MS was close to acquiring Capcom at the start of last gen.
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I think everyone needs to remember that the last 2 publisher’s that have been purchased were in some kind of trouble financial or PR and Microsoft took advantage of those circumstances and purchased the entire publisher. For that reason I always look at who is having issues first. Capcom is doing better than it ever has and was only on the table because they were ready to go under, once monster hunter came out and exploded they were off the table and backed away from the Microsoft deal immediately. At this moment there are 3 publishers in trouble Ubisoft, WB, and Square. I love Capcom and especially Sega but neither of them seem to be having issues and until Microsoft breaks tendency and buys a healthy company I’ll continue to look at publisher’s and individual studios that are in trouble first. If you think back even the studios from 2018 were all having financial issues the only exception that I can think of was Mojang and that was long ago
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Of those three, SE and Ubisoft seems like they would need a lot of work.
Ubisoft is cheap right now, with a lot of IP, but has too many employees. Do you let Ubisoft course correct on efficiency before giving it a serious look?
A play for SE would basically be to buy Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, likely having to keep it all multiplatform to make it financially sustainable. Outside of the mainline FF titles, is this team good at finding any other pathways to growth?
WB Games seems fairly well run, but is tied up in a lot of licensed IP. Maybe the experience working on licensed IP is a strength. This one makes the most sense.
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Sega will be on the table once their super game initiative inevitably fails lol
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If Microsoft genuinely add another major acquisition after Activision goes through then the situation will start to get really serious really fast. I’d find the contrast between Microsoft’s owned content & the current worldwide console sales figures utterly hilarious, i.e. buyers remorse might become a serious reality for a lot of people when they realise so many of their beloved franchises they’re used to playing on a PlayStation are now owned by Xbox.
I swear this is already the case, i.e. I’d bet loads of absolute casuals who buy the PS5 as the ‘default’ console will still be expecting the next Fallout, Doom, Elder Scrolls etc. to be released on the PlayStation. Even with the Activision deal all the talk of Call of Duty remaining multiplatform for ten years might have added some confusion, i.e. COD remaining on PS5? Yes. The rest of Activision Blizzard’s content? lol. But I bet people haven’t realized this ‘new gaming reality’ yet.
The effects of the Bethesda acquisition haven’t been felt yet due to outstanding existing contracts (like Deathloop releasing on PS5 a year before Xbox, or Ghostwire with the same Sony exclusivity), so when all of these acquisitions start to really, really kick in with Xbox exclusives or Game Pass day one titles, then people might start to understand what’s really going on. Aka Microsoft isn’t messing about anymore.
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I think Bethesda was a pivotal moment tbh, i.e. Sony was aggressively securing exclusivity deals for their future releases (Deathloop, Ghostwire & they wanted Starfield), so Microsoft bought the company to save Xbox from getting wiped out by PlayStation. Jim Ryan was too aggressive against Xbox & he opened Pandora’s box.
If only Sony had played nice & fair with Xbox, we probably wouldn’t be here right now with Activision soon-to-be owned by Microsoft.
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Of course, I cited Capcom + SEGA as my ideal acquisition scenario, not as a prediction of what was to come. I agree with you about Ubisoft, Warner, and Square Enix being the most obvious targets, although I highly doubt we’ll ever see Square Enix in the Xbox family. I think SEGA is making a big bet with its Super Game project, and chances are it will fail (Hyenas…) and lead to a possible acquisition by Xbox, even if that remains purely hypothetical.
Another interesting and perhaps more realistic scenario for some of you would be SEGA + WBD. You get the JRPG (Persona, SMT, Like a dragon), the strategy game (Total War, COH, Two Point, Endless Saga) and the family game (Sonic, Monkey Ball, Samba de Amigo) with Sega. Then you get the fighting game (Mortal Kombat), third-person superhero action game (Harry Potter, Batman, Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad), and family game (TT Games) with Warner (and of course Warner’s huge IP catalog). You can complement SEGA (CC2, Mediavision, Platinum, Frontier, WayForward…) and Warner (IOI, Asobo, Certain Affinity, Crytek, Double Eleven…) with the acquisition of independent studios that can join the branches of Microsoft Gaming edition (Xbox, Bethesda, ABK, SEGA, Warner) and potentially work on the Warner catalog (DC Comics). It’s also an attractive option, provided Microsoft wants to enter the film and television industry with Warner.
This scenario would also work very well with Capcom + Warner, but Capcom is probably much less accessible than SEGA, so it seems less realistic. I agree with your arguments about market opportunities. Microsoft will seize opportunities above all else as it did with Bethesda and ABK, but nothing prevents it from discussing with certain companies, even if it does not lead to anything, it is always worth trying. While we don’t know who will be next, there are some pretty exciting possibilities and the future looks bright for Xbox.
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You make some great points
WB for me this is the best purchase of the 3 but it would break many tendencies for Microsoft they would have to buy the whole thing, and they have yet to express interest in entering the TV and Movie markets but that is a lot of IP and bunding synergies that could be used to their advantage the gaming division in my opinion would get completely overlooked in a acquisition.
Ubisoft is probably the second best option of the three,loads of IP, back catalog, work force. This would mean a gamepass explosion of playable titles. The workforce is also a negative however, but can also be a positive, it is known that Xbox has tons of issues with contractors, a Ubisoft acquisition solves that problem immediately and who knows maybe they wanted to trim the fat from Microsoft as a whole with 10000 layoffs to add 15000 from Ubisoft, probably not but maybe who knows😂 don’t forget also that Xbox now has many live service games that will need continued content that takes lots of devs Cod, ESO,Halo,Fallout 76,Sea of thieves the list goes on my point is all those devs could be a positive.
Square to me is the worst of the 3, horribly managed and only really owns FF IP dragon quest and kingdom hearts both are licensed they as a publisher are just in a horrible state at the moment.
Capcom are definitely in a super solid position right now, most things they release these days are big successes
So while I agree that probably makes them less likely to sell compared to some other pubs I wouldn’t completely rule them out, money talks above all and if MS truly wanted them i’d say they could get them
But like you said, while Capcom would be an amazing addition there’s a lot of choice over there that would be good for Xbox, whatever they go for I do hope it’s Asian focused though, after ABK I think they have more than enough western games and studios
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Oh I definitely don’t mean to say we should rule them out, I just think of the studios people frequently talk about they’re perhaps less likely. For example Sega has a solid pre-existing partnership with Xbox and recently restructured their business in a way that would aid in an acquisition.
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WB does have some issues - multiple teams have gone prolonged periods without any output and there’s reports of work culture issues across multiple teams, and development issues at TT. The potential loss of IPs is a definite issue too though and would have to factor in the price, though it’d depend if this was an acquisition of WB Games or the entirety of WB - the latter would at least come with DC Comics basically removing a large chunk of licensing issues.
More to the overall topic though - of all the publishers SE seems the most likely to sell soon. I still personally think Square Enix could be solid under Xbox. Other than obvious examples like Forspoken (the studio of which has been folded in to support other projects) - most of their middling content has been lower budget content made with external partners.
Their main output from their internal teams seems to be relatively strong - Final Fantasy is in a good place with XIV being in a great place XVI being very promising as it’s from the XIV team and VIIR being mostly well received, Dragon Quest is in a very strong position with XI being a game I often hear counted among some of the best JRPGs in recent years and spin off titles like the Builders series doing really well too, and smaller teams have been putting out critically acclaimed content like Octopath 2.
Yes, there’s definitely some issues but I think by prioritising internally produced content and re-evaluating their existing partnerships (maybe with some additional acquisitions of close partners to expand the company) to focus on what IS working or what could find a life on game pass - they could do pretty well. They also stand to bring the most new content to Xbox out of all these Japanese publishers we’ve talked about.
I’m definitely not saying they’re the best of the possible options of course, I just think people are perhaps underselling that there are strong points to them as well.
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Nah it’s not gonna happen even after next acquisition
Xbox needs a licensed ip and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
Hogwarts did well for Sony. I know casuals that haven’t gamed in a while, who bought a ps5 for that game. Spider-Man will move lots of units for Sony.
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I don’t get why Xbox needs a licensed IP when they have (and are acquiring) IP that sells better than any of these licensed IP that we put on a pedestal.
It would be nice, but licensed IP is not the only way to sell 20 million copies.
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It’s a guaranteed seller that’s why. Even if the game is not even great like Gotham knights. That game did well. Even despite reviews and the hate it was getting.
Most of those “guaranteed sellers” have less sales than players of even the more modest titles on GamePass.
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Those of us that have been around remember the days of trash games with licensed IP. It isn’t guaranteed to sell. These just so happen to be really good games that happen to have licensed IP.
Do we have sales numbers on Gotham Knights? It selling well is news to me.
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What I found from quick search and landing at Wikipedia –
Gotham Knights was the second best-selling game in its first week of release in the UK. In Japan, the PlayStation 5 version of Gotham Knights sold 3,125 physical copies during its week of release, making it the thirteenth bestselling retail game of the week in the country.
Licensed is tricky for Microsoft, they’ve got game pass after all. Any licensed games coming to the service will need to involve negotiated payments and repayments as time goes on, and could end up with the game being removed from the service after X amount of time. I don’t think it’s impossible we’ll see some studios come out with licensed games - but I don’t think we’re gonna see Microsoft pushing studios to take licensing deals that are awkward for their business.
Although if they wanted to get the licenses to remaster some of Activisions old works like Simpsons Hit and Run I wouldn’t mind it 
Hmm, I was curious about the fact that it launched second so I looked it up for more context. First place was Fifa which had come out three weeks prior and was still selling strong, but the UK do love their FIFA so that could mean second is still pretty good? It did also outsell Mario + Rabbits and Plague Tale which launched that weeks.
Seems potentially good, not likely amazing?
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Do you actually get the DEV’s ? Bandai does not seem to own many Dev’s or IP’s they are more just a publisher most of the IP’s they published are from 3rd party they don’t own much.
For 5 billion there are better options. The only 2 franchise i can think of the top of my head that Bandai own are Tekken and Ace Combat, Dark Souls they published but Fromsoft own that same with Elden Ring.