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The Risks of Big Gaming Acquisitions [Gameindustry.biz]

tmlDan

Member
You don't make a 8 billion and then a 70 billion buy if you are scare it could backfire. This is them now showing everyone that they are going all in on gaming before it was just a side job but now they are putting all the backing into gaming they are serious now & it scary for everyone
MS does because they have so much money, this could fail completely and they could shut all the studios and still be a 2-3 trillion dollar company.

Saying something doesn't always make it a reality, taking on this many employees is no small feat.
 
They did underdeveliver on expectations, from a business perspective, especially when time is taken into account.

They've had to restructure Rare and lay off staff since the acquisition (all of which is an additional cost along with an admission that things haven't worked as planned):



As per the gamespot article above in 2009 they had failed to recoup the cost of the acquisition - that's 7 years after the acquisition and they were nowhere near being in the green overall:



This is a business article, the stance will be financial, not Ozzy Onya A2Z's personal feelings. You should probably take emotion out of this and look at the situation objectively.

What a weird take to post articles from 2014 to just exclude Sea of Thieves from your overall "analysis". End of last year SoT sold over 5 million copies on Steam alone and pushed over 25 Million players. It's won awards for best social game, fastest growing new Xbox IP etc etc.

Besides the historic restructure and Kinetic failings they've also opened a second studio under Rare and overall increased their staff to exceed 250+. Feelings aside SoT has killed it in terms of restoring Rare Ltd and Xbox/MS investment over the last 20 years. You're off base in the current holistic assessment. Bring your data up to date, show your workings and you might just convince me. Otherwise loading 8 year old data for your argument can go the way of the dodo.
 
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Acquisitions can go either way, good or bad. Everything will depend on the money Microsoft will spend and the developers making the games(for those companies they purchased, or any company in general).
 

bender

What time is it?
What a shit article. They lost me at -



True for a little while but ultimately delivered beyond expectations. 25 million players for Sea of Thieves last year and multiple success stories for PC/Xbox releases as well as Gamepass/game sales of a new IP. Content is consistently delivered by multiple internal teams and Everwild is looking quite interesting and unique. Lest we forget The Initiative studio was built to deliver Perfect Dark AAA/AAAA too. Rare Replay was a joy also.

There is no insight in such articles, lowest hanging fruit that is factually incorrect at best. FFS.

The question I'd ask is could they have poached key staff from Rare and made Sea of Thieves all those years later with a new studio while not paying the premium for all of Rare's IP. I bet if Microsoft had to do it over again, they would pass on purchasing Rare. The acquisition was too late in the Xbox life cycle to make a dent and weren't really the driving factor for the 360's popularity. I guess you could argue they helped with Kinect software but I'd counter, to put it nicely, that anyone could help deliver that type of software. Killer Instinct, Rare Replay and Sea of Thieves really didn't do much to help the Bone. Sea of Thieves is a wonderful success story and they've had some great games along the way (Viva Pinata and Nuts and Bolts) but it's hard to call that 2002 acquisition a smashing success when it took them 16 years to have a hit.

All that said, Microsoft's experience with Rare does give me hope for the Activision acquisition as the certainly have mistakes and success to draw from. Further, the industry was changing a lot when Microsoft purchased Rare and the likelihood of Microsoft letting Activision's IPs go dormant is less than zero.
 
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The question I'd ask is could they have poached key staff from Rare and made Sea of Thieves all those years later with a new studio while not paying the premium for all of Rare's IP. I bet if Microsoft had to do it over again, they would pass on purchasing Rare. The acquisition was too late in the Xbox life cycle to make a dent and weren't really the driving factor for the 360's popularity. I guess you could argue they helped with Kinect software but I'd counter, to put it nicely, that anyone could help deliver that type of software. Killer Instinct, Rare Replay and Sea of Thieves really didn't do much to help the Bone. Sea of Thieves is a wonderful success story and they've had some great games along the way (Viva Pinata and Nuts and Bolts) but it's hard to call that 2002 acquisition a smashing success when it took them 16 years to have a smash hit.

All that said, Microsoft's experience with Rare does give me hope for the Activision acquisition as the certainly have mistakes and success to draw from. Further, the industry was changing a lot when Microsoft purchased Rare and the likelihood of Microsoft letting Activision's IPs go dormant is less than zero.

Why does it matter how long it takes for a roaring success? SoT revenue is off the charts, also financial crapola analysis doesn't include licensing, merchandising etc. Given they've seriously invested in The Initiative studio and next Perfect Dark game how anyone could retrospectively say they'd now regret Rare's purchase is beyond me. They're investing more, not less. If the article is using terms like "ultimately" expect the entire lifetime of the studio taken into account.

Killer Instinct was a brilliant game, super well executed and just a symptom of the Xbox One being a crap platform plagued with issues and a lower install base. I'd love to see a new KI with crossplay and more.
 
What a weird take to post articles from 2014 to just exclude Sea of Thieves from your overall "analysis". End of last year SoT sold over 5 million copies on Steam alone and pushed over 25 Million players. It's won awards for best social game, fastest growing new Xbox IP etc etc.

Besides the historic restructure and Kinetic failings they've also opened a second studio under Rare and overall increased their staff to exceed 250+. Feelings aside SoT has killed it in terms of restoring Rare Ltd and Xbox/MS investment over the last 20 years. You're off base in the current holistic assessment. Bring your data up to date, show your workings and you might just convince me. Otherwise loading 8 year old data for your argument can go the way of the dodo.

Again, you are confusing the moderate success of one title, of which actual profitability metrics aren't fully transparent, to the actual topic of discussion which was to whether the Rare acquisition was a worthy investment for $375M in 2002 dollars. We can actually quantify that 375M investment by comparing it to the general market which actually had less growth than the gaming industry in aggregate, and the result is that if Rare were to be sold today they would not be worth 2.5B dollars, over half the market cap of a studio like Capcom. They do not have anywhere NEAR the output of Capcom, their IP is largely completely underutilized which is where a huge portion of the valuation was.

Rare was flourashing before they were sold to Microsoft, and were one of the primary reasons for the N64's great software output. They were delivering tons of monster hits at their peak. They could have truly grown into an amazing studio for Microsoft. But instead, we have one moderately successful GaaS title and other new titles that still go through development hell and take forever to come to market.

There's no dancing around that, no matter what sort of fudged metrics you use for the basis of SoT which, again, is a side topic to the actual discussion of the worthiness of that investment which all depends on if the initial capital generates a return up to the expectations of the initial purchase (which was enormous for that time and still is).
 
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Orbital2060

Member
People are really salty because everyone is simply not on board with this acquisition and MS is facing scrutiny… well, that’s what you get when you make these kinds of deals. This is only getting worse from now on.

f3e93870-6bf4-4b79-93dujpo.gif
 
All investments involve risk. No risk, no reward. Remember that kiddies, invest your money, don't listen to this bearish garbage.

There are calculated risks and reckless risk taking. All those meme stocks and highly speculative stocks are getting crushed right now because, again, it all depends on the price you pay relative to expectations.

The Activision purchase makes big headlines, just like Rare did in its day, but Rare is a shell of their former self. That is the genuine risk that the acquirer takes on because they are ultimately responsible for managing these newly purchased studios and being stewards of their operations. And this is basically the Rare purchase x 100, to put things in perspective.

Despite the moves MS has made the past few years, we really have no idea how they will ultimately end up and MS does not have the greatest track record when it comes to studio development.
 
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bender

What time is it?
Why does it matter how long it takes for a roaring success? SoT revenue is off the charts, also financial crapola analysis doesn't include licensing, merchandising etc. Given they've seriously invested in The Initiative studio and next Perfect Dark game how anyone could retrospectively say they'd now regret Rare's purchase is beyond me. They're investing more, not less. If the article is using terms like "ultimately" expect the entire lifetime of the studio taken into account.

Killer Instinct was a brilliant game, super well executed and just a symptom of the Xbox One being a crap platform plagued with issues and a lower install base. I'd love to see a new KI with crossplay and more.

When you are investing in something, time is important. 2002 to 2018 is a long time. And again, Microsoft could have made Sea of Thieves without purchasing Rare and Rare's back catalog of IP. I'm also not dunking on Rare here as I love some of their past output.
 
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of which actual profitability metrics aren't fully transparent
But you get to claim this as saying it's not profitable? Pretty biased.

We can actually quantify that 375M investment by comparing it to the general market which actually had less growth than the gaming industry in aggregate, and the result is that if Rare were to be sold today they would not be worth 2.5B dollars, over half the market cap of a studio like Capcom.
Bullshit number. Show me the workings for going from $375M to $2.5B. Inflation alone has it has under $600M from 2002 to 2022. You're calculating compound growth, adding yet another not transparent metric or more?

When you are investing in something, time is important. 2002 to 2018 is a long time. And again, Microsoft could have made Sea of Thieves without purchasing Rare and they're back catalog of IP. I'm also not dunking on Rare here as I love some of their past output.

Ah good old retrospect. Easy to just say why weren't they successful. Imagine Kinect was as popular as Wii. This idea that every game/acquisition or move by a publisher is going to be the most successful YoY is a fallacy. Easy to say looking back.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
What a weird take to post articles from 2014 to just exclude Sea of Thieves from your overall "analysis". End of last year SoT sold over 5 million copies on Steam alone and pushed over 25 Million players. It's won awards for best social game, fastest growing new Xbox IP etc etc.

Besides the historic restructure and Kinetic failings they've also opened a second studio under Rare and overall increased their staff to exceed 250+. Feelings aside SoT has killed it in terms of restoring Rare Ltd and Xbox/MS investment over the last 20 years. You're off base in the current holistic assessment. Bring your data up to date, show your workings and you might just convince me. Otherwise loading 8 year old data for your argument can go the way of the dodo.

It's not weird at all, Rare's history post acquisition is important if we are to have this discussion. We can't just live in a vacuum where we only consider what's happened post Sea of Thieves and discount everything that led up to that. That's not how it works, businesses want ROI when they make acquisitions and they want it ASAP.

Why does it matter how long it takes for a roaring success?

Because you pay an up front cost that is based on a number of transaction multiples (sales, revenue, growth, etc). From that you can work out roughly how long it will take you to make your money back with all else being equal post acquisition. Those multiples underpin all negotiation in M&A (with higher multiples being given to growing businesses and lower ones to steady and stable ones). If you fail to hit that projection the problem becomes a cascading one - you are paying wages and other overheads on a business that not only cost you a chunk of cash flow, but it is also costing you from a balance sheet perspective month to month.

Hence since their acquisition lay offs and a restructuring have had to be undertaken in order to try and lessen the burden to the overall business while giving them another shot to be successful.

I'm pretty sure if they were told up front that it would take them roughly 20 years before they started seeing ROI they would have passed. Like bender bender alluded to, they would have learnt a lot of valuable lessons from everything that's happened with Rare since the acquisition.
 

JackMcGunns

Member
There are calculated risks and reckless risk taking. All those meme stocks and highly speculative stocks are getting crushed right now because, again, it all depends on the price you pay relative to expectations.

The Activision purchase makes big headlines, just like Rare did in its day, but Rare is a shell of their former self. That is the genuine risk. And this is basically the Rare purchase x 100, to put things in perspective


You can't compare this to Rare, not even remotely. The only way this would compare to Rare is if somehow Microsoft thought they were getting Call of Duty with this deal, but it turns out they didn't (Donkey Kong) then the main talent behind their biggest franchises left Actiblizzard just like the Stamper brothers left Rare.

Call of Duty is a million times bigger than Donkey Kong, it's everything, it shook the industry at its core and even Sony made an official statement about it, that's how big of a deal it is and will continue to be for years, and the crazy thing about it is that its a SINGLE IP when there's dozens more under their belt now. I mean StartCraft? World of Warcraft? Diablo? Crash Bandicoot? Spyro? Tony Hawk? Overwatch? The entire Guitar Hero franchise? WTF bro?
 
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But you get to claim this as saying it's not profitable? Pretty biased.


Bullshit number. Show me the workings for going from $375M to $2.5B. Inflation alone has it has under $600M from 2002 to 2022. You're calculating compound growth, adding yet another not transparent metric or more?

It's simply the same compounded growth that the S&P 500 had from 2002 to 2022 (two decades worth). And it amounted to a fairly normal historical return of 10%. Pockets of gaming were much higher (Activision compounded at over 16%, as an example).
 
You can't compare this to Rare, not even remotely. The only way this would compare to Rare is if somehow Microsoft thought they were getting Call of Duty with this deal, but it turns out they didn't (Donkey Kong) then the main talent behind their biggest franchises left Actiblizzard just like the Stamper brothers left Rare.

Call of Duty is a million times bigger than Donkey Kong, it's everything, it shook the industry at its core and even Sony made an official statement about it, that's how big of a deal it is and will continue to be for years.

Right, and that's why they paid over 100 times the amount they paid for Rare.

The magnitude of the purchase has no bearing on risk or whether the investment is worthwhile; again, Microsoft could have massively overpaid if in 10 years CoD is no longer the industry juggernaut it is today, and their studios failed to deliver on the promise of peak earnings Call of Duty we see over the past few years.
 
It's simply the same compounded growth that the S&P 500 had from 2002 to 2022 (two decades worth). And it amounted to a fairly normal historical return of 10%. Pockets of gaming were much higher (Activision compounded at over 16%, as an example).

Lol. You want to base a small game studio against S&P 500 growth for 20 years (the S&P was over $5 Trillion in assets last year), you realise most of that tracking is for equities and been on a meteoric rise for the last 2 decades ...like billions/trillions of dollars differences. Stupid metric you're fronting for $375M to $2.5B. I choose my words...fuck off with that.

It's weird you also don't apply such bloated metrics to opportunity loss Xbox/MS caused Nintendo by buying Rare and denying that growth/IP for 2 decades. If you want to talk business and metrics you're missing half the competitive equation. Again this article doesn't really understand why Microsoft buy ActiBliz, to deny the other major heavyweights entering/buying the market share and talent/IPs.
 
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bender

What time is it?
Ah good old retrospect. Easy to just say why weren't they successful. Imagine Kinect was as popular as Wii. This idea that every game/acquisition or move by a publisher is going to be the most successful YoY is a fallacy. Easy to say looking back.

What acquired Rare IP made Kinect a success? What acquired Rare IP made Sea of Thieves successful. What acquired Rare IP is in the future for Microsoft Game Studios?
 

GHG

Gold Member
What acquired Rare IP made Kinect a success? What acquired Rare IP made Sea of Thieves successful. What acquired Rare IP is in the future for Microsoft Game Studios?

In addition to that I'm pretty sure very few of the people that were there during the acquisition are still there now. All the things you buy a company for (IP, talent, culture, etc) are either no longer there or are not being utilised.
 

JackMcGunns

Member
Right, and that's why they paid over 100 times the amount they paid for Rare.

The magnitude of the purchase has no bearing on risk or whether the investment is worthwhile; again, Microsoft could have massively overpaid if in 10 years CoD is no longer the industry juggernaut it is today, and their studios failed to deliver on the promise of peak earnings Call of Duty we see over the past few years.


MS could also fail if they invested in Xbox and it went the way of the Dreamcast....


But it didn't


This is pointless arguing. Unless you have a legit reason why you think Call of Duty will decline and the massive list of IPs they acquired turned to crap, other than a fear or a hunch, then this is just more saltiness at work.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
As always a bunch of people are completely missing the point of the article. M&A and creative businesses has a truly lousy track-record across industries.

This is a very large gamble by MS and with MS track record of being unsuccessful to integrate even non-creative businesses it is very reasonable to be sceptical as an MS shareholder. Add to that, that ActiBlizz already was on a downturn with a demoralised work-force.

It is not about salt - it is about being sober.

Barack Obama Applause GIF by Obama


You've literally summed it up. Well written, as always.
 
Lol. You want to base a small game studio against S&P 500 growth for 20 years (the S&P was over $5 Trillion in assets last year), you realise most of that tracking is for equities and been on a meteoric rise for the last 2 decades ...like billions/trillions of dollars differences. Stupid metric you're fronting for $375M to $2.5B. I choose my words...fuck off with that.

It's weird you also don't apply such bloated metrics to opportunity loss Xbox/MS caused Nintendo by buying Rare and denying that growth/IP for 2 decades. If you want to talk business and metrics you're missing half the competitive equation. Again this article doesn't really understand why Microsoft buy ActiBliz, to deny the other major heavyweights entering/buying the market share and talent/IPs.

Ummm....yes?

That's what investment is all about. Growing your business.

Compare Naughty Dog or Insomniac in 2002 to what it is today and I'm pretty sure it would do WELL above the 10% rate the market generated. They are massive studios in comparison to what they were in the early 00s.

I continue to hear excuse after excuse for why Rare was a good investment just because people may have liked some of their games on Xbox or because SoT seems to have found some success. That may be true if MS purchased them for, say $50M dollars, but they didn't. Again, you judge the investment based on the pricing expectations compared to what they actually ended up generating for over two decades.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
2-3 trillion dollar company.

This is the funniest conclusion that most people run with. I think people don't really know that MS as a whole have spent $70B out of $130B cash on hand ($60B left), real cash not theoretical. Let alone that they have $184B in debt!!! Which is now putting them at an approximate -$124B!




People are "laughably" overestimating Microsoft. If Bill Gates was in charge none of this and Bethesda's would've happened.
 
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tmlDan

Member
This is the funniest conclusion that most people run with. I think people don't really know that MS as a whole have spent $70B out of $130B cash on hand ($60B left), real cash not theoretical. Let alone that they have $184B in debt!!! Which is now putting them at an approximate -$124B!




People are "laughably" overestimating Microsoft. If Bill Gates was in charge none of this and Bethesda's would've happened.
Of course, it's never cash on hand at all.

But when you have a monopoly in the software and limited competitors in the server space its guaranteed income, hence why their value is is high
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Matt Booty and co seem to be doing well with first party, flight sim, Psychonauts 2, FH5 and Halo infinite all released and have been received very well.
So in terms of management they are doing something right.





In this quote below is just tales from his ass, he doesn't know this, lol.
Also one of the reasons why MS likely aquired these publishers is because they already have well established studio systems and product pipelines.
Microsoft is still in the process of really trying to get its first-party game studios off the ground, so it's not like there's a well-established studio system and product pipeline



He also says rare has not delivered, on the contrary, viva piñata and sea of thieves show otherwise.


The risk to Microsoft is monetary, the risk to the industry is if the quality goes down or they fuck it up and close it all down, but even if that did happen theres plenty of places the devs can go work.


Basically this is a poor clickbaity article which has several things wrong.
 
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Ummm....yes?

That's what investment is all about. Growing your business.

Compare Naughty Dog or Insomniac in 2002 to what it is today and I'm pretty sure it would do WELL above the 10% rate the market generated. They are massive studios in comparison to what they were in the early 00s.

I continue to hear excuse after excuse for why Rare was a good investment just because people may have liked some of their games on Xbox or because SoT seems to have found some success. That may be true if MS purchased them for, say $50M dollars, but they didn't. Again, you judge the investment based on the pricing expectations compared to what they actually ended up generating for over two decades.
Cool, you talk about numbers but show nothing. What are the gross and net figures for what Rare has generated since buyout until current day?
 

Ozriel

M$FT
People are "laughably" overestimating Microsoft. If Bill Gates was in charge none of this and Bethesda's would've happened.

You say this like it’s a good thing. Bill Gates and his chosen successor set up MS to fail in the all-important mobile OS and internet browser wars, losing out on both to Google.
 
Why are you comparing a 3500 employee strong publisher to Rare with 250+ employees? How does this make sense to you?

Because 375M invested in 2002 @ 10% growth would be half the 2022 market cap of Capcom

I don’t think people understand just how big Rare used to be, and just how relatively inconsequential they are now
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
Because 375M invested in 2002 @ 10% growth would be half the 2022 market cap of Capcom

I don’t think people understand just how big Rare used to be, and just how relatively inconsequential they are now


At their heydays, they were selling games with an average of about 4 million units. Took them a couple of years to make these games. They were always a mid-sized developer in terms of employee count.

How were they expected to make revenues half of what an entire publisher with extremely valuable IP sells?

While they’ve overall under-performed post-acquisition compared to their lofty pedigree, Their last game is probably pushing around 8-9 million in sales, and is generating very decent MTX revenue.
 

Riky

$MSFT
Rare delivered some wonderful games even early on and the 360 launch wouldn't have been the same without the likes of Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero, also denying those franchises to Nintendo definitely helped.
I think after the huge amount of money Sea Of Thieves has delivered it's now got to be looked at as a bargain in retrospect, also the likes of Killer Instinct have been resurrected and we have the reboot of Perfect Dark to come. Owning those franchises has a value in itself.
Hopefully we'll see a new Banjo and Conker game at some point even if one of the other many studios they now own and not Rare develop them.

As for Activision well I think MS will have a slightly more hands on approach than they have with Bethesda who they seem to have granted autonomy to apart from cancelling the PS5 version of Starfield but that's obviously down to the poor management at the company before they were purchased but the pipeline of software is going to be unchanged for the foreseeable future.

Microsoft are one of the few companies in the world with the resources to handle this sort of acquisition.
 

Shmunter

Member
Yeah this is a long term investment. No way in hell are they going to make it back. Which is why i am certain this was a move made to kill PlayStation. Or at least force them into allowing gamepass. GP just hit 25 million subscribers after what 5 years? The adoption rate is too slow despite it having access to 150 million PC gamers if we go by steam stats. They need the ps audience and the Nintendo audience to go up to 100 million when they can start earning $1 billion in revenue and even then it’s only $12 billion a year.

I think they want the full $25 billion revenue PlayStation generated last year.
Gamepass on ps would likely do better than ever with ps only fans wanting to check out some of the never before seen content. However, despite Sony collecting 30% of the sub tag - I’m sure they would prefer their own offering collecting 100%, not to mention cannibalising bespoke sales on the platform.

I just cannot figure out a solution here that works. It’s like 4d chess.
 

Shmunter

Member
I complained about this for a bit last week. The main page was getting bombed with all kinds of threads regarding the acquisition to the point where some were locked within minutes. It was just a complete mess though it has eased up a bit.
It will die down as nothing happens for around 2 years
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
You say this like it’s a good thing. Bill Gates and his chosen successor set up MS to fail in the all-important mobile OS and internet browser wars, losing out on both to Google.

And he was considering axing Xbox, and Bing/Bing maps. Flight sim literally is the saving boat for Bing, but they need to do better and make some deals with car makers and other GPS devices like Garmin which uses Google maps. But that's Bill Gate's company, and he made it what it is today.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
Why is it when Sony buys something its always viewed as natural and should happen but if Microsoft buy something ( I get its bigger buys ) there is always concern about it, or what they are buying isn’t popular anymore.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
So much nonsense there.

For one , mega corporations like MS need to make big moves to shake up investors and get their market value to go up. Just like the rare purchase drove major interest when they were launching the Xbox and showed investors that they were serious about the market.
And A lot of CO pay and bonuses are usually directly connected to stock market gains.

Two .. MS can afford to invest for 50 years out. They must feel having activision and Bethesda games on game pass will help build their all important digital platform future.

It’s not always about direct profit.
 
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leizzra

Member
For me this was one of the first things that I thought about when MS bought Zenimax. The company wasn't ever good at managing a few studios that they had. So when they are buying a lot more in a short term then it doesn't look good in that deparment. Thats why I think it's good for Bethesda to operate independently, becasue they know whay they are doing (more or less ;) ). The same thing should go with Activision Blizzard. Sure, Ms can intervene, in the end it's their company. But it should be done in right time not all of it. They need great leader, clear goals and that's it. Like I'm not even sure if reviving old IP's is a good thing to od(it can be but it's also a risk).

What I would do is to separate Blizzard from Activision and make it as another independent company in MS structures. The way it was supposed to be when Activision merged with them.

There is one other thing that I think no one is talking about (or I don't see it). What about the studios that MS bought before Zenimax and Activision? They were bought in completely different circumstances, when Xbox needed them. And in theory it still needs at least Game Pass needs their content. Most of them are smaller companies that could grow with MS fundings. How it will look now when they have this big competitionin their mother company? How it will look in long term?

I know that there are a lot of subjects about this news (MS buying Activision), but it's because of how much fascinating and big for the whole industry it is. And how much it'll change it.
 

Three

Member
Apparently Rare only cost $375 million. Seems like a bargain in these contexts. Doesn't matter that they had a mediocre period, Sea of Thieves alone easily makes up for all that (in business terms).

Again, 375M in 2002 with performance equal to the S&P is 2.5B dollars today

You can’t use 2002 dollars relative to 2022
Rare made money selling avatars with shoes you could look at the bottom of with the power of kinect during the 360. Rare makes money now with ridiculous microtransactions in SoT. In terms of investment for MS I think over time they used them to make money so that the ROI is fine but in terms of using them to make decent games with the IPs they had they failed miserably with Banjo, Conker, Killer Instinct, etc.
 

FrankWza

Member
Why are you comparing a 3500 employee strong publisher to Rare with 250+ employees? How does this make sense to you?
A point a lot of us have made when Insomniac being purchased by Sony is the same as Microsoft buying publishers and many IPs and studios.
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
A point a lot of us have made when Insomniac being purchased by Sony is the same as Microsoft buying publishers and many IPs and studios.

I don’t believe anyone has said the scale or scope is similar. And that’s in line with my earlier point.
 
Why is it when Sony buys something its always viewed as natural and should happen but if Microsoft buy something ( I get its bigger buys ) there is always concern about it, or what they are buying isn’t popular anymore.
Sony buying Insomniac, Bluepoint or Housemarque got mostly responses like "i thought they owned them already" because they already mostly did games for Sony for years already and their IP's belonged to Sony anyway.

Bethesda and Activision are in no way comparable. For starters these two got most of their revenue from Sony and not MS, specially Activision. Second, they had only multiplatform games and their IPs weren't created by Microsoft.

It's night and day.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
Sony buying Insomniac, Bluepoint or Housemarque got mostly responses like "i thought they owned them already" because they already mostly did games for Sony for years already and their IP's belonged to Sony anyway.

Bethesda and Activision are in no way comparable. For starters these two got most of their revenue from Sony and not MS, specially Activision. Second, they had only multiplatform games and their IPs weren't created by Microsoft.

It's night and day.

I knew non of those studios were owned by Sony, we even had a game on Xbox one from insomniac, they weren’t Sony studios and just because they made games for their console doesn’t matter. Remember when Sony was trying to money hat exclusives away from Xbox as well? Its the same thing Microsoft just did it on a bigger scale. If Sony can pull of a huge buy out of a company they will do and I have no problem with it.

The amount of response threads saying Sony should buy this publisher or this studio just shows what fans think. They want the games they like on their consoles and if the games are on the other console they will get it.

there has never been a stronger time to own both consoles in reguards to PlayStation and Xbox as there is so many good games coming out on both.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
When did I said that or acted like that? There is a risk even if you are crossing a road and there is no vehicle in your vision. All these kinds of decisions are risky but there is no substance here in the article, it is just another speculative piece. We will get some real info in due time but till then this is just clickbait.

There is? What you talking about bro?
 
Activision has put its dev into the salt mines of COD.
Microsoft has put a lot of fanboys and media into the salt mines too :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
Sony buying Insomniac, Bluepoint or Housemarque got mostly responses like "i thought they owned them already" because they already mostly did games for Sony for years already and their IP's belonged to Sony anyway.

Bethesda and Activision are in no way comparable. For starters these two got most of their revenue from Sony and not MS, specially Activision. Second, they had only multiplatform games and their IPs weren't created by Microsoft.

It's night and day.


As soon as Kena showed up and as soon as they won that award, this forum was awash with wishful posts asking Sony to buy Ember Labs.

Here’s yours.

zDEMThQ.jpg


Here, you acknowledge 6 acquisitions in 2021 and state that you expect even more from Sony in 2022. You’re even perfectly fine with thoughts of Sony buying Remedy. And you’re fine with them buying Kena even though it’s pitched as a timed-exclusive multiplatform IP, owned by Ember Labs.

So…acquisitions seem to be fine if Sony’s doing it, and it’s terrible if you buy a publisher with 8 sub-studios but perfectly fine to scoop up multiple studios piecemeal.
 
As soon as Kena showed up and as soon as they won that award, this forum was awash with wishful posts asking Sony to buy Ember Labs.

Here’s yours.

zDEMThQ.jpg


Here, you acknowledge 6 acquisitions in 2021 and state that you expect even more from Sony in 2022. You’re even perfectly fine with thoughts of Sony buying Remedy. And you’re fine with them buying Kena even though it’s pitched as a timed-exclusive multiplatform IP, owned by Ember Labs.

So…acquisitions seem to be fine if Sony’s doing it, and it’s terrible if you buy a publisher with 8 sub-studios but perfectly fine to scoop up multiple studios piecemeal.

Buying an indie studio that Sony funded is not comparable to buying the biggest third party publisher that was in no way strapped for cash

This false equivalency is comical
 
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