I don’t know because my niece and nephews love playing tmnt shredder’s revenge on gamepass, or Mincraft dungeons. They never play halo, forza or starfield.
That would be the ultimate entertainment/tv/film acquisition for MS if they ever want to expand in streaming to compete with Apple, Amazon, Neflix and Disney.
WBDP+ 
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Nah, Convince the entities to sell of gaming and the rights to those IP for gaming , and in exchange you tank on some of the debt. Leave the rest
I believe Phil was asked about WB talks before, and he pretty much said it’s a licensing and royalties web of disaster. The ips have been bought and sold and split so many times, with varying disputes. Then you add on the new streaming rights which were never in the original agreements. So just acquiring gaming rights wouldn’t work with WB/DC comics. They would mostly have to own the whole thing, then look at what they can work with.
I have seen the rumors of a paramount acquisition and I just dont get it
You called that one,let’s keep speaking it into existence and maybe it will come true 
Just for fun speculation in tv/film acquisition space and gaming that would be great for Xbox, here are some of the marketcap reports.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)
- Market cap: $28.06 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $42.04 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): -$3.52 B
- Total debt in 2023: $44.80 B
Paramount Global (PARA)
- Market cap: $10.31 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $30.14 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): -$0.56 B
- Total debt in 2023 : $16.97 B
Walt Disney (DIS)
- Market cap: $167.05 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $88.89 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): $6.74 B
- Total debt in 2023 : $46.43 B
Disney is totally out of the range like Netflix.
Sega Sammy Holdings
- Market cap: $2.97 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $3.31 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): $0.48 B
- Total debt in 2023 : $1.01 B
Square Enix
- Market cap: $3.96 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $2.53 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): $0.21 B
- Total debt in 2019 - : $73.73 M - $100 M
Take 2 Interactive
- Market cap: $26.86 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $5.43 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): -$1.46 B
- Total debt in 2023 : $3.51 B
Electronic Arts
- Market cap: $36.73 Billion
- Revenue in 2023 (TTM): $7.59 B
- Earnings in 2023 (TTM): $1.41 B
- Total debt in 2023 : $1.88 B
Apologies for the long post.
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I said a while ago if Netfix ever wanted to expand through acquisitions something like Paramount would be the way to go - they would benefit from getting some established franchises under them.
I think my vision at the time was Paramount and Ubisoft - gain IP, expand their revenue sources and better utilise the IP they have across multimedia.
I was hoping it would be Warner Bros and Universal, so we’d finally get the T-Rex in the live action Batman, Batcave.
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Just curiosity but what makes paramount a good target for microsoft? They dont have debt like warner which is good but isnt like paramount is doing better, I just have a bad taste after the halo show tbh
Paramount Earnings ( $ -0.56 B), Total Debt ( $16 B) I wasn’t to happy with Halo tv show either, but I think we could also put that blame on MS for who they contracted to write and produce the show. They should have stayed closer to the Halo comic series for adaptation.
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Oh i was purely talking about if Netflix DID pick them up
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Oh, they own IP like Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Yellowstone, Sponge Bob, TMNT… probably more. But whoever does pick them up will probably sell off cable assets like CBS. I honestly can see Amazon pick them up first. Prime has already seamlessly add Paramount+ to be an added sub and watched through Prime.
Amazon acquired MGM for $8.5 B last year to bolster prime.
I can understand the desire from both companies as they do compliment each other but I just don’t see it happening for a couple of reasons. Regulators have already become a massive headache and this would easily be a level of consolidation that would concern them. A bigger issue at least imo is that WBD still hasn’t gotten their own house in order and I think are still two or three years away from getting onto an even keel, adding paramount which is in just a big mess could mean they never overcome the debt and growth targets. It feels like a deal that could either be a massive success or take the whole combined entity down
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Debts is insane for those movie companies (yes you have to buy the debt as well)…
WBD would be a a 75B$ before any majoration due to buyout. Count something like 100B$.
Sega debt is mostly due due to their mobile acquisition, relatively to their value it is still high.
Square Enix profits are pathetic.
ps : you do not buy the debt from the get go. you endorse the obligation of the debt, to be reimbursed in time with interests.
Read this article on the verge about the Adobe Figma deal being abandoned and found this part quite interesting as regulators were very concerned about future development at both companies. It seems Microsoft in general will have to be very careful about future acquisitions:
Adobe general counsel Dana Rao said that the company couldn’t prove to European regulators that the acquisition wouldn’t harm competition in the future — that is, that Adobe or Figma wouldn’t eventually do more to compete with one another.
The issue arose when it came to competing down the road. Rao said that regulators had “been very focused” on newer doctrines of antitrust law that “say that future competition is a critical part of the antitrust analysis.” Following the public statements from the EC and CMA, “we got together with Figma and just said, ‘Looking at the road ahead and the timing and the tenor of the conversations we’re having, this is probably a good time to stop,’” Rao says.
Rao also discusses why Adobe didn’t just keep fighting, like Microsoft did for its eventually successful Activision Blizzard deal. Rao says that Adobe and Figma saw what was persuasive with regulators and what hadn’t been, and they had to decide if they should continue the fight — and both sides concluded that it wasn’t worth it.
“The only way to solve a future competition issue, that someone might do something, is to not do the deal,” Rao says. “That’s essentially what they were telling us.”
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MS had to fight because the reason of blocking were cloud related, and they could not afford a case law saying that they should not grow because of cloud considerations, since it is a pillar of their company now.
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The comment section of that article is quite interesting.
It all comes down to how the markets were being defined. There were multiple of the more narrow market definitions like graphic software design where the combined entity would own almost 90% of the market.
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Idas was talking to us on the Xbox OT on the otherera and he mentioned this tidbit
Yes, the FTC, as well as the CMA and the EC, are very concerned with Big Tech moves. Therefore, any future acquisition by MS is going to be scrutinised (even small ones if they are potentially “killer acquisitions”). I mean, a month ago Germany said that they weren’t concerned about the OpenAI - MS recent moves and 10 days later the CMA opened a public inquiry, the FTC said that they were (informally) investigating it and the EC was following “very closely the situation of control.”
In any case, the recent incorporation of Alex Dupplessie to MS could be a sign that they are thinking more about acquiring studios than publishers in the short - mid term (I think that he managed the acquisitions and integrations of Bluepoint and Savage Studio for Sony).
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