I have no opinion on whether they should do this or what would be a good buy, but here is the list of mobile companies that Microsoft shortlisted in 2021 as per court document RX1141:
Zynga - Acquired by Take Two Interactive in 2022
Playrix - Formerly employed roughly equal numbers of Russian and Ukrainian staff across both countries. Has suspended operations in Russia, thus terminating a large percentage of it’s workforce.
Niantic - Privately held, with substantial (but unknown percentage) ownership stakes held by Google, Nintendo, and The Pokemon Company
Scopely - Acquired by Savvy Game Group (Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund gaming subsidiary) in 2023
Niantic seems difficult but may be possible depending on how the ownership stakes play out. Playrix having actually shut down Russian operations completely (including shutting all studios there) means it’s probably in a damaged state in terms of productivity, and large operations in Ukraine may still cause buyers to hesitate since it’s a warzone.
These others were also filtered down as part of the “Top 20 opportunities” but did not make the final shortlist:
Netmarble - Public, ~20% owned by Tencent, ~2.6 billion market cap
Glu Mobile - Acquired by Electronic Arts in 2021
GAMEVIL - Public, stock price has declined to roughly 1/9th of it’s 2021 value (now at 137 million, formerly over 1 billion usd)
The 13 remainng companies in the “top 20” they made were struck out by Microsoft at the time because they were all acquired prior to the document being prepared.
There is, it’s called Activision Blizzard King, and it hits all 3 strategic priority areas identified in 2021. King alone is a much bigger mobile company than most under discussion as targets here.
Im just thinking about how Microsoft is probably still looking to spend about 25 billion per year on acquisitions. Kind of wild. Gaming will surely benefit.
The point was that worst case scenario they had a top tier development team that could be making great content regardless of if it was associated with the Dragon Quest IP, and that Microsoft already has a working relationship with Disney and was able to negotiate the existing deal for Indiana Jones to make it an Xbox exclusive launching on gamepass. So it’s seems reasonable to say they’d be open to negotiation to continue the Kingdom Hearts franchise in a way that would fit Xbox’s plans for Square.
I was wondering if anybody have a chronology of the leaked studios that microsoft was interested
We now know that MS was trying to get WB around the same time of the Bethesda talks.
We also know that MS was interested in Square (Project Phoenix)
And then, we also have that big list of potential acquisitions that included Sega, Paradox, IO, Supergiant and others.
So what happened first?
Things of course have changed, some of the targets on that list are already acquired and the WB talks were probably before the Discovery merger. But on the other hand Square seems to be more desperate for money than ever
Capcom’s “game machine” is already extremely well-oiled and the company is doing amazingly, and they don’t skip Xbox, so there is no reason for a Capcom acquisition. Nothing changes under MS other than GP releases which is not a valid reason (in that they seem to be improving Zenimax’s output by taking away the GAAS necessity and rushing games necessity, and -hopefully- will clean the culture at ABK) alone to be able to purchase a publisher. I wouldn’t be a fan of it even if multiplat was left as is.
Obviously it’s -legal- and they’re -able- to, I think at the moment that no JP publisher has a reason to sell (including Square).
I also think that “owning Japanese content” is kind of overblown on here as a priority on MS’s “bucket list”. Not saying it isn’t something they want but I do not think they want to overpay a premium that much to accomplish this. No mobile or GAAS hits actually probably knocks Capcom down a bit.
I also still feel that MS is not going after publishers that didn’t mutually agree to be bought.
You’re pretty close as far as what we know about over that period.
2019 (late): The aquisition of Square Enix, dubbed “Project Phoenix” is proposed. Some kind of approval was sought. It is unknown what happened after this.
2020 (mid): In an E-mail between Spencer and another executive on the topic of M&A, Square Enix is not mentioned. He does say they are actively working on acquisitions of WB Games and Zenimax (while other parts of the company are focussed on TikTok).
2020 (late): Zenimax agrees to be acquired and this is announced pubicly shortly after.
2020 (late): Warner Brothers abandons their effort to sell WBIE.
2020 (late): A document exists wherein Xbox is seeking approval for a purchase of Sega. Several risks are highlighted, including Sega-Sammy’s potential unwillingness to be separated.
2021 (mid): In the 2021 M&A strategy document, Sega is mentioned as hypothetical future acquisition, implying that the 2020 effort either did not get approval or was rebuffed by Sega-Sammy. The following companies are shortlisted for M&A possibilities; Thunderful, Supergiant, Niantic, Playrix, Zynga, Bungie, IO Interactive, Scopely.
2021 (late): News breaks about significant problems at ABK, and stock price plummets. Spencer says he is “reevaluating their relationship with Activision.”
2022 (early): Public announcement of deal to acquire ABK
It’s a shame we don’t have similar documents covering the 2017-2019 period. It has been alleged by some people that Capcom was under pursuit in 2017, but presumably since they acquired many companies over that period there would have been many other attempts that did not pan out for companies large and small.
