Xbox Acquisition |OT6| If this is about competition, let us have competition

I don’t see Sony going after any publisher - they plainly just can’t afford it. WB? LoL. Arc Systems? Not sure why would Sony were to acquire them considering that they are making PS exclusive games most of the time anyway. CD Project? I also doubt. Sony’s recent patterns are all about GaaS. (BTW, did you check CDProject market cap right now? It is 2b! What a crazy drop from 11b :exploding_head:)

And especially SE - I mean, why would you spend on SE if their main game you are interested in - which is - FF is moneyhatted years in advance? (Also I believe Forspoken director (or some old guy, don’t remember name) is the connection point between Sony and SE - I think he was also involved in FF in the past or something) And if it is a defensive purchase - Sony won’t be able to win the bidding war against any other serious buyers (like it happened with Leyou). So it is in Sony’s best interest not to be overly aggressive in acquisition war.

And if anybody brings Bungie as the example of Sony’s win we can say that SE won there because Microsoft decided to pull out due to ABK, not because Sony offered the higher price. Not to mention with Bungie being that strict with being multiplatform, Microsoft did not lose much at all.

Largely agree except for the Bungie part; we reported on Xbox looking to buy Bungie well before ABK was on the market (so-to-speak), and Jez later confirmed the validity of our reporting. Microsoft/Xbox walked away from the deal because Bungie wanted to remain independent and the cost compared to value to Xbox’s portfolio wasn’t justifiable to any potential gaps. After ABK, that latter point stands even more solidly. Given Bungie’s negotiations to remain multiplatform and exist as an independent subsidiary, nothing of value has inherently been lost as you mentioned.

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not really the right chat about this anyway so if you want to continue this go to the other acquisition chat but they can afford to make acquisitions, sure someone like EA is definitely out of reach but they could definitely afford to spend a few billion to acquire a publisher, I will be honest I think they will acquire WB games with NRS and a DC licensing agreement but that is just my opinion (I am speaking under the assumption they do sell WB games and WBD isn’t sold off as a whole or they decided to keep it). Arc doesn’t work exclusively with sony at all, a lot of games come to switch and even occasionally xbox but if they did it would just sort of help the argument since is a strong relationship in the same way housemarque was. CD Project I could see them grabbing because of the stop drop, they don’t really have any strong WRPG studios but its definitely the least likely from the list.

Disagree, defensive purchase doesn’t mean they are in a bidding war, it could mean they just want to grab them before someone else tries which makes more sense than sitting back and watch the industry you get the highest percentage of revenue from in their entire business just slowly disappear from them

The chances of that is close to zero. I would probably even bet on it not happening.

DC property is such a lucrative thing that Sony is nowhere near the level of a conversation where they can hope to acquire it. If DC properties are for sale (I presume we are talking about gaming), it will be a bloodbath between big tech giants. And if WB is for sale, it will be another bloodbath ((though WB had a big debt, so it might discourage some companies) between another set of tech giants. I wonder if EA would want to merge with WB-Discovery (lol)

Defensive purchase is when you acquire something that you originally did not plan to acquire but you had no other choice but to win the bidding war there. For the public companies (and we are talking about publishers) you cannot purchase anything defensively if there is somebody else who offers a bigger price.

People really overestimate the reach that Sony has.

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I’m pretty sure Kadokawa and Square is a target, and Sony will acquire it sooner or later.

Sony Acquisition OT is that way.

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Out of interest has there ever been a thread just for generic acquisition talk? I’m just wondering if it may be easier to manage as I notice that this thread often goes sideways (I’m often guilty of this).

E.g. talking about acquisitions outside of Xbox/PS but in the gaming industry, for example EA merging with TakeTwo or someone else.

Alot of the time there is also some crossover between the threads e.g. Xbox should do this before/in case Sony do this (or after they acquire someone).

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their used to be one…it was the xbox discussion one, it used to be generic gaming acquisition talk (or at least that is how it was treated)

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We should scratch the studio of the acquisition list now.

…is that the guy behind ninja gaiden?

That and dead or alive series

ah, an acquisition never really made sense to me. I thought a partnership made way more sense personally

Out of all the acquisitions Sony has made, this one only one I wanted Xbox to make. I totally understand the reasoning behind but it would’ve made so much sense for Xbox to have Bungie back. From a marketing perspective the OG Halo creators (at least by name) and from a development standpoint Bungie’s live service expertise are unmatched. And not to mentioned they are a massive studio and still growing.

As nice as that’d be, I can’t imagine how annoying it’d be to have people talk non stop about how they should take over Halo.

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People would just need to come to the realization that Bungie wouldn’t make a Halo game unless they wanted to. I think DoubleFine/Tim did an great job at letting people know they weren’t making Banjo game.

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That would be the Community Thread - the XGS OT has always been, and was meant to be strictly that discussion.

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hence I corrected myself in the brackets

Hi guys l, new here. I know people think Xbox will buy a big Japanese publisher to get into the market over there, but imo they won’t.

Sony isn’t doing amazing over there either, Nintendo is absolutely dominating.

I can see Xbox buying more western studios after the activision deal. This could force Japanese games to not miss out on Xbox sales if they get even more market share in the west.

I can see Xbox buying someone like cdpr tbh, especially after cyberpunk, this might be the best time. Maybe even Wb or Larian studios.

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Welcome to XboxEra!

I 100% agree, it’s something I have also been saying for quite some time. Although I’d personally love for them to get SEGA I think they will continue buying publishers & studios with the biggest IP’s and player bases which are typically in the west.

Once Xbox grows their market share to equal or even surpass PS it’s going to be difficult for a Japanese developer to skip such a huge audience base on Xbox. IMO it will also become increasingly more difficult for PS to money hat titles such as FF and SF, which is easy now when they have over twice as many consoles in people’s homes.

The eastern market is dominated by mobile gaming, if they want short term success there they need to either buy up more mobile publishers or release a handheld whether that be native or cloud.

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Hi thanks. Yeh I agree, xbox already has a good relationship with sega, I can still see them buying a smaller studio like platinum, but no big publishers. I hope they get cdpr, wb or larian.

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