I think they would still have gone ahead if Activision didn’t have COD just look at what Diablo did in Beta never mind what other blizzard IPs like WOW and Starcraft will do when they go on more platforms or get remakes. COD certainly is a powerhouse but so are Blizzard titles.
the MS Mobile Store, it kinda reminds me the lunch of Xbox OG, there were many partnerships so I guess we will see a lot of 2nd party and 3rd party deals, if they are successful maybe MS acquire them or do more partnerships with them.
the thing about mobile market is, the genre defining games, get the most attention, IIRC Archero is one of them and Mighty Doom is almost a clone of it. and yes, Mighty Doom is popular but what MS needs for its store is these genre defining titles. acquiring the most popular developers definitely is going to help them, but that’s not enough.
Microsoft wants more arrows in its quiver: COD, Diablo, Warcraft, Candy Crush and so on. COD is the biggest one, but it’s all about the cumulative effect. By itself, COD want be a game changer for Game Pass - if one mostly plays COD, then COD with PS+ is €140/year. Game Pass Ultimate is €156/year, and while giving much more value, if you’re already entrenched on Playstation, the catalogue of new/recent games you’re getting with GPU might not be worth switching if you don’t play those games much anyway.
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I saw a lot of people on here showing interest in Bandai Namco. I don’t mean to sound negative but I don’t get the hype?
Lots of their games are licensed anime projects (so if your into those games I get it) but surely the owners of those IP won’t automatically follow. It may even be in the contract that if Bamco sells their deals end.
So excluding those titles (Naruto, Digimon, Dragon ball, One Piece, Sword Art) what’s left that they own/develop.
- Ace Combat
- Pac-Man
- Soul Calibur
- Tekken
I must be missing something but what?
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I am one of the loudest advocates for a Bandai Namco Acquisition.
They developed/published following games/franchises :
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.Hack
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Ace Combat
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Armored Core
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Code Vein
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Dark Souls Series
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Digimon Games (Digimon Story Cybersleuth)
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Dragon Ball Games (Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Dragon Ball Xenoverse I-II, Dragon Ball FighterZ)
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Elden Ring
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Eternal Sonata
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God Eater
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Gundam
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Idolmaster Series
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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
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Katamari Series
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Klonoa
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Mr. Driller
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Naruto Games (Ultimate Ninja Storm Series…)
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Ni No Kuni I-II
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One Piece Games (One Piece Odyssey, One Piece Pirate Warriors,…)
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Point Blank
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Pac-Man
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Ridge Racer
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Scarlet Nexus
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Soul Calibur
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Sword Art Online
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Taiko no Tatsujin
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Tales of Series (Tales of Arise, Tales of Berseria, Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Symphonia…)
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Tekken
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Xenosaga Series
I have a personal soft spot for many of those games, because i played them in my childhood/youth.
Tekken 3 was my favorite Fighting game on the PS 1, Ridge Racer Type-4 was my favorite Racing game on the PS1, i played some Dragon Ball Games on the PS1, PS2 (Budokai, Budokai Tenkaichi), Tales of Vesperia was my favorite JRPG of the PS3/360 gen.
I really liked Code Vein, Scarlet Nexus and loved Tales of Arise.
It is not very realisitc that Microsoft will acquire Bandai Namco, but if an opportunity arises, i think they should definitely consider them.
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Bandai Namco is not my top pick, but id take any of the major Japanese publishers. Tecmo Koei is in the same boat for me.
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The most important Namco series is Splatterhouse.
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I think any of the big japanese publishers would be a big win for Microsoft.
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COD is a yearly event though, i.e. in this industry where dev cycles are taking way, way too long, that’s a huge bonus.
I also think this problem of games taking a ridiculous amount of time to make is getting worse & needs addressing. The sheer number of IP’s & dev teams owned by Microsoft will mitigate this but the situation has become critical for everyone.
Mass Effect 5 for example is apparently still in early development, which means it could be years & years until we see something (it’s crazy that the first 3 games released less than 5 years apart, whilst Andromeda is already 6 years old). This is a massive, massive problem for console manufacturers because key titles being worked on today aren’t even guaranteed to release this gen. This might be going off on a tangent here but Game Pass & these acquisitions helps alleviate this issue because the amount of content under the Xbox umbrella assures there’s at least something going to be released (so another 2022 never happens again). COD would be the biggest draw, obviously.
I always respected their ability to release a new one every year.
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Thanks for the input, I’ll have to google these franchises. Might just be that I missed them growing up. Might be I know off them by image but not name. Maybe the site I used wasn’t very accurate.
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Ok I didn’t know this games name but after googling it I love it!
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The impressive thing there is that 30m count is only after 3 years. 2 years faster then Skyrim! Diablo 4 would be a massive game @$70
On gamepass…a phenomenon
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Koei Tecmo is good. They are actually one of my top publishers in Japan behind Capcom.
Team Ninja make master class action games and also have fighting game experience with Dead or Alive
Gust is an absolute JRPG factory. I know they are super budget and not “mainstream” appealing though. Atelier Ryza 3 however propelled their capability by a lot as it’s a genuinely huge and seamless open world game while their previous games were small “zone connected” areas
Omega Force is another good action game team with the Warriors/Musou games and also made Wild Hearts
Kou Shibusawa team makes grand strategy games like Nobunaga’s Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, also worked on Nioh
Ruby Party makes games targeting women and excel at it. Last year they released Touken Ranbu Warriors for Switch and it was a pretty good seller in Japan (not in the West though, I was surprised it was even localized)
Koei Tecmo’s biggest weakness regarding acquisition however is that a major chunk of their output is contract work for other companies. Tons of Nintendo stuff, Square Enix stuff (mentioned DQ Builders and FF Origin already), Bandai Namco (anime licensed musous). Also their biggest budget game yet (as well as the one they are forecasting to be their best selling AAA game), Rise of the Ronin, is directly funded by Playstation and is a permanent “second party” exclusive.
Bandai Namco just isn’t feasible. Look how big the Gundam IP is, and it’s worthless in the video game sphere. Bandai Namco has by far the biggest non-gaming baggage of all the JP publishers. That’s on top of the already mentioned most of their games are licensed thing, and that, this is just a personal thing, their output is “okay”, I think they are one of the weaker JRPG publishers too.
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Agreed, Bandai Namco is muuuuch more dependent on non-gaming activity than any other Japanese publisher. Well, except Konami.
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Activision have been throwing more and more manpower at the challenge of releasing COD every year, they’ve halted development of pretty much all non-COD games. From what I’ve heard COD comes out pretty much less and less complete each year now, shipping with glaring technical issues that only get fixed months after launch. There’s hope that since Microsoft’s stock won’t tank if MS delays COD or skips a year, they can actually do it if the series needs it.
But in general, games take a long ass time because games got technically so complex and the quality expectations are sky high. You’ll play any given masterpiece, and with each subsequent game that cuts corners to meet the deadline, you will see its flaws more and more clearly. So everyone is trying to raise the bar as high as possible, and that takes time… There’s no way around it. Even indie games take a lot of time now, eg. Signalis took 8 years, Chained Echoes - 7.
In a way, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing games take this long. It forces developers to create with cleare vision and the end user experience in mind, rather than copying current industry trends just because that’s what sells at the moment - by the time you release the game, those trends will be long gone and your title will be out of date… Just look at the fustercluck of Suicide Squad. So better focus on what you want to create and what you want others to play.
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I am not so sure that this will continue at least as a yearly game release. Would still likely get something biggish every year like a big update to either the previous game or BR.
We are also several years away, likely near the end of the current generation, before COD will be Day 1 Game Pass unless MS breaks an existing contract which is something they have so far avoided. Sony’s contract ends at the start of 2025 and almost certainly has a 1 year subscription service clause for the 24 game. Holiday 25 would be the first time we would see a Day 1 COD assuming of course that they still do an annual release after the 24 game.
COD is relative safe bet but gamers are notoriously fickle so who knows how long the COD gravy train will continue.
There have been franchises that have been amazingly resilient and have managed to stay relevant for decades (Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Warcraft). As long as the quality bar is kept high and there’s enough innovation within the franchise, it shouldn’t go away easily. COD has been huge since 2007, which is more than 15 years already, and since then the series has seen the addition of eg. battle royale, extraction or zombie modes, among others, to keep it from getting stale. From what I understand anyway, haven’t touched it since February 2008. 
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Final fantasy has been surviving on name alone, also wow went through some bad expansions
The one element which offsets the overly long development cycles is the diminishing returns in terms of graphics, i.e. anything from the HD era is basically fair game now in terms of looking playable to various degrees. It means I can play Halo 2 Anniversary in 2023 & not think it’s too outdated to be enjoyable; whereas 20 years ago a new console generation & new games always marked a stark & evident increase in visual fidelity which made the previous generation defunct very quickly. This doesn’t happen anymore.
Hardware has become more iterative, i.e. Xbox since the mid 360 generation has seen hardware releases which have simply complemented what came before & organically (I hate that term but it applies here) replaced previous hardware. Like since the Xbox 360 Elite with its HDMI port, every new Xbox has simply been ‘this is better HD gaming’. PlayStation is similar.
We don’t get big console hardware releases which mark the death of a previous generation & the birth of a new one. So when games take so long to make, this iterative hardware cycle offsets the length of time it takes to release the game (because it’s not visually outdated by the time it releases & can be tweaked for current hardware quite easily).
For example I’ve just installed Doom 2016 on my Series X & it looks amazing. But if in 2003 someone tried to play a 1996 game, it would have looked much, much worse than current year releases.
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Lol cant say I have much of an understanding of its current status either.
The only ones I personally have purchased were Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare and that was for their campaigns. I have completely ignored COD ever since the public backlash guaranteed that we wouldnt see a sequel to Infinite Warfare. There was so much potential there for follow ups.
My only online shooter has always been Halo with exception of a few years of Destiny but that doesnt count since it is just fantasy Halo.
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