Based on all the noise they’ve made lately regarding mobile, I can see them doing another mobile acquisition even if ABK goes through. The more mobile under their umbrella, the more they’d be prepared to launch an alternative store front.
How on earth does this ancient history of decisions have anything to do with the Xbox Acquisitions?
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They’re actually about a 30 person studio. So I think they’d probably be additive to King and Alpha Dog. 
I feel like folks that wonder why Microsoft skipped Spiderman must not have been into gaming long enough to have been around for the days that 90% of licensed games were trash.
Outside of Star Wars, that’s been the case up until like last generation.
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As far as mobile goes , Netmarble or Nexon would be solid choices In a location of expansion that would be extremely desirable for Microsoft. I still believe Ubisoft is in the cards as their market cap continues to sink and they have loads of mobile studios among other positives, it just seems like to good of a deal to pass up at this point.
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I just chalk it up to Xbox one era stuff. All the hardships occurring now even the slow release of games is down to decisions made in that era.
I don’t think people grasp how bad the Xbox one damaged the brand. This is partly why Sony can get these deals so easily.
And you can see that Bethesda and ABK deal are required to catch up even. And even then it is not a guarantee.
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Since that post from buckeye I have been wondering, do you guys think that if xbox acquires cdpr they will go aswell for the new studiosformed by ex developers? Dont get me wrong they still need to prove theirselves but putting them on the cdpr umbrella could help them
Afterall this people worked in the company for years, and it could turn cdpr into a whole new big publisher, isnt going to happen but it would be great
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It’s funny you say Xbox doesn’t have a vision for the industry when everything happening in the industry currently was at one point something Xbox envisioned and half-implemnted, though too early. Individual games come and go, Bethesda and ABK and Minecraft are also opportunities that opened themselves to them and they took and they’re a great sum of individual games now to be exclusive and/or associated with Xbox, on top of the other individual studios and IPs that come with.
You focus on - in hindsight - unfortunate decisions made throughout 20 years by different sets of executives and teams like all of them are one who should have known somehow that those games would be hits or that they could force their way into those deals even if the parties don’t agree, while ignoring that in return they also took opportunities that paid off, with Halo and Gears for example both of which defined their respective console generations and the Xbox brand.
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No so long ago I have run into this document
And basically it confirms that all the talk about “american companies cannot by anything in Japan” is a nonsense (just like all normal people expected). They can do even hostile bids too.
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Here comes capcom 
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This was always really stupid and always felt like Sony fanboys trying to wish something into existence to stop Xbox from doing better
It’s well known MS was interested in buying Nintendo back in the day and it’s heavily rumored they were very close to buying Capcom a few years back
But maybe MS has a habit of trying to acquire Japanese companies even though they aren’t allowed /s
Wonder why they didnt try to acquire mistwalker back in the day
They where interested in square enix in rhe 2000s, maybe they saw that jrpgs didnt helped a lot on consoles
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It’s most likely because Mistwalker has always just been a “concepts”/“vision” studio while actual development of their games was done by another party. Lost Odyssey was feelplus, Blue Dragon was Artoon, The Last Story was AQ Interactive. Mistwalker was simply the ones doing the story/concepts/world for these games.
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I made a list of partner studios that Microsoft could acquire to grow organically. In the end, I realized that even if these studios were good studios, they will never be as profitable for Microsoft as acquiring a publisher. So I think Microsoft will continue to acquire publishers rather than individual studio partners, and from that perspective, I would say the best choice to achieve their goals would be : Ubisoft, Capcom, and CDPR. I think there are other great options, but with those three (and even without CDPR) Microsoft could probably dominate the market with big IPs and deliver and regular FP content on the GP (and a very large library of games).
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I think one of the major issues of acquiring studios instead of publishers is the payoff takes too long. Publisher you’re getting games immediately (sans weird timed deals). Studios you’re waiting til they finish up their current projects before they even start yours.
Or waiting for exclusivity deals to finish… 
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Publishers also give a back catalog.
That’s why I maintain that Capcom is the best option. Its back catalog has a lot of Xbox titles. Unlike for example Square Enix that has a tons of games but they never came to Xbox.
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Not to mention that the majority of these studios come without a major IP. I think that’s what Microsoft is most interested in, and that’s why I think the 2018 acquisitions are way behind us. It is much more interesting to acquire already functional companies with a large catalog of games. I think independent studio acquisitions will be an exception, at least for years to come. I think Microsoft’s priority is acquiring publishers and big IPs to bring as many players as possible to the service. Another publisher will probably arrive before 2025. Ubisoft is a gold mine for Microsoft, it is for me the most likely and the most interesting to acquire on many levels, and Capcom is probably the most interesting in Asia, just ahead of SEGA . However, we might be surprised at the turn of events.
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This is why I wish they got crystal. Tomb raider is a big IP that would be great with the xbox brand
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