Buy and grow Paradox Interactive as a 3rd publishing arm, commit to PC (even more), normalize m+kb on console/cloud, find the best possible way(s) to map PC-oriented games to controllers, and let the players choose what to use while playing.
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Could not agree more, Paradox would be a fantastic get that doesn’t exclude the possibility of others (due to cost and focus) whilst greatly encouraging diversity and PC growth.
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Square Enix. Not my first choice, but meh. WB …I could see MS acquire some studios, but not the whole shebang.
Stop derailing the Netflix/HBO Max thread, with this acquisition stuff
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That is not how it works. They explain the overall growth strategy, not the finer points.
Besides the top 5 - MS, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook - don’t do a lot of explaining of the finer points to the shareholders, because they themselves exert a lot of control both on the shareholders and on the board of directors. Famously, Steve Jobs used to hand pick the board of directors himself.
Also - Most of the major shareholders are from MS, anyway. So Ballmer, Gates, Paul Allen’s Estate, Brad Smith and, now, Nadella - on the individual side,. Besides a huge no. of MS employees having stocks in MS. And among institutional investors you have Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard being the top shareholders.
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While this isnt a sexy console acquisition (even if they put the work to get them on xbox) it would be a massive coup and show of faith from the xbox team to PC gaming.
Id do it in a heartbeat.
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You are overvaluing the power of the board.
These questions are asked by Phil and his M&A due diligence team, and Nadella/Hood – if and only if - Phil wants their view. The board is not in the picture for finer points. They are there to guide the CEO.
PS: Phil is Executive VP. He has an amazingly high level of power, that the forum seem to forget. Coupled with the fact that he is in Exec level position in a trillion dollar company.
Very interesting information. It’s always fascinating to hear from someone who works with M&A on how all that works. As you hear so much speculation and armchair quarterbacking. nice to hear from someone in the trenches.
They aren’t doing movies into hbo max next year like they are this year. Atleast as of right now. The last report i read they were going back to theatrical only releases next year assuming things stay the course in regards to the pandemic. So it obviously isn’t working as well for them as it is for disney.
Whether the loss of sales from theatrical relases effect how or pushes themto sell the gaming division has yet to be seen. I think it depends on how things are billed out. If the money lost ends up on the financials for the new merged company it could push them more to sell. However, the CEO of the merged company seems to not care about gaming division and is known for selling off things aren’t the focus of the business.
For a well oiled highly profitable machine like MS - whose stock is listed as “buy and forget – or long term guarantees”, I can imagine their investor calls are a snooze fest.
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Quick OT but I think they had to change day in date on HBO max because they could have got sued because they didn’t alert anybody that they were doing that decision. That’s why Christopher Nolan and many creatives went off on them. Also when i say sued i mean from the smaller companies that invest into the film as well as it would have writing in the contract saying how long a theatrical release would be for before it goes into streaming blah blah blah.
They get good numbers on HBO max but Warner media as a whole is a shit show of a company.
But to point it onto Gaming wise i think it shows just how Important of a job these lawyers do for companies with Contracts for games and so on
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When I say ‘the board’ I largely mean Nadella and Hood, but everyone would get to input. Spencer is in a stronger position as a board member than when Xbox were a subdivision of Windows, but he doesn’t have the keys to the warchest and the right to sign off billion plus acquisitions without approval.
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Just out of curiosity who now owns 4A games? (The guys who did Metro) Was it Focus Home?
I’m saying this as I thought those guys would have been a solid get for XBOX
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Embracer Group
The important thing to remember that Phil said this months ago even before the Bethesda acquisition that he had the backing of Nadella/Hood to make some bold decisions.
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The original GSC team is still up for grabs, though. Their geographical location is slightly problematic.
4A was the team that split from GSC World.
PS - Embracer owns 4A.
You’re still spinning this narrative after the myriads of responses, or Satya opening the last three Enterprise events discussing Xbox (Ignite) and having a press briefing reiterating how much they’re ‘all in on Xbox’, as well as reiterating that the XGS family will continue to grow (after the completion of the Bethesda acquisition as it’s important to note)…
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While i agree with this 100%
The thought of ms owning hairbrain schemes aka fasfa studio again and having more turn based shadow run and battle tech games makes me so happy.
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Absolutely agree on one aspect of this - get Konami’s IPs in some way. I had mentioned this in the past avatar of this thread.
This establishes a deep link to well loved past Japanese IPs.
Have Igarashi play the role of an executive producer, and allow (say!) Ninja Theory to reboot the Castlevania franchise – or even Rare, if they are interested in doing that. (That Everwild art style is out of this world!)
The idea is to go the route of FF7R while re-establishing Castlevania as a premier IP.
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OT3 is close. 