I thought we were tapping the breaks on Publishers for a bit? Paradox Interactive does have some solid developers under their umbrella
This seems relevant to our interests. CWA no is okay with ABK acquisition.
https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1536364371290509312
Microsoft after the deal goes through:
Japan, Capcom/Level-5/Silicon Studio/Jp games
South Korea, Blueside
Germany, Focus Entertainment, then you have Deck13 best developer in Germany atm imo
They want the deal to go as smoothly as possible. Good for them and the devs.
I don’t know Blueside but can’t fault your choices for Japan and Germany.
I am a big campaigner for Focus Entertainment, one of the most underrated small publishers there are. DotEmu is awesome too and the work they’ve been doing with Asobo on Plague Tale is amazing (Plague was the stand out for me in the Xbox show).
Being a SEGA kid it’s always going to be CAPCOM or SEGA for me in Japan.
French.
I am too.
The publisher is French but Deck13 (who they own) are German 
I’m for all these studios but especially Cococucumber. Love their unique style and they have great polish and presentation. The potential for growth is even more exciting.
I doubt tencent would ever be forced to do that but if they did I think tencent would just move riot, supercell ect. HQ to a different region
Ubisoft is a little bigger than Bethesda which isn’t big, its mid sized. Even the smallest one out of the ones I listed have a market cap of 20 billion (and its expected to raise to 30)
If you look at how the strategic alliance with Sega was done. Its an alliance that inherently favors sega more than Microsoft. It reminds me of when you are dating someone and you want to take them out to that nice restaurant to impress them a bit. You put on your best outfit, etc and really do a full court press to impress so they view you in the best of light.
I personally think the strategic alliance is just a opening of another door. Its like hey you got your toothbrush here, you a got space in the closet and a drawer already filled. So why not just move in and make a official.
ITs a lot easier to entice someone like sega when they are already using the tools, your processes are already built around using the Microsoft tools and servers. You’re budget is setup in a way that monetizes there platforms for your benefit.
So when MS comes knocking on the door and say hey why don’t we just buy your gaming division you conveniently split off to its own separate vertical with its own management structure. Here all the stats of how good your games do game pass and how we’ve made you all this money and here’s all the money you’ve saved using our tools and services, etc. It’s harder to say no they’ve had a good experience.
Does it though? Microsoft now will be move Sega and Sega’s infrastructure into their Azure ecosystem and that will bring other clients who will see what experience Sega will have with Azure. And also now Sega is in Game Pass camp too.
EA sports games are in the top gamepass games played nearly every months. Hockey, madden, Fifa, now with codemasters and getting the f1 games, that does alot of heavy lifting.
Part of maintaining a service is also keeping what you have. lots of months when its quiet EA does alot of heavy lifting for gamepass. It reminds me of netflix when they would have shows like the office. When nothing really appealed to someone they could put on the office or show like that on Netflix and just let it run. EA does similar job in gamepass where Madden and Fifa aren’t always the number one game someone is playing but its always on deck ready to go for alot of people of when you do get that lull of I played through the latest title. Now I’m just playing something to get to the next title.
Now you have PlayStation with a more serious competitor. Where sometimes you need to protect your turf a little and be like hey how much would it cost us over 10 to 15 years to lock down ea play titles exclusively versus just buying it all. As we don’t necessarily care if people want to pay 70 dollars for madden on PlayStation but if you want it via subscription its gonna be gamepass.
And that’s why Microsoft is trying to acquire more and more publishers - to get more regular content. Also I think we overestimate the amount of importance back catalog have for those games. I think any Day 1 release of smaller title brings more people than some game from 6 months or 1 year a go.
As I said before - as a third party EA is a perfect partner for Microsoft. But as a first party they are not good at all.
Sega was putting their games in gamepass before the strategic alliance. Secondly, Microsoft does need Sega to sell Azure. They have a ton of other companies that fully operate using azure with there systems and tools built around using it. If i was selling azure the fact that unreal engine 5’s pixel streaming tech can integrate and use azure is a better selling point, parsec uses azure, etc. and thats just gaming i could also go beyond that into cyber security and general infrastructure companies that fully run using azure. MS doesn’t need Sega to sell it. They are pitching to sega on using it and giving them a sweetheart deal because they want something.
Hopefully Microsoft learns from netflix’s mistakes. As when you build an ecosystem around content you ultimately don’t own. Eventually the people who own the content will either want more money then its worth or will pull the content. EA has content that is unique in that you can’t get it elsewhere. you can’t go out and just get another madden for instance.
The other thing to look at is there are two things Microsoft doesn’t like. They don’t want Apple to be beholden to apple, and they don’t want to be beholden to Amazon as they are direct competitors. Look who’s sniffing around EA.
I don’t think Microsoft is interested as its what I want as a fan. Just someone who works in the tech field and has to follow it closely. I’ve seen billions spent on all the sides just so the other cant have it. If Apple or Amazon put it in a serious offer MS will also be interested.
Absolutely! That’s why I can still see Microsoft acquiring EA (they have tried to acquire them before).
If EA Play left GamePass for PlayStation Plus or another subscription service (Amazon Luna or Apple etc) it would be a humongous loss for GamePass and Xbox as a whole. The value for GamePass Ultimate would absolutely be capped overnight
Plus having all those sports/racing titles on day one would result in unfathomable growth for GamePass.
And that’s why I say that EA is not good at all. All those sports IPs are the IPs Microsoft cannot own unless they buy FIFPro, NFL etc. Any other company can start making those games if necessary. Especially in cases when they publisher is acquired and those contracts will have to be renegotiated. Just look at MLB.
Anyway, I will wrap these debates, they are going nowhere. I don’t believe that Microsoft will buy EA, I will stick to that.
Swap sony with someone like Apple or Google and I 100% agree with this take because someone could just come out and buy them and that relationship goes away
Which is why getting EA or a different publisher games day 1 would help expand the service a lot
I have a lot of issues with this take, I am pretty sure apple or amazon could put down the money to pprevent this from happening and EA dropped the FIFA license, if the license was that needed I think EA would of paid to renew the contract. If EA drop the contract without fear why would apple or amazon or some shit hesitate
FIFA gave nothing by label. All club licenses are negotiated separately via FIFPro (or whatevet it is called). It is a separate organization.
The goal of all those organizations is to promote their sports. EA have this licenses because they release it everywhere. MLB was fine with locking the game down when PS was dominating, but then they changed the tune . It is not only about money at all.
Anyway, I stick to my point that Microsoft won’t acquire EA. Simple as that.
They absolutely will still be looking at EA, I’m sure they are still looking at every publisher and assessing the risks against loosing each of their content! It’s common business practice to risk assess stuff like this (I was updating my works corporate risk register today!).
When you look at the top 20 US selling games in 2021 EA was:
If all of them were first party (day one) so many people would sign up to GamePass as Xbox would almost have all the top 5 selling games:
Warner Bros had 2 games in the top 20. Ubisoft had 2 games in the top 20. Take Two had 1 with NBA 2k22 (again sports) which was #15
Anyone thinking all of sudden EA will loose all these licenses if acquired make no sense whatsoever. Most of them such as Madden have been going for 30+ years!