As funny as the monopoly talks are, considering Xbox is miles away from that. I wouldn’t want Xbox to buy more publishers, unless those third party publishers go downhill and are creatively bankrupt and treat their developers like dirt.
With people wondering if Sony will respond with buying a publisher and if they do I think they might look at buying Embracer Group.
The reason why I say that is because you’d get shooter companies like Gearbox and Free Radical. They’d also get RPG studios in Piranha Bytes and Warhorse Studios. Then there is action/adventure companies like Volition.
So I can see Sony wanting that company.
Half is me referring to calls for them buying Take Two, EA, and others. Not from Activision Blizzard, which I am fine with.
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Absolutely! Competition is the best thing for the industry.
Complete domination can lead to anti-consumer practices due to lack of good alternatives.
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Wow. You have perfectly summarized how I feel about the plot of every MGS. Ha.
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It’s off topic since it’s not acquisitions, but perhaps MS can consider long term Game Pass partnerships with major companies (like they have with EA and potentially Ubi) as opposed to buying them out right.
I am confident in saying that Embracer is not looking to sell at this moment in time unless it is too good to turn down. They seem to be leveraging the company to reach a point where they have at least a few massive hits from among their many studios, and then sell it to a big tech company for a massive sum.
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I agree with this and think Embracer wants to be a big player, but I think this would be a company Sony might want to look at.
Plus Embracer has the rights to Dark Horse and those comics would be perfect for movie conversions.
I forgot about that lol. One of the most random acquisition I’ve ever seen.
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Phils comments about trusting Nintendo and Sony in gaming and not Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Tencent signal s that Microsoft will aquire more so others who aren’t trustworthy don’t get them.
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There is almost* no bad choices among publishers.
I kind of struggle to say which i would favour.
*Konami
I think that is a bit of PR fluff from Phil there. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft is ok with Nintendo and Sony because they feel they can have the upper hand and don’t see them as existential threats.
The same cannot be said for the others as they do have the financial muscle to challenge Microsoft, and Amazon and Apple in particular are direct competitors to Microsoft in a number of other areas.
Phil may personally believe that but when he is wearing his business hat it is a different reason.
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Konami would be good from an IP perspective and you also would get Hudson Soft games too.
The only bad thing about buying the game rights from Konami is that you’d have to start up new game studios, in Japan.
Now I don’t know if this would happen or not, but if it did, that would be cool.
That being said the only way it would happen is if Konami just sells their game rights, because Konami does a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with video games at all.
It’s actually never been illegal to be dominant. Google has a dominant search engine for decades. No one blinked an eye because they provided a good service. What got them in trouble was they started fudging the search results to favor google and their partners. People talk about MS being anti-competitive but it’s been sony that has used their dominate position to keep third parties off other platforms. They have done it for decades and yet no one is bothered…
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That’s reasonable, but I have no problem with changing the status quo TBH. Let Sony trail behind.
When I’m thinking about additions it’s kind of hard. The type of games Xbox lacks at the moment, aren’t exactly the ones a lot of independent studios make.
I absolutely love Castlevania and if they can only go for the IP’s I’m all for it. But as whole company it would be horrible and absolutely not worth the money.
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Wait. How did a Swedish video game conglomerate get ahold of a comic book company from Milwaukie, Oregon 
.
Yeah people misinterprete the issue with monopoly or a dominant position. As you say, there is no law that forbides them hence why many industries have them. The issue is when you use it to negatively affect consumers or the competition like what Microsoft did with Internet explorer back in the day, or what Google has been getting in hot water over.
Where did this “illegal” piece come in?
I’m just saying completely dominating a market can lead to complacency, and we’ve seen it (PS3, Xbox One, etc.)
Didn’t mean to imply you thought that. I was just talking generally…
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