Xbox Acquisition |OT6| If this is about competition, let us have competition

[Jorge_Alexander_Acos (Jorge Alexander Acosta Duarte)]

@GamingFirefighter

I can understand Steam raising monopoly concerns but if Microsoft were to do a divestiture of Steam and acquire the rest of Valve maybe that would work.

Valve just seems like the perfect oppuertinty to allow Microsoft a better opportunity in the VR and modding department. And Microsoft could use the hardware engineers across Valve to build their own portable handheld Xbox console.

I dont knwo, that feels like buying ABK without COD or King.

[DeAd3yE]

@Hue

I could see some insanely rich person buying it just for Half-life 3

Microsoft really do need to make a better PC storefront though! Maybe they will do something with Battle.net?

they might close it down just like bethesda launcher

[GamingFirefighter]

@Jorge_Alexander_Acos

I dont knwo, that feels like buying ABK without COD or King.

Even without Steam I still think it would be a valuable acquisition. Maybe there is a deal where Microsoft could still own 50% of Steam and Sony could own the other 50% since there are PlayStation games in the Steam Store.

[pg2g]

@GamingFirefighter

Even without Steam I still think it would be a valuable acquisition. Maybe there is a deal where Microsoft could still own 50% of Steam and Sony could own the other 50% since there are PlayStation games in the Steam Store.

It’d be valuable, but I’d say it’s a much worse acquisition than most other options. Doesn’t do much to help push any of their priorities.

[GamingFirefighter]

@pg2g

It’d be valuable, but I’d say it’s a much worse acquisition than most other options. Doesn’t do much to help push any of their priorities.

Maybe not entirely but it does prevent companies like Amazon, Google, Tencent, or Apple an opportunity to acquire Valve/Steam and mess everything up.

[Hue]

@DeAd3yE

they might close it down just like bethesda launcher

Possibly but I think the difference between Bethesda and Battle are huge…

[DeAd3yE]

@Hue

Possibly but I think the difference between Bethesda and Battle are huge…

i feel microsoft is all in on steam and xbox app dont know if they want third app but lets see

[JonnJonzz]

With everyone talking about Valve I just have to say I’d like more companies to use the Source 2 Engine.

We definitely need more engine competition, instead of everyone wanting to use Unreal.

That being said this is off topic, so I’ll stop talking.

[nrXic]

@JonnJonzz

With everyone talking about Valve I just have to say I’d like more companies to use the Source 2 Engine.

We definitely need more engine competition, instead of everyone wanting to use Unreal.

That being said this is off topic, so I’ll stop talking.

When I think about it Source discussion does make it relevant to acquisition.

You are absolutely right that there needs to be more competition in this space.

As a software and cloud services company this also seems up Microsoft’s ally.

[pg2g]

Source 2? Come on guys… at least pick a state of the art engine. At least we’ve got Id tech.

[Kals_Els]

Speaking of engines, what are the chances that Microsoft ever make any of the in-house engines as available to use as unreal or unity?

[ThereAreFourNaan]

@Kals_Els

Speaking of engines, what are the chances that Microsoft ever make any of the in-house engines as available to use as unreal or unity?

Pretty unlikely, since making an engine commercially available implies building a large group of people who can train and support licencees. It’s also extremely unlikely to pull any marketshare from Unity or Unreal, both of which have huge numbers of people already trained in them, robust support options for licencees, zillions of online tutorials, people learning them as part of school programs, and mainstream companies already totally committed to using them.

You’d have to pitch an engine as being so superior for some reason that you would want to give up those extremely powerful ecosystem advantages. Like, if you were staffing up for a new AAA game, it’s going to be super easy to hire people with Unreal experience, versus training everybody on new tools. And it’s also going to give you access to all these stores where you can buy prefab assets from to get started fast, and Epic will (if you pay!) offer you round the clock technical support. And if you’re a non-anglophone developer, Epic has you covered with a bazillion supported languages.

The prospect of competing with epic in engine licencing is extremely daunting, imo, and there’s a reason more and more companies are dumping internal tools for their technology. It does make me sad to see fewer in house engines (and I think there are some pitfalls when you stop having technical staff capable of doing that), but it is what it is. The commercial incentives are powerful.

[EPC]

@GamingFirefighter

I can understand Steam raising monopoly concerns but if Microsoft were to do a divestiture of Steam and acquire the rest of Valve maybe that would work.

Valve just seems like the perfect oppuertinty to allow Microsoft a better opportunity in the VR and modding department. And Microsoft could use the hardware engineers across Valve to build their own portable handheld Xbox console.

I would probably see an external entity buying the whole Steam+Valve and divesting Valve as a nuisance to the much quieter business of handling Steam.

Valve does not worth much currently, their output is scarce and not necessarly interesting to maintain.

[strawman]

@EPC

Valve does not worth much currently, their output is scarce and not necessarly interesting to maintain.

CS:GO has ~1M concurrent players, DOTA2 ~0.5M concurrent players at any given moment. Their games are immensely popular and valuable.

[nrXic]

@Kals_Els

Speaking of engines, what are the chances that Microsoft ever make any of the in-house engines as available to use as unreal or unity?

I think it would be smart but it would require a lot of investment and resources. But there needs to be a business case for it. If they look at Unity or Unreal, both of which make decent money from their assets stores, and think they can duplicate the same monetization then using one of their current engines would not be a bad launching pad.

But to answer your question I don’t think it’s likely because while Microsoft does have app creation tools like the Visual Studio series, I don’t see them wanting to get into game development.

The reason why I like the idea is because none of these other engines do a good job of supporting DX12 Ultimate. We haven’t seen Series games that really shine because even Microsoft’s own games don’t support it that well due to many games needing to be backwards compatible. I’m hoping that changes with Motorsport, Starfield, Fable, and so on. I imagine any new idTech engine would also support it.

But the reality is most developers in publishers want to target all of the consoles and so making something specific to the Xbox and PC wouldn’t be a good business move. So the angle I’m looking at it from isn’t very realistic.

[drakel (akis)]

Finding out the remnant II studio is owned by embracer already was a sad roller coaster of emotions yesterday.

[DeusJabu]

Tencent is to acquire a majority shareholding in Dying Light studio Techland...

One more to cross from the lists.

[KakkaKarrotKake]

@DeusJabu

One more to cross from the lists.

Never had much interest in xbox buying them anyway so not a big loss

But it’s wild how many companies Tencent is a part of, to a disturbing level honestly

[Hue]

@KakkaKarrotKake

Never had much interest in xbox buying them anyway so not a big loss

But it’s wild how many companies Tencent is a part of, to a disturbing level honestly

It is crazy that they are by far the biggest gaming publisher now and still growing considerably!

[euV2]

@KakkaKarrotKake

Never had much interest in xbox buying them anyway so not a big loss

But it’s wild how many companies Tencent is a part of, to a disturbing level honestly

Tencent having a small stake in a lot of companies acts as a small deterrent to other companies trying to buy them too. They probably even have clauses like the right to buy first etc. They are essentially an investment company.

Microsoft could literally have bought 50 studios and not gotten anywhere near the same scrutiny they got for buying ABK. Wouldn’t get you the things that ABK does well though.

But my hope is Xbox goes back to buying studios like PG and Obsidian for the next few years.