google and Amazon reactions trying to actually making games and lmao), considering the movie/tv thing already backfired spectacularly for MS, even if they tried it before the streaming era. They also already provide a movie/tv renting/selling option on the store, while Sony is removing the feature next month.
The gaming market is more profitable than the movies market. Also Gamepass has virtually no real competitors. If MS tried to enter the movie market they would be competing against 4-5 consolidated giants in this area.
Microsoft doesn’t need a movie subscription service, they should just focus on Gamepass. Microsoft already has a huge presence in gaming, the service has the potential to be more profitable and has no competition at the moment.
Imagine that the movies and gaming subscriptions market are two squares. The movies subscription square is 35% dominated by Netflix, 25% dominated by Amazon, 20% dominated by Disney, 10% dominated by HBO MAX and 10% dominated by Apple. Microsoft would enter with 0% of market share in a heavily saturated market that is less profitable than the gaming market.
Now let’s see the hypothetical gaming square. It has an area dominated by Xbox Game Pass and the rest of the square is a huge vacant land that Xbox Game Pass can easily claim with no competition. Microsoft should try to get this vacant land with no competition instead of trying to get into the saturated movies subscription market.
They are 2 trillion company. Getting a movie studio, that already makes money, isnt gonna cost them anything. And its more content to add to gamepass,store,etc if they need it at some point. Also a good way to have studios to do content based on your games without getting into weird contracts.
The only realistic move would be buying WB altogether and getting HBO Max, which also is America only and MS could turn into a global service. It’s the only way to enter in an already over-saturated market, creating from scratch a movie/tv subcription would be asinine now, expecially without a major Hollywood firm (aka zero owned content).
Yes! Movie industry will get blended into subscriptions. Having the Netflix of Games along with a Netflix competitor could create some synergies and packaged subscriptions. The two services create mindshare for one another.
Just bumping this. Granted Post is… well, the Post. But still, if true…
It would be a no for me.
Personally, I have little to no interest in movies/TV shows using video game IP. (Although I did enjoy Quantum Break).
And as others have said, it would be very expensive to even give yourself a chance of establishing a foothold in such a saturated market with such major incumbents. The risk/reward is too negatively skewed.
Stick with games, and go hard on studio acquisitions to grow the value of Game Pass.
I agree Nick. The answer has to be- yes.
I’ll also say something that you might think is crazy: Disney has to be on the table for MS.
Reasons:
For a valuation between 150m to 200m, this might be a steal. Although, that is a large figure in terms of valuation percentage, consider what AMD just did last year. AMD valued at around 100bn bought a company worth 35bn in stocks and cash. That is, they bought a company worth 30% of their valuation.
This coupled with the fact that 2025-26 will be peak tourism years, if we study how travel and tourism starts gathering steam after a pandemic.
Best time to invest.
Ownership without actually running the companies in house would be the least worst outcome if they did jump back into mass media. The problem they would need to avoid is looking like a second place alternative compared to the daftly banned PlayStation Productions. You would see it referred as console/media war fodder.
Definitely keep it away from the Xbox division. If it fails you don’t want gaming to take the fall
It certainly sounds like something they should go into , however the problem is do they have the people that can pioneer it. It would be nice if they could strike a deal to buy the game license or rights of say WB IPs. Pay 5-10 billion to own the game rights to all their IPs , buy up all their game studios as well and call it a day. They could even give WB the full license to make movies on Xbox IPs like GEARS, HALO & FABLE. In other words instead of buying one they could partner with one where they could both gain. That partnership could even result in GAMEPASS bundle with streaming services or simply it’s inclusion there.
Just imagine bundling Game Pass and Disney +, that would be crazy.
Disney does not know what they have, yet. They have upgraded themselves for cheap with the 71bn acquisition of Fox, but their Asian (Fox/Star) properties are market leaders in their own right.