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Telling Studios They Shouldn't Sell Is 'Short-Sighted," Phil Spencer Says After Xbox's Acquisition Spree - IGN
Xbox boss Phil Spencer says selling and buying game studios is a healthy part of the industry and a reason why there's innovation in businesses.
www.ign.com
“I know sometimes I see dialogue out in the industry about, well, are acquisitions a good thing or a bad thing,” says Spencer before congratulating Sony on their acquisition of Housemarque announced earlier today.
“One thing I’ll put out there is… starting a new studio — starting any small business, frankly, is a very risky proposition, starting a video game studio even more so. And if a team actually takes the risk of starting a new company, starting a new studio, building that over years, building value in that. To say they shouldn’t sell, I think, is just short-sighted.”
Spencer says that the value of growing a business to become something valuable is part of why creative teams start new studios in the first place. The immense risk it takes to start a new company is the potential reward that comes with it, and Spencer says “M&A is absolutely a part of that.”
Spencer clarified that not every new company has to sell and that there are a lot of studios that can fail. But successful teams growing and potentially getting acquired “is a natural and healthy part of our industry.”
“It’s such a risk-filled journey for them to get to the point to create real value. I’m always going to congratulate when teams get to the point where they realize that value through acquisition or just massive independent success… many of those leaders will go off and start other things over time. It’s kind of the natural turnover that happens with entrepreneurs and startup businesses. And for us, we’re always out there looking at where we could continue to build our first-party capability and looking at teams that we think would be good fits for us.”