Yeah, I don’t think anyone with any sense of business acumen would argue against the overall value of Valve, it’s primarily the fact that it doesn’t coincide with the strategy Xbox’s leadership are leaning into. The majority of Valve’s value stems from its PC dominance, but Xbox is building an ecosystem that by-and-large supports all of the Game Pass devices (Xbox, PC, and Cloud), so Valve would be the first purchase to specifically focus on one market, which they haven’t done. There’s no question that they have some great IP as well, sure, but none of them are anywhere near the juggernauts that some other publishers/devs have that would be far more sensible from a cost/benefit evaluation.
Would I love for Gabe and crew to “come home”? Sure, but I don’t see it happening personally and from a business standpoint, it doesn’t make much sense nor is there precedence.
I believe anyone and everyone is a target. Ubisoft, take two, Wb, paradox, japanese publishers, smaller studios mid sized studos, etc.
None of them are prohibitively expensive for Microsoft. It’s all about who is willing to do a deal and which studios would pass the vetting process. As obviously just because you offer someone a deal doesn’t mean they will take it. Not every deal makes sense for both sides.
Microsoft’s aspirations for where they are going seems like they will need many more studios then Sony. As the overall goal would be to to get to a point where if need be you could sustain gamepass yourself kind of like netflix does with there own internal production. Yes netflix still liscenes some outside shows but the bulk of the heavy lifting is internal studios. Microsoft seems to be on the same path and 23 studios doesn’t quite seem like enough to effectively achieve those aspirations.
Plus there are only so many studios and dev teams. Consolidation we are seeing seems to validate that. They aren’t an infinite resource. So it seems like the industry as a whole is playing musical chairs. The only question is who is going to be the odd man out?
I think they will continue acquiring studios big and small I just dont think (MY OPINION HERE) we will see a publisher of Zenimax size be done. But hey prove me wrong cause I wont complain.
Im on the record here multiple times saying if its one I do see them acquire its Paradox because it boosts their PC side immensely.
Ir’s strange indeed, because there are small things exclusives to PS, like challenges and things like that. Why would MS market a game with exclusive perks on PS is beyond me, lol.
WB doesn’t appear to be selling; or at least won’t until late 2023
so they could cover the hole of fighting games with arc system or cyberconnect2
take 2 and parodax are not doing well; they have lost a lot in the stock market (so this is a more opportune moment if microsoft wanted to).
Sega seems to get out of the resorts buisness; so only video games would remain (but does it make sense to take it if they buy take 2 and parodax for atlus and sonic?) better capcom at that point!
Ioi - asobo - moon - crytek don’t seem willing to sell for now.
as children’s games already have a good base with Minecraft they can always make rare a kind of game “clone of Pokemon” .
He’s too late, Doncic has already been sent off to toil away on the next Elder Scrolls. Cubans cries can be heard echoing through the American Airline Center
For a “Pokémon-style game” they might as well go with the Nexomon devs, Lime Turtle. I would argue Extinction was better than some of the recent Pokémon games.
I do recall Phil not being a big fan of the “copy them!” strategy though, so a monster capture dev might not be in the works unless leadership feels it would fill a massive gap in the catalog (I think they could do a lot with the formula).
