Microsoft rumored to be buying...... [2020-04, 2020-07, 2020-11]

[Nesh]

SEGA?

Or some exclusive deal??


https://gamingroi.com/2020/04/13/is...U3L2qFQpgMpqld4oKHI0dH-bSZcq4zTKPPrVyD_C4WzqU

or maybe not?

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/71786/no-microsoft-isnt-buying-sega-and-has-reason-to-sell/index.html

 

[AlNom]

New Nights into Dreams game?

 

[fehu]

A blu colored xbox one

 

[orangpelupa]

A blu colored xbox one

With red accent

 

[eastmen]

I don't think Microsoft is going to buy Sega. However I think the article misses the point of why Microsoft would buy a sega or konami or Capcom.

Gamepass / Xcloud

Look at Disney. They are entering the streaming wars late , but they had something very valuable which was their 70 years of content. They then paid a lot of money to get Pixars and Marvel and Lucas Film and then Finally Foxes properties.

For microsoft its the same thing. Buy up a lot of cheap catalogs. You would get the developers still working there and of course they could make a hit game at some point or just quality content to put on game pass / xcloud. But you get all that already made content with nostalgia hooks in people. Sega was able to create quite a few console generations that had fans growing up with the brand. Locking that into Microsoft lets them build up their own library.

I think MS will get more bang for their buck however going after a lot of smaller devs that need Sugar Daddies. I think you will see another 6-8 small to mid size purchases from microsoft this year and one larger purchase.

As for this sega deal , I think MS is going to foot the bill to get a bunch of classics on their systems through remakes and then possibly new entries into series.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's the Sega Dreamcast 2 using Lockhart as the SOC.

Regards,
SB

 

[RobertR1]

Sega has nothing to offer. It’d be a terrible waste of money.

 

[invictis]

Sega has nothing to offer. It’d be a terrible waste of money.

Agreed. Outside of a best of Sega arcade bundle that included Daytona, Rally, VF and a couple of others, there nothing Sega is going to give.
The Sega boat has sailed.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The Sega boat has sailed.

Sunk.

 

[cheapchips]

Sega subsidiaries are interesting?


Amplitude Studios
Atlus
Creative Assembly
Hardlight
Relic Entertainment
Sports Interactive
Two Point Studios

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Atlus would be pretty big in terms of trying to get more penetration in the Japanese market. Heck, it'd help even in Western markets. Persona 5 was pretty big this generation and generated a fair bit of sales for the PS4.

Even if it's only to get some titles to be multi-platform, MS would likely consider that a win. This goes for other Sega IPs as well. Making new entries in the Yakuza series day and date on Xbox along with PlayStation would be a win, for example.

Relic is already making an exclusive title for MS (Age of Empires 4).

Creative Assembly focuses heavily on PC as their core series doesn't translate well to console controllers. Creative Assembly has also made one exclusive for MS in the past (Halo Wars 2).

Phantasy Star Online 2 (the largest MMO in Japan), is currently Xbox exclusive outside of Japan due to MS paying to have it ported as well as paying for translations to other languages than Japanese. A Non-JP PC version will be coming later.

Basically Sega are no strangers to working with MS. Phil Spencer has been working to make that relationship stronger as there are still key franchises that have been PlayStation exclusive due to development costs and market penetration (many, like Yakuza are kind of niche).

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-expresses-interest-in-acquiring-warner-game-unit more rumors of MS interested in buying warner.

I don't think it would make sense unless they get exclusive rights to the DC and Warner movie properties

Sorry if this is the wrong thread

 

[iroboto]

I don't think there is a more appropriate thread than this one.

Yea I think this is a good opportunity for MS. The sheer number of studios in this purchase is going to be worth the price tag and picking up 2 quality studios that will sell titles well regardless.

But deals this large will take a significantly longer time to assess than something like Minecraft despite being the same price.

As of April earlier this year we learned that they have ~10M subscribers. A revenue of 100M per month at a rate of $9.99/mo. This of course does not include cost of acquisition which I'm sure is the number #1 thing someone will throw back at me, but CoA costs are a separate line item from revenue when you work out the balance sheet.

So you're looking at a revenue of 1.2B a year. Subtract expenses for running the service, subtract contracts fees, subtract studio fees and then subtract CoA and you've got an idea of how much profit they are running. Provided those numbers are somewhat fixed within an upper limit (ie the maximum that MS is willing to lose per year), the revenue climbs significantly if they can get something like 20M or 30M subscribers.

It's a fairly sustainable business model, provided you can get the subscriber base up high. But the initial launch of the business where you don't have enough subscribers to break even, those initial running costs are likely extremely high.

 

[cheapchips]

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-expresses-interest-in-acquiring-warner-game-unit more rumors of MS interested in buying warner.

I don't think it would make sense unless they get exclusive rights to the DC and Warner movie properties

The limited amount of original IP seems like an issue longer term. Can't read The Information article, but the CNBC article from June said that WB were looking to gain ongoing revenue from licencing. Seems like licencing will be a tricky balance for both parties. The purchaser won't want to be on the hook for recurring fees and WB want recurring fees.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Buying the game studios won't correspond to buying the rights for the games unless that's part of the deal. All the hero and HP IP will stay with the parent company. As game studios themselves, what's the value in WB? All I know is they swallowed up Snowblind Studios and basically killed them!

 

[fehu]

What I read is that sony has spiderman, so microsoft must have some equivalent to fight with, and the logical solution was to buy WBI with all the game currently in development and leave to batman enough time to study a plan to beat spiderman.
I don't know how ip inheritance works, but I'm sure that whoever is the owner doesn't want to limit the earning possibilities to a single console, at least if its name doesn't begin with sony playstation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Batman is owned by WB. Buying the studios won't transfer the IP over - there'd have to be a licensing deal. So if this is the case, I can only imagine WB are wanting out of the video game business and MS are willing to spend large on a a deal where they buy the studios and license the IP.

 

[cheapchips]

Batman is owned by WB

Batman's owned by DC. It's not clear if WB have permission to sell on the game rights, or how long those last.

Edit: oops. DC is owned by AT&T these days. Didn't know that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah, they're all one large media empire. So I can't see them breaking off an arm of that for one particular medium, video games. The game IPs I know of are DC comics, Harry Potter, and now not worth so much LOTR.

I can't see WB doing a deal that'd keep their IPs off Sony and Nintendo consoles.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yeah, they're all one large media empire. So I can't see them breaking off an arm of that for one particular medium, video games. The game IPs I know of are DC comics, Harry Potter, and now not worth so much LOTR.

And if the intention is to get the rights to use IP, just ask to licence the IP. IP is a means to make money and most IP holders are good with licensing use of IP, usually with some restrictions, as long the product is not doing a disservice to the source material.

Insomniac's Spider-Man is a good example Great game, Marvel Game Studios made some money, Sony made some money, everybody wins.