so 67 million MAU on EGS compared to 134 million MAU…that is quite the difference not to mention most of those users are probably only signing on to play fortnite or to get the monthly free games.
fair, I spoke without thinking there
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Great job with the false equivalencies! I “went on you” about Street Fighter because you said it sold more and was more popular than Mortal Kombat - which I proved to be false with data, therefore your point was false. If being wrong and merely called out on it ruffles your feathers so much, you may need to disconnect a while.
As for Sonic, you’re just as wrong this time as you were the last time you went on this dismissive tirade. Just like last time, I have more data to back up my points:
Sonic is hardly the dead franchise you constantly pretend it is (this is just FY2021). It’s actually important to note that, in general, Japanese games don’t sell anywhere near as much as some of you seem to think they do, period. As such, constantly hitting 3-7 million a year on a game or two within a single franchise is actually spectacular; keep in mind that Capcom never had a single title sell more than 8 million units until the release of MHW (we’re talking 40+ years of operation here). Sega has had dozens of titles that have, and as mentioned their PC presence is unparalleled across almost any other Japanese publisher.
It’s true, with a few exceptions, that just about any publisher can be argued to have great value for Microsoft as I have always argued. What’s funny is that you and a select few others seem to unjustifiably attack anyone who suggests Sega simply because you repeatedly choose to ignore the quantitative data provided to justify our reasoning, and because you don’t like them, for whatever reason. Capcom would be great. Namco-Bandai would be great. Sega would be great. They all have their own advantages and inherent value, but ignoring all the data points provided because you don’t like the data, coupled with feeling the need to repeatedly use logical fallacies and attempt to make find some sort of “gotcha” moments with me and some of the other users is bordering bad-faith and harassment, period. Change the damn tune and your tone along with it.
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No worries 
Out of interest why would you be against Epic?
They own some of the biggest games (Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys). In addition they own one of the biggest PC storefronts and some classic legendary IP’s like Unreal Tournament and are the original creators of Gears of War & Bulletstorm. Through their publishing arm they have negotiated a number of exclusive deals.
Then there is their golden goose - Unreal Engine which is a commercial and critical success. Not only do they license this out to game developers but movie studios too, for example they helped with Disney’s The Mandalorian. Imagine if they had all that knowledge in house! They could specifically design the next Xbox to take advantage of its current (and upcoming) features.
I know, but still it would have been cool to see them working on multiple games with xbox beyond being a support studio
They could have made a new banjo or even work on on some dead ips
Thata why I hope they will not let ubisoft go, most of their studio could bring some xbox or activision franchises back
Not necessary. Teams should want to work on those IPs first - it is like people always asking Double Fine to work on Banjo. Acquisitions actually make this matter worse because Microsoft won’t be able to force their own teams to work on any IP, unlike third party deal where they can ask a team to make a game and pay for it.
We see it right now - just because Microsoft owns Bethesda, does not mean that Obsidian will suddenly abandon everything they work on, JS abandons his game - just to start making New Vegas 2 (not matter how many people want for that to happen).
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Yes, I know not everybody would want to work on old ips, most of them would prefer to work on their own things, but I am sure that atleast 1 would want to bring back an ip
And I prefer that than hoping for ms to hire a random developer to work on a Ip that I want to see back for the next decade
It’s been a while but I’m constantly asked (and always forget to respond) who I’d like to see Xbox acquire. On the publisher front, aside from Sega, I’d love for WB Games (if not at all WBD to make license management easier). Capcom and T2 would be a lovely option as well, both for different target audiences obviously.
As for the individual studios, I’ll edit this shortly once I’m at my desk to add the rest 
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no I didn’t, I said it was more popular then took it back quickly after checking something and corrected myself saying I meant recognizable which you claimed to be the same as popularity which…it ain’t
I was miss reading the finantial report, it said 4,400K and I thought that mean 440,000 units LMAO, either way I find it ironic with the exception of mania (which is is made by fans who are now working with private division at rockstar) they are all spin offs or old as shit but I was going off indivual game sales not series sales in a year but I will take the L here since I definitely was being petty about it
I never called sonic dead because I would have to be brain dead to say that. Sonic is milked to hell and back by SEGA and undeniably insanely recognisable. I just argued about his popularity which I could of definitely worded better and not been as passive agreesive over it but regardless don’t act like I said sonic was a dead IP…also monster hunter 4/ultimate passed 8 million apparently along side RE4, RE5, RE7, MH3/Freedom 3/ultimate, SF4/Super/Ultra and MH Generations which all came out before world. Also yeah, I won’t argue the part about them being the biggest Japanese publisher in the PC space but I will say I don’t think that is a massive plus when they are getting blizzard and while it is not ownership, they are going to have the partership with riot…they are bigger in the PC space if I am not mistaken so it isn’t filling a hole like people love to claim “SEGA fills a ton of holes”
are you really going to say that when I brought up reasons SEGA is a good buy but I stood by the fact that they aren’t on the same level as other publishers and with anyone arguably on the table now after ABK the hype behind SEGA is incredibly over played? Like sure I didn’t go knee deep into it but why would I when others went over the main points (a few of them mentioning nostalgia is a factor because it definitely is)
Yeah I love capcom, I don’t let that make me think capcom is the best buy in the industry. Capcom is a solid buy but I think EA, T2 and arguably even Ubisoft (if you count Nintendo then 100% them too) are better buys because they appeal way more to the casual audiences and if it wasn’t for the sammy shit I think I would believe SEGA was a more likely buy than Capcom despite thinking capcom curb thomps them in terms of quality but I find this right here ironic because no one really goes over the negatives when it comes to SEGA, only the positives if you are on the side of them buying SEGA. We have president of this being an issues from acquisitions when MS considered buying midway so why wouldn’t it be a potential issue with SEGA or Bandai Namco or Konami or Sony or so on.
I am not against epic, I just don’t see MS being intrested because they are private with large percentage’s of the company being owned by other companies like tencent which could make an acquisition harder, their games are successful because they are free to play usually so it could easily not help game pass (it could help xcloud though…but the partnership is there now so it isn’t needed anymore). The biggest benifit would be the unreal engine which would definitely be a big get but MS already has multiple engines and the unreal engine is made to be licensed out pretty much so MS would just get the licensing payments. I don’t think they are a bad buy but I heard they are worth something like 50B and I don’t think they are worth it, escpecially when you could get EA for the same amount give or take or less the same price or T2 for cheaper
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Modern AAA gaming is just not sustainable anymore - high budget games require too many people and too much time.
Unity acquisition might be an interesting option.
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Most of their gaming investment has been content oriented, which makes sense given Game Pass. I don’t think Unity really targets any key growth areas for Xbox.
At $15+ billion, it seems like it’d be a pretty bad move IMO.
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I agree, I can’t see them going after Unity either, I don’t think any Xbox project has used Unity in quite a few years. With the recent layoffs and analysis that they are at a high chance of bankruptcy it doesn’t seem to make much sense.
It would prevent them acquiring something else that would likely have a much bigger impact to the platform.
They have Game Stack though.
Not really.
I don’t know. The GTA trilogy was outsourced to a company called Grove Street Games so I am iffy on the remake stuff in general, not sure about RDO though. But I am mixed on what you are saying because I agree but I am also convinced the next rockstar game will take arounda decade anyway
Yeah, I agree. If Microsoft wants more engines I think they will just get them from acquiring publishers e.g. Capcom has the RE engine, EA has frostbyte, T2 has R.A.G.E, Ubisoft has AnvilNext, SE has Luminous Engine, Konami has the fox engine, SEGA has the Hedgehog Engine and so on since you get the benefits of buying a publisher or just make one. Does unity even make games? genuine question
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Yes, really!
They have a market cap of 13.4B so we are looking at potentially a 19B acquisition.
If they have a 19B acquisition in progress they are not going to go after another large acquisition (or small IMO) in the gaming sector. We have previously seen that Xbox haven’t wanted to rock the boat at all with other acquisitions such as during ABK or Bethesda (which was half the size). They appeared to not even go after Crystal Dynamics/Eidos which was only 300M.
Microsoft as a whole have still continued acquiring in other business segments, but not Gaming/Xbox.
But this is a mute point anyway as why would they go after Unity instead of the other potential targets in this price range, it literally makes no sense. There are many publishers which would be cheaper, come with big IP and their own engines.
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To be fair this assumes that a hands off approach is the same thing as “business as usual”, when what it really means is giving studios the freedom to make the games that they want to make with less focus on a traditional sales focus. You wouldn’t see GTAVI any time sooner under Microsoft, but you’d probably have a better chance of a better work culture and other projects like Bully 2 seeing the light of day.
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The next acquisition needs to add more diversity to the GamePass lineup, and the clear choice is either Sega or Capcom. So many fantastic IP to bolster the lineup.
I was recently at a friend’s house who had the PS premium top tier whatever it’s called, and honestly the variety in library really appealed to me, and was more interesting than what we’ve been getting on GamePass this year. I might have to pick up a ps again when the slim version comes out.
MS needs to snatch up more studios as soon as they can to keep GamePass fueled.
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embracer group would do that too but they don’t really stack up to capcom or SEGA if we are talking diversity. I don’ think that is something MS will care too much about personally but SEGA would bring more diversity but the IPs would trend to be smaller while Capcom would still bring a lot but no where near as much as SEGA but the IPs will trend to be a lot bigger while embracer probably has the most diveristy but with a few exceptions (borderlands or tomb raider for example) most of these IPs are really unknown to the casual audience. I will be real, I think MS already has a stacked line up of IP from a diversity perspective but the problem is a lot of those IPs are dead.
That being said, their current biggest holes are probably JRPGs, sports games, fighting games, hack and slashes (prototype could fix that though) and maybe horror, I know they have the evil within but I think that is kind of niche and its just 1 thing so…that one is debatable. SEGA fits all those holes except horror I think (they made Alien isolation though so they could make a new horror IP so yeah) but sports is just football and they don’t own platinum so MS would either need to buy them or get someone else to work on bayonetta, capcom ticks all of them except sports but their JRPG offerings are not strong…they still exist but worth noting and embracer no clue, not looking though that.
Their are other holes like Visual novels, rythem game and arcade/arcady games but I don’t think they are anywhere near as a priority compared to others I listed above but SEGA has all 3 of these too assuming MS would get Hatsune Miku for the rythem games while Capcom has at least 2 of them (I don’t know if they have rythem games, I don’t think they do but not certain) while no clue for embracer.
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I believe the next Acquisition for Xbox after Activision deal goes through will be a Japanese company
They have a lot of momentum right now with japan stuff and i hope they keep building on that
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It depends what you’re looking for and what you mean by diversity. They lack jRPGs, sure enough, but the Embracer group definitely has a huge variety of titles. Strategy titles, shooters (1st and 3rd person, conventional and looter shooters), survival games, RPGs, action-adventure titles, mobile puzzle games, pinball simulators, racing games, factory simulators, the list goes on.
There’s a really strong effect with Embracer where you struggle to think of what they make then you go “oh shit, they own that? I didn’t even notice they acquired it.” It’s actually hard to keep track of what they own because of how many sub-divisions they have.
A selection of franchises of note they own (not exhaustive):
- Borderlands (IP + development + partial funding)
- Metro
- Tomb Raider
- Dead Island
- Saints Row
- Deus Ex
- Satisfactory
- Valheim
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Legacy of Kain
- Duke Nukem
- Timesplitters
- Homeworld
Plus games they publish but don’t necessarily own in other ways:
- KOTOR remake
- System Shock remake
- Payday 3
- Wasteland 2 / 3
- Shenmue III
For people primarily in the console sphere some of these titles might make you go “huh? Who cares?” but games like Valheim have sold over ten million copies. Satisfactory is a factory simulator that has sold at or in excess of 2 million copies. Some of these titles and franchises are properly Big Deals, like Borderlands and now Tomb Raider. Dead Island 1 sold >5 million copies as of 9 years ago. They own a half dozen mobile teams of various sorts but I honestly have no idea how big those games are and wouldn’t know how to research that.
There are other tertiary things attached now too - like Dark Horse or Asmodee. This makes them in some ways quite similar to most of the Japanese publishers by having things outside of the gaming space that a buyer in the gaming space may not be interested in.
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