I wonder how many likes would Kamiya left 
Kamiya would tag Phil like 
The usd to yen price has reached its highest point in 30 years. I wonder if right now it is a good time to buy a japenese publisher or studio.
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“The best time to buy a Japanese publisher was 5 years ago. The second best time is now.” - Sun Tzu
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Honestly, I think Xbox’s next acquisition will be a support house. Like Virtuos or Keywords. They would still supply competitors and third parties, much like Disney owned ILM does, but MS would get priority access.
CoD ain’t gonna make itself.
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Thatd be an odd decision. Why support anyone else? Xbox has more than enough going on in house to take up their full capacity and then some.
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I was thinking along the lines of regulatory requirement since if the firm is big enough, it could border on input foreclosure.
I’m going to keep banging the Ubisoft drum.
- Over 20 studios with worldwide presence.
- Over 20 support studios.
- Loads of IP
- Fills numerous holes in the Xbox portfolio (Party, Kids and 3rd Person Action/Adventure).
- Massive backlog of games for GamePass
- Regular annual games
- Really cheap at the moment!
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The more you say it the more I start to believe it, and it worries me.
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They seem like such a mess in so many ways right now.
Although I agree that their IP catalog is quite impressive, I just don’t see them being the next target. I also wouldn’t be surprised if MS went quiet on big acquisitions for a bit after the ABK deal closes.
Who knows though. I wouldn’t have believed they’d buy out ABK either.
What publisher would hand them the lead on a silver platter in Europe?
EA
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Shockingly enough I’d say Sega, because I don’t think people get how big Football Manager is on the PC market.
If not that and if by some chance MS could get just the video game side of Konami I’d say getting Pro Evolution Soccer, now known as eFootball would be huge or a combo of Sega and Konami, to have a big hold on the Football market.
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Has eFootball stopped being a joke already?
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I agree, Microsoft’s history shows if they can get a good deal when a company is at it’s lowest they will pounce
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You place too much importance on the amount of studios they have. Ubisoft has to go through the structural changes before anybody will consider them an attractive acquisition.
I 100% disagree.
For Microsoft it makes absolute sense.
Having studios in 54 different locations around the world when they’ve gone on record stating they want to expand to more locations would solve that particular issue.
In addition having 13 of those in the Asia Pacific (2 in Japan) region where they are specifically trying to grow makes absolute sense!
Gaining 20+ support studios (around 10,000+ support staff), when it’s clear that a current major issue for them is a lack of support staff to deliver their current output!
Then a regular output of games (3-5 each year) with usually atleast 2 of those in the top 10 sellers would guarantee regular first party content for GamePass ensuring growth.
Party content with Rabbids and Just Dance. They could also revive Rocksmith or help develop Guitar Hero.
Kids content with Rayman, TrackMania and Rabbids.
Action/Adventure games with Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, Division, FarCry & Watch Dogs etc.
Sport with Riders Republic, Crew and Steep.
eSports with Tom Clancy.
They currently have over 100 games on Ubisoft+ which could be folded into GamePass.
The opportunities would be endless and they are under $6 Billion right now.
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I agree there’s a lot of potential with Ubisoft, but we also have to look at how inefficient they’ve been recently with all of those resources available to them.
Just to name a few games over recent years that either have had development troubles, no-show, or went super quiet then suddenly dropped out of nowhere with little to no fan fair.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 (lol)
Skull & Bones
Prince of Persia: SoT Remake
Roller Champions
The Settlers
Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad
I won’t count Avatar since I believe the original intention was always to release around the movie.
Hopefully they won’t do the same thing to Rocksmith + as they did with Roller Champions, but it looks like people have already forgotten the game was announced.
We’ll see what happens with The Division: Heartland, might’ve just been announced too early.
Maybe Xbox could fix them, but they’ve also got to handle their own projects and ABK too at the same time.
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Fair points, hopefully something like a top level re-structure would help fix these issues.
My impression is that most of the issues stem from Guillemot and refusing to adapt for the past 20+ years. In addition to ignoring multiple petitions by his thousands of employees, Yves has also been accused of covering up years of sexual misconduct.
It’s really sad to see Ubisoft fall from their golden era, I just wish someone would save them.
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Ubisoft has excellent support studios and the quality of their games speaks for itself really (at least, from a graphical point of view, although I do personally really enjoy their games). While it is a huge amount of employees to take under, I wouldn’t mind them joining the MS family exclusively for sure . Ubisoft has a huge following, having all those players joining Gamepass would definitely help make it the defacto gaming subscription service.
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