Hope MS next acquisition is of a company in an up swing of good PR. Both Acti/Blizzard and Bethesda were in PR nightmares and trouble before they were acquired.
I get it, lower amount of money to be paid but jeez having Starfields initial reaction be met with skepticism and Diablo reputation in the toilet along with OW, MS really should look at acquiring a company that will just bring good will lol.
Right now all eyes are on these companies to mess up and those haters are ready to line up and say I told you so if they do bad.
Ubisoft and EA are other bad PR companies. Just pick up a Capcom or something jeez.
For a title that has been on PS3-PS4 until recently (without PC or Switch), while not being a mainstream genre - it is a lot.
No, 25m copies is the overall sales for the whole Far Cry franchise.
Far Cry 5 sold 2.5m copies in the first 5 days though. Far Cry 6 sales were down, so we can assume it sold less. Valhalla sold around 2m in the first week. And all these games are available on all the platforms.
Anecdotally FF7R sold 3m on a single platform in a weekend, despite being a relatively niche genre, according to some Granted I partially agree with JRPG being not that mainstream, but they have the potential and growing, but I think mainly thanks to Persona - as Square Enix & Sony is doing whatever it is possible to prevent JRPG from growing. It is kinda fascinating how Sony is directly involved in crippling the growth of the whole markets - like fighting game market last gen (that became more mainstream thanks to MK) and JRPG (that becomes more mainstream thanks to Persona)
The Division, Crew and For Honor you probably mean together 20m or something? Cannot find the source of your numbers.
Correct, which just proves my point even further that it is a niche genre against games such as Ubisoft which sale over 10 million copies for nearly every release!
Which type of games will bring in more GamePass subscribers? Ones that over 10 million people buy every year (and potentially buy multiple games: Division, AC, FarCry etc) or a JRPG franchise that comes out every 5-8 years and sells around 5 million?
Yep the chart I was using was inaccurate, they have still sold over 10 million copies of FarCry5 though so my point is still valid.
Aside South Korea - if Microsoft is interested in MMO and thus NCSOF, Nexon, Pearl Abyss become options (I personally stan for Pearl Abyss though, but no logic or reasoning is involved there) - other markets just don’t have the mature enough gaming industry that would lead to an acquisition. I could see some partnership deal via Xbox Global Publishing though.
I would say that having Square Enix in the pocket gives a lot of leverage to Sony in Japan with or without Japan Studio. It is akin having ABK on the west - no western game developer would be willing to ignore Xbox knowning that its parent company owns ABK. That’s why I advocate for japanese acquisition - Microsoft just lack legitimacy in Japan and owning a publisher would resolve it overnight.
I think people give too much credit to the back catalog. I suspect that new Day 1 releases bring more people to Game Pass than any back catalog. I don’t have numbers though, but new games available in the subscription is much more attractive proposition than something older (albeit bigger). I do think that there is some timeframe of being new - maybe 6 months at best?
I think it does not affect much the general consumer market. Twitter battle field was ugly though, but it does not represent much.
Considering that the title was available on many more platforms than FF7R, does it make more popular than FF7R though? Final Fantasy 15 had around 10m too. I think in that regard FF has bigger potential for growth that Far Cry.
If comparing which acquisitions would be more viable: Ubisoft or Square Enix then Ubisoft have multiple franchises that sell over 10 million copies.
If Final Fantasy died out then Square Enix would be redundant.
Square Enix doesn’t own Dragon Quest or Kingdom Hearts which are their next biggest sellers, we already know that Phil seems to be reluctant to make games on IP that Xbox doesn’t own.
Ironically they sold off their third biggest selling franchise (Tomb Raider) for a measley amount which to me shows they are incompetent.
Ubisoft also have more assets/studios, more valuable IP and overall fills more holes IMO.
Xbox have stated they want to expand to more locations and Ubisoft gives them studios in over 50 locations overnight (30 countries)!
Exactly, Ubisoft has loads of huge franchises.
Division is huge too.
I recently read that R6 Siege reached 70 million registered players (not active users).
The thing is tomorrow Disney could end it’s Kingdom Hearts license or Armor Project could terminate Dragon Quest etc (I appreciate it’s not that simplistic).
From a acquisition perspective its way too risky to acquire someone like Square IMO.
Final Fantasy would be the only viable product but it’s going on 35 years old now, it could easily become stale and loose it’s playerbase to a newcomer.
I don’t think we can call it risky without knowing the details of the contracts in place. What we do know is that Square Enix has exclusively made these games since their inception.
Also don’t see what’s wrong with FF being an old franchise. Its like worrying that The Elder Scrolls or Fallout are going to lose their place to a new Comer.
Nobody argues that Square Enix is a good acquisition per se - I stated multiple times that SE is not that great acquisition. It just solves the issue of Microsoft in Japan. Also SE does have something special and that is FF14 which is basically the biggest MMO out there right now - basically IP with the big engagement number. And that’s with SE issues with expanding servers and no Xbox version. Not to mention they don’t have mobile version of FF14 either.
There are many more factors involved in the acquisition and I stick to my position that Ubisoft acquisition is not the acquisition that Microsoft would pursue. At least not in the current state of Ubisoft. Simple as that.
The fact it was sold for 300m just means people here overestimated TR IP value. SE is stupid maybe, but 300m is a meager amount for a lot of companies yet nobody went over 300m for Square Enix West.
I suppose I’m talking from a risk perspective, when you look at something’s value you look at its longevity. Elder Scrolls is also 28 years old and neither are likely to keep going forever.
The difference is with Square it’s their biggest asset (Final Fantasy) and they don’t own their other two biggest IP’s so in my view it’s a little different.
Zenimax have a plethora of IP’s and potential new franchises like Starfield or Redfall which may also take off.
As you’ve stated we don’t know the details of those Square contracts so we can’t assess it fully, however in my view it is much riskier than say Ubisoft who own all their IP.
You also have to take into account that Xbox was busy with ABK, PlayStation was busy with Bungie, EA was busy with their failed Comcast merger and TakeTwo was busy with Zynga.
It may have just been the worst time for Square to sell as nobody was free to make a move.
When you look at Square’s Franchises Tomb Raider was their third biggest franchise with 81 million (just behind Dragon Quest with 82).
I’d argue that a 28 or 35 year old IP has less risk attached to it than a younger IP. We also tend to disregard many of the games Square Enix makes including their new IP like Forspoken.
That is also not accounting for the side effect that am Square Enix acquisition would have, effectively taking their competitors biggest ally and immediately solving the Japanese games problem for Xbox.
I’m not saying it’s better or worse than Ubisoft, but folks out there are acting like it’d be a bad move.
We don’t know if anybody was free or not, but we know that allegedly Square Enix West was for sale for quite some time. And that’s why I argued in the past that there should be a reason why Microsoft decided to go with CD partnership rather than acquisition (and it happened before ABK was even available and Microsoft was in talks with Bungie too).
