(I’m not saying I think T2 is plausible or desireable, to clarify)
Rockstar is the flagship, since GTA is an absolute titan and Red Dead is huge (although not GTA big). Max Payne and Bully are reasonably big but distant 3rd/4th after the Big Two.
2k Sports is pretty big but probably tied to multiplat.
2k games (outside of sports) has:
Bioshock (big)
Civilization (fairly big)
Mafia (fairly big)
X-Com (fairly big)
Borderlands (publishing rights on the 3 mainline games; possible right of refusal on future titles but unknown)
Private division is a small smattering of things, not very important. Kerbal Space Program 2 might be reasonably big. The Outer Worlds is still Private Division published.
Most of the valuation is unquestionably tied up in Rockstar, otherwise the company would be more like in the 5-8 billion range rather than the 20 billion range.
Because there is no guarantee there is a market for 1 billion gamers. Netflix is basically ubiquitous and has 200 million subscribers as of the end of 2020.
If they keep telling us that then it tells me they have done the market analysis and research to be confident in throwing that out there. A nearly 2 Trillion dollar company doesn’t just say things like that, they are letting the shareholders know thats what they believe they can do and should be working towards.
It’s not stupid with money. That’s why I specifically pointed to Sega and Take 2 as the best buys. Take 2 gives you one of the Top 3 most popular franchises of all time, one of the top 25 and then a bunch of great franchises in addition. They add a popular sport franchise that they can put on gamepass.
This is the type of move that brings in 25+ million gamepass subscribers in short order, in addition to pretty much locking in anyone already subscribed. 25 million gamepass subscribers is worth 3-5 billion per year. They also get all the money coming in on micro transactions, additional hardware sales, game sales etc. They’re likely looking at a less than 3 year payback period overall just from money this acquisition brings in.
You can make that same argument with EA, activision / blizzard, and ubisoft. Their biggest games are live service games, that can also count as platforms looking at gta rp, that thrive and profit on having the most players bases. Profitability on gta, call of duty, fifa etc. goes significantly down on being stuck on one platform.
Not when it can be a major catalyst for xcloud. Xcloud factors to be the largest Xbox platform long term. As Phil said with Bethesda, they’re aiming to make those the most played Bethesda games ever. The same would be true of Take 2 and GTA 6 for example.
I was making an argument why microsoft wouldn’t be buying companies that rely on live service games that cost 10+ billion.
At this point it feels like the argument has shifted from “look what x developer could do with unlimited budget and creative freedom” to let’s make one of the top 10 games exclusive which already have the biggest budgets just to make xbox better, which I don’t agree with.
I actually want xbox to buy sega because I played both yakuza like a dragon and alien isolation and they show great promise definitely some of the best games I’ve played. Like a dragon was great but the city was small, they could go a lot bigger and creative assembly could go to other genres like horror again but for original ip. That would be great. Sega has a great stable of studios that could be even better.
I think it’d make more sense to either go for Back 4 Blood (Turtle Rock) or Killing Floor (Tripwire) if we’re talking about acquiring a studio or funding a title.
I disagree, especially with the Disney+ comparison because Sony simply does not the output capabilities that Xbox is already showing its capable of. Sure, they may get a bunch of immediate subs but they won’t retain them because there has to be a constant content stream, and unlike Microsoft, Sony doesn’t have the revenue stream to compete with a consistent level of third-party moneyhats to bring content to their service. As it stands, Sony is still operating with the old-hat method of snagging a big timed third-party exclusive every year or two precisely because they don’t have the output to fill their calendar year. I mean look at 2021 where it appears as though Ratchet will be the only big Sony release (I fear for you if you think Horizon and GoW is coming out). You don’t build a substantial subscription model on that type of output. I would argue they would have to in order to compete the absolute monolith Xbox is becoming… but for all the “dumb mistakes” Xbox makes, it’s arguably true that Sony makes more of them, especially when it comes to reading future trends.
Apologies, I should have been more specific: of course the acquisitions that Sony does make belong in here as my previous defining characteristic of those that have an effect on Xbox applies. It’s the myriad of speculation about Sony targets, their “response” to Xbox, and whatnot, that then devolve into a generalist Sony first-party discussion that I would argue doesn’t belong in this particular thread: this is titled the Xbox Acquisition OT, not the Sony first-party discussion or the Sony Acquisition OT. There are Sony threads on this forum for precisely that reason; I’m simply trying to moderate and compartmentalize the threads.
In the latest Defining Duke podcast, at around 22:10 Karak said: “I have heard that there is one big company, you know (to Matty) the one big company, but we… I don’t know if that’s happening” to which Matty nodded and agreed. Makes me believe that least those two know. Seems that the talks are pretty early. Could be bs
I don’t think either of them would put their reputation on the line over a BS acquisition. They’ve both been doing this for a long time (Matty even gets insider stuff from Shrier).
Well, all I know is they both think Techland is off the table (then again, just because they know of one acquisition target doesn’t mean they’d know all of them).
If it were a public company, we’d know about it I’d assume.
I’m not a professional is M&A, but I’d assume we’d know if Bloober Team got bought out by anyone at this point (they did already open up bidding for themselves).
Nordisk Film and WB (I believe) would have to say something publicly if they were selling Avalanche/WB Games.
So with that said…
Supergiant Games makes the most sense to me, if this is the one Karak was talking about before. With Nick/Speshal Ed mentioning Hades coming to GP this year at some point (and it being a Switch console exclusive at the moment) that would cover the “confusion around exclusivity” aspect.
I think GSC Gameworld would make a lot of sense too, but they are based in the Ukraine which could be politically problematic, but maybe not.
Ebb Software (SCORN) and Neon Digital (The Ascent) would be good grabs too, but might be too soon for them.
So yeah, I’m thinking Supergiant Games (which means it’ll probably be someone else I never thought of).
If Xbox is looking at the top 20 games being sold (Benji sales), there is ONLY one non-publisher company that jumps up and has a super strong legacy with Xbox.
