Xbox Acquisition |OT2| Something, Something, Snowball Effect

Continuing the discussion from Xbox Acquisition |OT| - So We’re Back to Making Lists, Huh? - #10160 by DeoGame.

Previous discussions:

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And we’re back. Lol.

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It’s a brand new day, and there has been no discussion elsewhere about acquisitions.

/s

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I guess we should do this. Paging @Knottian

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Give us all the studios! ALL OF THEM.

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Did the system just auto close and repost a new OT with zero interaction from a user?

Man I love Discourse.

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It did. It didn’t carry over the OP but pretty much everything else is in order. Great system.

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child get GIF

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That’s fantastic, what a smartly made system.

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Thanks friend, been away all day for house work with the wife. Hope that’s a good enough title :wink:

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Yahtzee!

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I still believe Japan is somewhere xbox wants a bigger presence. Hell Phil made it obvious when discussing Tango.

Managing Japan is going to be very difficult. Buying a publisher would solve a lot of issues there.

After Japan I’m not sure what other locations they would want development presence. Maybe Poland?

They are almost setup perfectly for a steady stream of content. One or two more moves

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I don’t think they’ve mentioned it specifically but if you look at relationships they appear to be building, South Korea may be a target, although I’m not sure they’d want to be near all that conflict in the region.

I always wonder about India. It has not been a gaming hot spot, but there’s a huge growing population and the economy there had been rapidly improving (idk how covid impacted that). They also don’t have the issues that trying to get games into China, so they represent an interesting potential growth market imo.

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Console gaming is miniscule in India.

PC gaming is present, and mobile gaming is king.

Localized content is the key for India. And you are dealing with 20 official languages, you will have to pick and choose the top 5 languages for localizing the content. You just have to just look at Disney Plus, Netflix and Amazon Prime investing in original content for India. The market size is humungous, but it is not homogenized. You cannot address 1,300 million people simultaneously. Yeah - that is one thousand three hundred million people. :slightly_smiling_face:

Only the sport of cricket approaches ridiculous numbers that would be the envy of even NFL or the Champions League in Europe (600m+ total viewers sometimes.)

Covid has impacted India heavily, but people are worried more about jobs and livelihood than health risks. Although India is equal to UK on the GDP charts, that number is inadequate for a country that has 20 times the population of UK. The number of people who are working class or lower is super high. So, you will see inequalities easily.

Almost like the US, India has a diverse and well developed movie industry. This should Ideally translate into a rich game development culture, but that side is still nascent. All it takes sometimes is one good development studio that paves the way for others. Hopefully, MS, Take2, EA will incubate some studios in the near future here.

There are support studios, but that number is under 10. Mostly asset creation, I suppose. There are mobile game dev studios, but I am not counting them.

From a pure strategy perspective, if you are able to work out a market like India - every other market will be dwarfed immediately. Including US+Japan+Europe+UK+Korea combined. Ask Disney - who have become content kings for India overnight with their acquisition of Star Sports.

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Hello all

I’ve been reading this thread for the last few months and have been very much enjoying everyone’s contributions.

My work is somewhat related to this and I really love that gaming industry M&A is becoming ultra-relevant, as it means I can spend ages reading about stuff I love all day. :grin:

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This.

Also this is why I’m rooting for Ubisoft Mumbai/Pune to succeed at the Prince of Persia remake because it’s the first fully Indian made AAA game in history. Its also a rather odd thing for Ubisoft to give such a big IP of theirs to a very inexperienced (on homegrown development side) studio but I guess the game fits them rather well due to the setting and it being a remake more so than a full fledged next entry in the series. People complain when these studios aren’t given big projects to work on, and people complain when these studios are given these big projects to work on. Ubi India just gotta prove it now.

Although the initial reveal didn’t go as well received, I’m glad they delayed it but the game didn’t really look that bad to begin with, just some details in characters were missing or odd. They can focus now on trying to get all of that to a top notch standard and hope it does well commercially and critically, it shall be an important milestone for us.

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Someone who works at an hedge fund as a portfolio manager in Poland says that Microsoft is planning to buy a publisher in Asia.

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Which Movie hero’s IP should Xbox invest in as a parmanent exclusive?

Marvel:

  1. I wanted Iron Man due to personal favourite but now he is dead and I don’t know if it would be a good idea or not.

  2. Captain America would be the best for US market. Also, the hero isn’t a overpowered fellow so making it would be easier from game mechanics point of view. With the captain’s sheild we may have our GoW 2018’s throw axe moment. The story could also have an emotional touch.

  3. A Thor’s game would be great and tough to make at the same time. It will definitely have appeal due to its nature of being on Asgard and Earth (Space exploration maybe?) The game could be the toughest to make. There will be two main environment Earth and Asgard. Thor is an oveerpowered hero, which makes it harder to create mechanics for. Thor can also fly/jump. Then there is Thor’s hammer. And he also is the god thunder. This would be toughest game to make which i could think of.

  4. Hulk game could be tricky. Nature of Hulk is angry and not really a good trait to make a Hero out of. They could make a story where Bruce is trying to find peace. They could make it a forest simulator In the mountains of Himalayas. Hulk fight with yeeti could be epic. Try to bring the soft side of the Hulk in the story.

  5. Wanda-Vision is a popular hit these days. The character development of Wanda has so much potential. We could have magic power game with spells and what not. A great female protagonist. Wanda can fly has well. Maybe add Vision here and there in the story or for sequeals.

  6. Black Panther have good potential to have great melee game mechanics. Concept around vibranium and the whole wakanda will be full of nature and advance technology.

Black widow, hawk eye, falcoon may have there own episodic or short story games.

DC:

Don’t know much about DC. A recent good movie was Aquaman. A world completely inside water has a great potential for new experience. It could be challenging and something unique.

What could be your choices everyone?

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