I think he just doesn’t want to give up majority control.
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Depending on the right offer or buyer I could see him wanting to sell. Mind you the selling price would be a pretty penny, but he did sell Gears of War and who knows if he wants to retire soon. If he does want to retire he could spend it on his own island, after he sellls Epic.
He has his own island? 
Actually. Why am I surprised about that. Lol
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Thought my site was bought XD
Purely from a subscription model, Ubisoft would make the most sense, most of their games make serious cash through MTX as well, I read recently that AC Valhalla has made over a billion in revenue. With an acquistion like Ubisoft, MS would basically be set for big games in gamepass every other month lol.
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I think Ubisoft represents a great “bang for your buck.” Lower valuation compared to other publishers with a ton of legacy and ongoing popular IP, a large workforce, and locations all over which would aid in recruiting, not to mention 1P engines and a willingness to be a bit weird and experimental at times. I don’t love a lot of their games - some feel borderline soulless like the recent AC or FC - but I’d love to see more Rayman or POP in my life.
But…I’d rather Microsoft not buy another publisher and instead focus on fostering the growth of studios they own and continuing to build and invest in creative studios.
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The Initiative showed that acquiring studios is better approach.
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I don’t care? I didn’t say anything was better. It’s what I’d prefer.
If we were talking a year or so ago I wouldn’t agree but the fact Ubisoft stock is tanking and they went from one of the biggest publishers commonly being seen as the same level as Take Two, EA and Activision to a company with a market cap currently just under $6 billion makes me actually agree. Like if we assuming Ubisoft stock keeps tanking I think the premium is likely to be smaller too so lets say maybe $8 billion to acquire them currently, it may get lower.
Microsoft would get massive franchises granted most of them having spotty track record in terms of quality, games which fill the sony game niche granted sony games quality trumps Ubisoft’s most of the time, more E rated content with rayman, rabbids, just dance and most board games and Ubisoft is one of the few publisher’s/studios not owned by Microsoft which make big FPS games with the tom clancy licenses (Ubisoft, EA, Bungie (about to be bought by Sony), Valve and I believe tencent are the only ones left now owned by Microsoft) so Microsoft would own maybe 80% of major FPS games if they bought Ubisoft not to mention the back cat would be easy to roll into game pass as all Microsoft would need to do is fold Uplay+ into the service and while quality can 100% be questionable Ubisoft has a incredibly well oiled mechine of game releases and support studios which could help other Microsoft studios if acquired
I will admit I was definitely too dismissive of Microsoft looking at Ubisoft and @Hue definitely did get me to think and sleep on it and while I still think their are more likely targets I think Microsoft is almost garenteed to look at them at minimum at this point and I definitely see major benifits to Microsoft acquiring them, now more benifit than acquiring Take Two, Capcom, SEGA or Square…their is 100% a case to be made even if I much prefer all of them compared to Ubisoft, it more depends on what you think MS places value on currently
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To be fair towards The Initiative we don’t know what has happened, it’s mainly rumour at this point.
We do know there use to be issues in Xbox of old, which is why some beloved studios including Lionhead were closed down.
All of that said I think most people don’t appreciate how difficult it is to create something from scratch like a studio, when it’s been researched before they believe around 85% of new studios fail (especially Indy).
All of the most successful PS studios were brought too (Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Guerrilla Games & Sucker Punch). I think the only big studio they created (Santa Monica) was due to a PS employee going rogue and wanting to do his own thing (Allan Becker).
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I remember when people said there is no way MS would buy Ubisoft because how many staff they have haha then MS went and bought ABK with 10k staff for 69B. If anything because of the TI issue the more staff the company has the better it probably is for them.
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Yeah, I mean even Haven literally had an established core of the people that have been working together for quite some time.
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Why act like that can’t and won’t happen with acquired publishers though? If anything, having multiple publishing arms would make things even more unique and creative… maybe even competitive.
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I didn’t even think about the back catalog! You would be scrolling through GamePass for days with the amount of games they release 
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Ubisoft are also one of the few publishers trusted to use Nintendo IP (Mario/Rabbids) which would be a fantastic in for a Xbox/Nintendo partnership.
It’s true some of their franchises have struggled recently but with more funding and time (which MS could offer) they could easily turn it back around. With how low their market cap is right now it seems obvious.
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Again…didn’t say it can’t and won’t. It’s my preference, as in my preference for their first priority would be to do what I said and not focus on buying publishers, or both.
Could not agree more Hue, I would even go as far as to say if another company tries to buy Ubisoft, Microsoft may go on the defensive just to keep them away from everyone else specifically Amazon or Tencent
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really? IDK it is one of the 1st things I think of, I know day one games are bigger for marketing but being able so say all or most of the assassins creeds or GTA’s or sonic or resident evil or final fantasy ect. games are on game pass feels like a massive pushing force to me
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Sure! For starters, expect the EU to go through its standard review process (Zenimax went through it, and given that ABK has studios in the EU, this will be the same). Assuming there’s no crazy concessions or additional discovery periods, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the deal close between the Q4 2022 and Q1 2023 (speaking strictly calendar year here).
Where I work just got a boon in its budget and I imagine the Defense budget will as well, so I don’t expect branches like FTC to be seeing much in extra funding over the next while, due to both the Russian-initiated war and higher priorities in budget.
As far as another large-scale acquisition, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft pursue another but I do think people need to be mindful that at some point there is a risk of broaching antitrust, and I wouldn’t be surprised if another one or two would occur, some strict assurances of supporting competitors’ platforms would follow. For me, we know ABK was a sort of unplanned maneuver, so what is happening (or happened) with the parties they may have been talking to for acquisitions prior.
Disclaimer: I am neither confirming nor denying any particulars, I am not responsible for websites presenting these observations as facts.
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If they were in talks with someone else I don’t see why they would be dropped just because MS saw Activision in a prime position to be acquired, I could see Microsoft wanting to pro long the discussions possibly depending on the publisher because trying to approve activision along side EA, Take Two or while they probably won’t happen Sony or Nintendo probably would be a bad look but I don’t see any reason Microsoft would drop the discussions, talks usually months to years to complete (like bungie took 6 months and bethesda/zenimax to some extent took 3 years granted by the way stuff was discussed it seems like it wasn’t serious all the way though).
In terms of anti trust, it depends. I doubt Microsoft would face it consider how big the gaming industry really is, like in 2021 52% of gaming revenue was mobile (which is mostly the google play store and the apple storeas they take 30%), 20% from PC (which I doubt the window store is taking a big amount from, its mostly stuff like steam, the epic games store, chinese launchers) and 28% from consoles (which Microsoft currently has the small market share of being behind sony and nintendo granted I wouldn’t be shocked if xbox series s/x outsells the PS5 when all is said and done…it ain’t beating the switch though in my opinion) and in terms of 2020 since I couldn’t find all the revenue for 2021 this was the make up
Microsoft with actvision is behind sony granted not by much and a distance behind tencent and if we assume other companies like amazon (who has been investing quite heavily into gaming), facebook (Who we know tried to buy activision at some point), apple, tencent (Who in my opinion hasn’t been any near as agressive as they could be and is still number 1 in revenue) ect. start becoming agressive the anti trust worries basically die out completely in my opinion granted we don’t know for certain if they will, it just seems likely
There’s a reason I use italics in certain situations 
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