Can’t wait for Soul Reaver remaster
Nobody is gonna cancel a deal over that 
Longest acquisition in gaming? Who knows what future holds.
Folks, it’s a joke poking fun at Square literally the same way Embracer just did.
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WB me please.
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100% this. even if every square enix title was 1 year exclusive for the next 5 years per the term of an agreement its still worth a purchase because MS or whoever are spending the money for what they bring long-term to the platform. As 15 years in the future no one will remember or care oh this final fantasy game was locked away from most non-sony platforms for a few years.
Even if you accept the premise that Ubisoft has too many devs for its current business model, it does not logically follow that layoffs must follow a Ubisoft acquisition. After an acquisition, Ubisoft would be working with its new parent company to support its (the parent company’s) business model. Those “extra” Ubi devs could be redeployed in any number of useful ways.
We can illustrate this with some hypothetical numbers. Ubi currently has about 20,000 employees. Let’s say the “ideal” number of employees for the firm is actually 15,000 given the current business model. Xbox-Bethesda-Activision currently has about 15,000 employees (not sure of the accurate number), but its “ideal” number may be closer to 20,000. This would allow X-B-A to staff up 343 to support GAAS content, add support devs to CoD to free up other studios, speed up the dev times of TES, Fallout, etc.
It’s easy to see (given my admittedly convenient numbers above) that Ubi layoffs would not necessarily occur if Xbox acquired them.
I’ve been saying on here for months that the number one constraint facing the industry as a whole is the (insufficient) supply of good developers. It truly baffles me when people treat that scarce resource as a liability, not as an asset.
BTW, a couple of months ago I posted a brief financial analysis of Ubisoft that does not support the idea that the firm has too many devs. Link below for those who are interested.
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Absolutely. Between competitive poaching of talent, new studios being announced seemingly bi-weekly, support studios being booked, studio expansions, etc it’s no wonder there’s a shortage of help and a consistency of industry-wide positional vacancies that we see numerous job posts for.
Really hoping Certain Affinity and Asobo are both in the cards (assuming Asobo is interested). Maybe MS could find a way to even acquire Splash Damage from Tencent. Those are just my dream picks though, especially since they do both support work and original projects.
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Asobo are ridiculously talented, I’m super hyped for Plague Tale 2.
I never realised Splash worked on Gears and Halo!
I think Robot Entertainment would be great too, I just think it’s unlikely as Microsoft previously closed their studio down (Ensemble Studios). If you haven’t played Orcs Must Die its so addictive!
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Just because it is a group of developers, it does not make asset by default. We know that not all the projects are succefull just because there is staff available.
I always bring that example that Jeff Grubb mentioned regarding Monolith and EA - rather than buying Monolith they opened a studio and poached devs there. It is just easier to do, you do not need to dig into the group, find out what brings down their output and so on.
Just because there are a lot of people, it does not make it a good thing.
Nobody involved in hiring people would agree that it is easier
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More studios needed for sure. Be interesting to see what direction that takes. They have indicated diversity and big IP are important. Will they feel like they already own enough big IP and just need to leverage them more? Will they feel like they need more IP? Will they feel like they need more in house diversity of content? Will they think they still need all of that in spades?
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I think they will do all of that - we saw some indications of that. But acquisition priority will be big IPs, especially exclusive ones. That’s how I see it.
I mean we know of the rumors regarding Bungie and that Microsoft decided to pull out the talks due to ABK opportunity and Bungie’s strong desire of being a multiplatform maker. So Microsoft clearly was interested in big IP with high engagement value and they were interested in making it (future games) exclusive.
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I 100% agree. Timed exclusive deals that Sony make are short-term strategies, owning a whole publisher, you can keep the IP exclusive for as long as the acquirer likes.
They still need anime! 
*looks at japanese publishers
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Wasn’t the rumour surrounding Bungie simply that Microsoft weren’t interested in the sizable asking price? I mean just cause Microsoft can afford to buy Bungie dozens of times over doesn’t mean they’re willing to spend more than it is worth to them, it just seems like Sony had more to gain from a Bungie acquisition and was willing to spend more as a result.
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Jez said on Twitter and on his podcast that Bungie was willing to sell to MS for way less than what Sony paid for. But apparently what kept Microsoft from pulling the trigger is Bungie was very adamant about all there games including future ones staying multi platform.
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Oh interesting, I hadn’t heard that. I guess it wasn’t just asking price after all.
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If there games are multiplat then who buys them doesn’t even matter
Of course it doesn’t. I was just telling him what Jez reported.
Just wanted to drop in and say that I can’t stand reading that these talented humans that make games are equated to “assets”, and even worse that they’re somehow less valuable than IP. What a horrible viewpoint. Also, just because you can poach talent doesn’t mean you’ll see the same quality output of a successful staffed studio. Chemistry is indeed a thing in games and elsewhere.
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