I honestly just don’t see the need for either. LOTR doesn’t necessarily need extra expansion (outside of maybe games) and we’ve seen that with how toxic the fanbase can be… then again we’re also talking about the same company that owns (or will own) Halo, Gears, and CoD…
In the case of Harry Potter I’d basically argue the same thing. Maybe I’m out of touch on this one, but I feel like Fantastic Beasts is not the hit anyone was hoping for. New games would be cool I suppose and I’m sure they could get creative with TV/Movies down the line, but I feel like grabbing an IP when its basically already run its course seems unnecessary.
I understand Harry Potter, Xbox doesn’t really have anything like that. But why would they go after LOTR? They already have a lot of fantasy games in development, and honestly fantasy games that I think are more interesting.
There was some milarky with LoTR rights being sold but best I could tell it was only some specific things? The situation was a bit confusing, especially with Amazon actively making their tv show, but if someone was looking to cash in a bigger deal could be possible. But then, I don’t know how much WB can really do with Lord of the Rings right now. I definitely think buying Rowling out of Harry Potter would be a smart move, pay her whatever it takes so she can stop dragging the franchise down with her toxicity and weird stuff about wizards pooping on floors. It’s just a shame they didn’t get lucky like Microsoft did buying out Minecraft before Notch became an unlikable troll.
This is less about what Microsoft should do if they bought WB and more what WB should do in general. I don’t know how much Microsoft could really benefit from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, especially when they’d have the entirety of DC at their disposal.
Thank you for bringing this up.
The acquisition of the whole WB Discovery unit would be a dream come true for me.
Think about all the possibilities you get with WB Discovery, you can produce your own tv shows inhouse (HALO by HBO, Overwatch, Crash/Spyro on Cartoon Network), you can produce your own movies inhouse (Gears, Call of Duty, maybe another Warcraft movie), you can create and distribute your own Comic books inhouse and don‘t have to go through a third party partner. (Dark Horse Comics)
And if you think about the gaming possibilities, we talked ad nauseam that Microsoft should produce their own Smash Bros and now you got it with Multiversus.
Add Characters from Halo, Crash, Spyro, SoT, Gears, Doom, KI, etc. and you got yourself a pretty good roster and could also celebrate new character additions like Nintendo does with Smash Bros.
Develop finally your own Kart Racer with Characters from the Looney Tunes, DC, Crash, Banjo, Spyro and all the other IPs you got.
Make finally a good Aquaman and Superman Game.
Bundle HBO Max and DC Universe (first make both worldwide available) with Game Pass or some form of Microsoft Entertainment Pass.
And after all that make your final Publisher Acquisition with SEGA and all (at least I would be) are happy.
I like the way you think about it, there is so many things they could both do together, discovery could use the age of empires trademark to do documentals, studios like traveller tales could easily work with looney tunes, banjo or even minecraft
The idea of seeing series of conker or doom by adult swim would be fantastic, and which for me is the biggest win would be gamepass, adding every game warner has published to the service would be spectacular, and since they are still letting some external developers use their ips(samurai jack, super hero girls, rick n morty vr, multiversus) you could easily add a ton of variety to the service aswell
If Microsoft could get the rights to the LOTR with WB/Discovery that would be huge. And it would be cool to see Bethesda or Obsidian make an RPG set in the Lord of the Rings universe.
I wonder if it would be smart to get a partnership up and running with Dark Passenger, then if it works out MS can buy the studio, so then they’d have a company in Poland.
That being said I’d much rather see CDPR, but maybe this would open the doors, so MS would buy them next.
They should probably go for a gaming studio acquisition before they go for WB. I feel as though boomer regulators will have less of an eye raised on a Sega/Capcom acquisition than they would on a WB/Discovery acquisition. After a WB/Discovery acquisition regulators would probably be extra detailed in MS acquisitions possibly blocking future deals. We saw Facebook get hit with less just a few days ago.
Guillemot is not the majority holder, but still has significant influence over the company. Let’s not forget that it was he who fought against the giant Vivendi. Guillemot also has a majority on the board of directors. I think Guillemot should not be underestimated, and especially that it could play a major role in supporting the sale of the company to Microsoft.
They want to merge while keeping their independence, from this point of view, I think it would work rather well with Microsoft. However, EA is not obligated to sell (like Ubisoft might be), so they are probably the ones who will set their terms.
I keep hope in Bioware and DICE, but I still prefer the latest Ubisoft games to Anthem or BF 2042
I think they both have potential, you shouldn’t underestimate Ubisoft, with more freedom it’s still a pretty good publisher. Ubisoft would bring a lot of franchises, but would also be able to work on a lot of games from the Xbox catalog (Perfect Dark, Banjo, Conker, Kameo, Prototype, Guitar Hero…). This would allow them to diversify and avoid the misuse of certain licenses. Could be an interesting combination + Phil Spencer is a Splinter Cell fan.
yeah but lets also not forget he barely won, like vevendi was incredibly close to winning and he had to put a lot of effort into prevent it
I mean, I think he doesn’t want anyone to buy ubisoft to be honest so it hurts the chances in my eyes if anything
I think MS would kick the upper managements on the curb after all the drama being real, like they have also had the sexual harassment shit and the drama with NFTs
Both are if offered enough money, they only exist to maximise shareholder wealth
