He wasn’t in the know about Bethesda, and the acquisition topic is one of the most difficult one for insider and journalists. If big talks are engaged, almost nobody knows about them aside from those concerned. What’s more, Amazon and Google are there and not joking around. MS won’t take a back seat and waiting for things to happen.
If Nadella himself mentions acquisitions, you can be sure it won’t just be small stuff.
This. Satya Nadella has said they will be looking to acquire and he’s incentivized in his pay to grow gamepass so I’m confident they are looking at bug studios and studios with ambition.
This is how it should be
It only makes sense. I don’t doubt they will acquire small studios too, because diversity of content is also important. But big studios are certainly considered too.
Correct
Zenimax has literally been the exception to this.
I mean, small is a relative term.
I don’t think I would’ve considered Playground or Obsidian to be “small” in terms of size.
They literally made offers on IOI, Bungie and WB.
Bungie and IOI are small compared to EA and Activision which is I believe what Jez was getting at. It would be a smaller dev/publisher who is private as major acquisitions like Bethesda would be very private, and public acquisitions/bidding wars common knowledge.
With this in mind, I think these are our best bets for anything this year:
Studio Wildcard, especially if Ark 2 is progressing well.
Asobo if they can just kiss already.
Bungie, if they can agree on a price.
Talking more in the vein of publishers.
How about Thatgamecompany as a smaller acquisition, they made Flow, Flower and Journey.
Small on a scale of Asobo. Of cause they won’t get a entire publisher after Bethesda…
I like to pretend that game doesn’t exist lol. No idea why Nintendo even funded it.
If we’re talking about small acquisitions then I hope they grab Hello Games (England) – No Man’s Sky, The Last Campfire.
I’ll keep on saying it and scream it from the rooftops…
Can’t go wrong with Tripwire Interactive.
Killing Floor 3 with a campaign? Sounds awesome.
Man Eater 2 with a bigger scope? Sounds killer.
The one large publisher I believe Xbox can’t afford to lose is Capcom (outside of the juggernauts that won’t sell to anyone like EA & UBI). Capcom has Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, Marvel vs Capcom, Dead Rising, Dragon’s Dogma, Onimusha, Mega Man, just to name a few franchises. If XGS does buy another large Pub Capcom makes the most sense followed by Sega. XGS has almost no Japanese presence and Capcom makes some of the most popular Japanese games in the west.
Outside of Japanese studios, which may or may not be a realistic acquisition, what are the best Studios with MAJOR IP that could be acquired by MS?
Here are 5 that came to mind, ranked in order of relevance(IMO):
Valve - Half Life, Counter Strike, Portal, DOTA, Left for Dead
Eidos\Crystal Dynamics - Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Just Cause, Thief
Bungie - Destiny, Matter
Remedy - Alan Wake, Control, Quantum Break, Max Payne
Supergiant games - Hades, Pyre, Transistor, Bastion
There are a lot of smaller studios with good IP that would certainly be worth acquiring, however none of them would be on the level of the studios mentioned above. A few of them that come to mind:
Moon - Ori
Asobo - Plague Tale
Hello Games - No man’s sky
Playdead - inside, Limbo
WB & CDPR are obvious omissions from this list but while both are\have great studios, neither have strong IP ownership
CDPR has licensing agreements for Witcher & Cyberpunk, nonetheless they are a fantastic studio which is why they would be worth acquiring IMO
WB has 6 fantastic studios and possibly some good IP, headlined by Mortal Kombat & whatever Monolith’s new IP potentially is.
IMO an acquisition of WB would be more about the studio talent & possible WB IP license than IP ownership
Who else (not a Japanese studio) would be considered a major IP acquisition, that is realistic?
Supermassive Games - Dark Pictures Anthology, Until Dawn (owned by Sony)
DONTNOD - Life Is Strange (owned by SE), Tell Me Why (owned by Xbox), Vampyr, Remember Me
Crytek - Ryse, Crysis (EA?), Hunt: Showdown, Cryengine
Tripwire - Killing Floor, Maneater, Rising Storm
Mediatonic - Fall Guys, Gears Pop! (Xbox)
Behaviour Interactive - Dead By Daylight
The Behemoth - Castle Crashers, Battleblock Theater, Pit People, Alien Hominid
I’ll edit more in that I think of
I think that there’s a chance that Supermassive Games its going to be bought by stadia. They are making an exclusive for the platform rn.
I’ve seen some names thrown around in this thread, so I decided to check for the public ones and list their Market Cap to feed the discussion.
Fun fact: Microsoft’s Market Cap is above 1 trillion dollars.
Microsoft really should buy remedy and launch alan wake 2 :angryping: