If MS Really wants to win this generation...

[leechan25]

Yeah like they bought Oddworld! Microsoft would be wise to simply invest to upcoming tatent instead of buying big companies or one hit wonders. We don't have clue which new developer going to produce the next GTA or GT4.
It always seems to be a team that is allow to be creative with hardware and ideas.Even Bungle is a one hit wonder. Plus Halo 1 was better than Halo 2. What's next?

 

[therealskywolf]

If they want to win, they just have to give gamers the best games.

 

[blakjedi]

The only reason why I made this post is because well... I think EA holds teh most sway of any publisher/developer in the entire industry... along with a lot of dumb moves, EA has been credited with sinking Dreamcast, with stunting the growth of Xbox Live, and single handedly killing off 989 studio sports division and MS' Sports division... I didnt really think of the enormous power they wield until MS stated that they were getting out of the sports development business except for racing!

I knew they had the money to buy rights to teh NFL but the power to make console makers ignore an entire lucrative genre of videogames?

Plus Sports games are perennial cash cows.. there must be and yearly update as stadiums are built and rosters change... If I was playing for keeps and had teh cash I might do it if I were MS... maybe not a full buyout but maybe a controlling interest so that every title sold even if its on another platform makes me more money...

 

[ecliptic]

I doubt EA would sell for anything Microsoft would be willing to pay. If that rumor about Nintendo asking 25B dollars is true (which I doubt but anyways), I can easily see EA asking for a lot more than that. And, a lot more than that is too much even for MS.

EA is not Nintendo. Nintendo has a single shareholder who owns the majority of the company. EA is a publically traded company which is split up among many stockholders. MS would buy EA for whatever their stock is worth.

 

[a688]

I doubt EA would sell for anything Microsoft would be willing to pay. If that rumor about Nintendo asking 25B dollars is true (which I doubt but anyways), I can easily see EA asking for a lot more than that. And, a lot more than that is too much even for MS.

EA is not Nintendo. Nintendo has a single shareholder who owns the majority of the company. EA is a publically traded company which is split up among many stockholders. MS would buy EA for whatever their stock is worth.

Only in the event of a hostile take over. Most deals arn't for the actual price of all of the stock, usually more (those execs wants bonuses damnit).

 

[Legend]

EA is the biggest publisher. keep in mind that they do not own all their published titles. So if EA- for ANY reason- becomes a certain platform exclusive that will be the end of them. All the other big names like SEGA, Take Two, Ubi, Actavision, etc. will focus on ALL the other platforms and bring EA down- whether in sports or general games.
Secondly, EA’s strength is in multi-platform publishing, what do you end up with if you take that away from them?

About the NFL license; EA football will not be the only football game out there. There will be other offerings. Picture it as FIFA against the other soccer titles like Winning Eleven, European League, etc. So you think a single license is enough to justify a long-term sole platform approach? remeber that football is only popular in N America, what about other world markets? do you really think the NFL name will cover for overseaes operations and marketing? especially when there WILL be other football games out there?

Finally, if you are thinking that you can buy your way to success, then you are using the same mentality as MS which is a false illusion. Yes, aquiring talents here and there is helpful, but if you rely on “buyingâ€￾ the good games out there, you won’t get far. There is only so much one can do. I see the acquisition of Rare to be a huge mistake. they cost more than a third of a billion dollars and did relatively nothing for this whole generation. to ad insult to injury, they released only one game that was a disappointment. here is a quick question for you; what was its name?
I say that MS should stop thinking of buying success and start focusing on making potential hits like Halo. You won’t get far by relying on buying others successes.
MS has enough studios. they have enough money to support them. why not make the next Polyphony, Insomniac and Naught Dog on your own?

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Much has to do with the amount of privately owned stock and the amount of stock available in public. You can't possibly buy a company when the private stock owners say no, at least when a company has quite a lot of privately owned stock. Companies like Nintendo, Tecmo or EA perhaps even won't be bought out unless someone on the board agrees on selling their share, but with the two first companies I don't see this happening for a long long while.

 

[Brimstone]

For the money it would probably cost, Bohemian Software, the makers of Operation Flashpoint would be a smart move.

Operation Flashpoint sold over 1 million.

 

[wco81]

As others noted, EA's valuation is largely dependent on multiplatform sales.

Unless buying EA instantly reverses the market share in X2's favor, EA's revenue streams as an X2-exclusive publisher would shrink to a fraction of what it is now.

I'm sure MS could come up with the financing but MS gave away about a half of its cash horde for dividends and is expected to continue drawing down its cash in the form of dividends. MS couldn't use its stock as currency as it's been fairly stagnant for a few years. I'm sure they could finance it against its huge cash flow.

But how big is the console business that MS would mortgage its cash cow businesses? Even if they could recoup the purchase pretty quick and realize positive earnings from the video games business, total revenues in the video games market is a fraction of the OS and productivity businesses. Margins are probably way higher too.

I'm not sure there is a single entity MS would purchase which could quickly (within a generation) reverse the market share. Maybe buying Take Two, one or two of the big Japanese houses and Nintendo would cause this instant reversal.

Or maybe X2 will rock the world on its own and be the market share leader as some hope.

 

[Pozer]

I think MS would be better off merging with Nintendo. Let MS do the OS and business software and transfer the game division to Nintendo. MGS and satellite studios could develope for the console and have seperate games for PC only. Like a PC only Advanced Wars and Nintedo branded strategy games. Would give Nintendo an immediate PC presence. Basically keep everything game related with nintendo brand, business brand could be ms logo'd. Talk about a complete software monopoly.

Same could've happened with MS/Sega or MS/EA merger.

 

[blakjedi]

I'm confused about z's post... though there still could be football games developed by other publishers... whats the point? you cant use real teams names, real stadia real players...? Football enthusiasts at this point in time, would NEVER go for it...

Sports being one of the prime catalysts for software sales in North America and north america probably being the single largest market... for console makers winning america's market almost guarantees you win the generation...

For example sony has won all three world markets twice, but the one time an upstart company defeated the market leader (genesis v super nes) it was because sega captured the American market and was number two in japan...

Football sales in general and madden sales in particular is a bellweather of who is leading in modern generations...

then again it may just be my impression

 

[sunscar]

Just a few things to point out. SEGA killed the DC (it's simple math DC + no support + warry fanbase = XP [dead face]), 989 killed theirself, and MS euthanized their sports devision of their own volition. The only thing EA has managed to kill in recent years is competition.

That said, being on topic here. EA is a huge, utterly massive corporation. I think their worth has been valued at over 19 billion dollars US. That would be a huge investment even for MS to make. MS would likely pay more than that to acquire EA, too. The sale be would catering directly to the share holders who already have a lucrative interrest in EA as it stands now, so the only reason for them to actually sell would be a larger piece of change. Once MS has this 20+ billion dollar corp in its grasp you still have to realize that only about eight or nine billion dollars comes in from the ENTIRE console market each year. Even if MS were the only player in that arena it would still take them years to pay off the acquisition (unless they siphon money from other devisions of MS). It doesn't seem a prudent investment. A more fortuitous acquisition would indeed be one of the larger or more talented development houses, such as Capcom, Square-Enix, Mistwalker (know they're new, but that's damn tempting, and a very smart move), or Ubisoft. The point there is there are far better choices for acquisition than EA. It'd be a large investment for very little gain. As much as American Football is intergral to the American market, that and baseball games are all EA are actually GOOD at, and they'd be of no use in other territories.


That's just my take on it. I'm sure there are better. It just makes more sense to go with with a more talented, cheaper, smaller developer than to go for broke for one genre from a massive company.


Later


Scar

 

[see colon]

Ubisoft.

to be honest, i don't see this happening. assuming EA wants to purchase ubisoft (and it's looking pretty obvious that they do), if MS scooted in and bought ubi out from under EA i think EA would be a bit upset. durring a period of transition from one generation to the next you want to avoid pissing off the largest publisher in the world, especial in the current state of affairs IRT sports titles.

 

[Teasy]

I'm confused about z's post... though there still could be football games developed by other publishers... whats the point? you cant use real teams names, real stadia real players...? Football enthusiasts at this point in time, would NEVER go for it...

EA have held the FIFA rights for the last 10 years. Yet games like Pro Evolution Soccer have real player names. They don't have real names for stadia, but the actual stadiums are real, just with false names. But you can change the names in the game anyway. Also Pro Evolution has become the best selling Football title worldwide now ahead of the FIFA games. It took people a little while to see past the extra content of the FIFA games to the sheer quality of gameplay in PES, but it happened. And it happened because EA got lazy. They had the license and were selling games despite not really improving the games from one to the next and so they kept barely improving them. While companies like Konami kept improving their Football games in leaps and bounds. Finally, the difference in quality was just too big for even casual gamers to ignore. The same thing may happen to Madden if EA get too comfy with their license.

Although I suppose license wise American Football its a bit different to Football since its more of a national sport then an international sport. Meaning there's only one license for the NFL. We're as with Football there are numerous different licenses. One company can have the license for everything to do with Football through FIFA and another can get the licenses for select nations like England, Italy, Spain ect and have something reasonable close to the FIFA license.

 

[see colon]

EA have held the FIFA rights for the last 10 years. Yet games like Pro Evolution Soccer have real player names.

EA has an agreement with players inc., so no other (american) football game can have real players names.

 

[passerby]

such as Capcom, Square-Enix

Those entities are incredibly hugh, because they don't just make videogames. Visit their official japanese site to check out their corporate info. They are into a lot of things. Too many things. The games division may be kitchen sink, but the whole deal involves the stove, oven, microwave, refrigerator, chopping board, kitchen knives and everything else. Sega is the only such entity in recent history that can be brought, and that's because it was in financial ruin.

EDIT: I'm wrong about Sega, since it really wasn't 'bought' - in the sense of 'MS bought Rare'. It was a self-preserving merger whereby they hold less control. I doubt anyone is willing to shoulder all the debts and maintenance costs of such a large entity!

 

[sunscar]

Completely aware of that, I was only pointing out my belief that it would be a far more worthwhile acquisition to go with either of those two, and considerably less costly. Admittedly, Capcom and Square-Enix are quite weighty companies, but not as large as EA by any stretch.

G'night

Sunscar

 

[Shifty Geezer]

EA have held the FIFA rights for the last 10 years. Yet games like Pro Evolution Soccer have real player names.

Ummmm, like Oranges16, that famous player?! PES has only a few licensed names, the others are either close or nonsense.

I think Madden obviously has the advantage with the NFL license, but word has it not constrained by NFL restrictions, non-lincensed Football games will add more varied gameplay. They'll porbably be better games as a result and in the long run my win gameplay over franchise.

As for EA being worth the money, that's nonsense! They made, what? $3 billion last year? That's selling to 80 million PS2s and 20 million XBs. If MS acquired EA exclusivity you'd expect income to be down to 1 fifth, some $600 million a year. How long would it take that income to recover it's worth? Okay with exclusivity MS would hope to expand the XB base and sell more software overall, but even at an extra $2 billion a year as a result, 5 years down the line they'd still be well short on what they paid out. No sense at all in such a move.

 

[Varg Vikernes]

Am I missing something or Microsoft already made their move?

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=58052

Or am I completely off topic here.
I don't follow comsoles that much...

 

[Teasy]

Ummmm, like Oranges16, that famous player?! PES has only a few licensed names, the others are either close or nonsense.

There's only one team with really silly names like that though, the dutch national team and that's in the previous game (PES3) not the current one (PES4). Also even PES3 had a lot more then a few real names AFAIR. But anyway in PES4 90% of the the teams in the game seem to have real names out of the box. All of the ones that aren't real can be edited and 95% of them can be given their real name in commentary too. That includes the national teams and the club teams from 4 or 5 leagues around the world. The dutch team still don't have their real names but the names are similar and obviously easily edited and changed in commentary.

BTW one strange thing I noticed is that while the Dutch players don't have their real names in the national team they all have they're real names in the club teams they play for :?