Looking at the rumored PS+ tier game list, it makes me wonder if it was one of those cases - which we saw with ABK - where Ubisoft agreed to make a deal with Sony for PS+ (Classics). A lot of Assassin’s Creed games. Granted all of them are old. Ubisoft is making a bunch of deals with everybody it seems.
It seems you are intent on twisting my words lately 
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I didn’t say Microsoft would be willing to pay X amount, I said Embracer would want a significant amount to sell arguably their best studios, if they are even willing to sell them at all.
They would have to consider an offer from MS but as a shareholder you don’t want to remove ‘value’ from your company. The only exception being if the whole company was being acquired and then you personally make money back on your shares anyway so who cares?
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A new No One Lives Forever would be awesome, however if Xbox were to do it I feel they would need to lean even more towards the 70’s as it could feel too similar to Perfect Dark (it’s been a long time since I played NOLF so may need a refresher).
I forgot about ETQW that would be great to come back too!
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They cannot ask “any” amount. All the prices are calculated based upon returns, size etc. All of it involves accountants and so on. Even if they bought them for 300m, they won’t be able to ask for 600m for CD for example. Just like 4b for WB studios - WB offered that price, but it was too much without IPs.
First of all welcome, and great first post with some amazing points, I agree Sega and WB would be some amazing acquisitions. Imagine a rebooted prototype from rocksteady studios so many possibilities with the amazing studios and devs from WB
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Now I have heard you say it all 
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The whole point of a business is to make money, they can ask for what they want, it doesn’t mean they will get it.
Sure their ‘value’ or ‘worth’ will be calculated through their assets, revenue and debt etc but for example if they deem that part of their business is ‘worth’ 10 Billion they are not going to sell it for break even at 10 Billion are they? They will ask for whatever premium they deem suitable.
Take the recent ABK acquisition for example their shares were worth $65 a share, Microsoft came in and offered $80 a share. ABK then asked for them to increase their offer to over $90 a share. This went forth and back with Activision asking for more until they reached $95 and a deal was struck.
Using the 10 billion example above it could be worth 10 billion but they could ask for 15-16 billion or even more if they wanted to.
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A lot of smaller and mid size japanese companies would be great. Platinum, Arc, CC2 etc and I think getting sega to act as the Bethesda unbrella esqu publisher for them to work with is the ideal. So basically get sega and the use sega to get smaller devs.
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arc just got bought by saudi’s so I doubt they would be for sale.
Arc System Works got acquired ? Do you have a link ? I can’t find anything.
there is no news about it where u got that info from ?
my bad it was SNK that the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman bought not arc .
I do not see Microsoft acquiring any small japanese company. Publisher - I can see though, but smaller companies? I do expect second party publishing deals though. Or maybe some thing like So Long.
It could be the way that Xbox goes if they can’t get hold of a Japanese publisher, effectively build up their own Japanese division (that’s if they are even interested in doing this).
On a side note I see alot of people state Xbox needs Japanese studios to compete, but it’s not like PlayStation has them either, PolyPhony is basically Xbox’s equivalent of Turn10 and Team Asobi are like Double Fine (making Platformers).
I don’t think they necessarily need first party Japanese content. IMO they just need to make sure that third party Japanese devs don’t skip Xbox by growing their market share. The quickest way to grow their market share is buying up the biggest and most popular IP’s which is what they’ve been doing. Because of this I think they will still go after publishers with the biggest/most popular IP’s like EA, T2, Epic, Valve & Ubisoft before they target Japan (granted there are massive Japanese IP’s too).
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Sony has Square Enix essentially in their pocket and other japanese publishers do not skip the platform either. Not to mention various smaller companies. You would think that - SE aside - other publishers would not skip Xbox now, yet we still have games skipping Xbox. Sony essentially gets more with less - they don’t need to do anything to get the games on their platform, while Xbox has to acquire publishers to ensure that the games are coming to Xbox.
Yep if you finished reading my post I addressed this…
PlayStation currently has the market share. There are way more PS4/PS5’s in people’s homes compared to XBones/Series.
Having more western games does not really address the issue. Nintendo almost does not have third party content from big western publishers (no big name - from COD to AC) for example. If even after ABK acquisition, games are still skipping Xbox nothing else will help. You would think it is crazy to skip Xbox Series platform right now (with Microsoft throwing around billions), yet here we are. Xbox just lacks the legitimacy in Japan.
All in all, my point is no amount of exclusive western games will stop Xbox from not getting certain japanese games. Xbox is literally in a situation of “Fine, I’ll do it myself” for various (albeit specific) reasons.
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Ok answer this… your a Japanese developer.
Platform A says can you make your game for our platform? We have 136 million units in people’s homes which you can potentially sale your game on! In addition we will give you X million to keep it off platform B.
Platform B says please can you make your game for our platform, we have 66 million units in people’s homes.
As a developer who wants their product to be successful both financially and in popularity what are you realistically going to do? Especially when you factor in the additional costs developing for multiple platforms against their potential sales.
We haven’t even seen the fruits from their current acquisitions yet, we won’t see the results from ABK for years considering the deal isn’t even done yet. Once Xbox owns all these massive IP’s and potentially make some of them exclusive it will guarantee more hardware sales and GP subs and as these grow their market share also grows. Once Xbox’s market share is equivalent to PlayStation (or even surpasses it) do you think every Japanese dev will still choose option 1?
Even if you look at the PS hardware sales in Japan they aren’t that great with a total of around 9.4 million PS4/PS5 lifetime sales, so arguably it’s the larger market share in the west which is probably the most defining/appealing part to a Japanese developer. Or to think about it a different way as Japan only account for around 7% of all PS hardware sales, do you realistically think that a Japanese developer is aiming for the 7% or the bigger markets when they develop for PS?
This is why Xbox IMO can grow simply by expanding in the west (which they are doing). If they become the biggest console in the western markets other regions will want to develop for their console simply due to the number of potential sales.
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I think even during Xbox 360 era, some japanese games skipped Xbox.
The thing is that, all the platforms exist in several distinct markets right now. All those markets have different state of market share. Japan is its own distinct market - just like USA market for example. For Xbox to gain legitimacy they either have to sell the comparable amount of consoles as Playstation (and even Playstation is losing there to Nintendo), which probably won’t happen this gen or they will have to make exclusive partnerships and acquisition. That’s the only reliable way for them to get japanese content on their platform.
A lot of devs and even publishers are content with just releasing the games in Japan and not anywhere else.
A major point you did not mention in the pitch:
If you make a game for Platform B it will also work on Platform PC or need minimal work for that.
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