Why the fixation on a publisher ? Publishers are becoming less and less important as technology changes. Physical Media is dying and you can release large games directly to console's digital stores and physical has been dead for like 2 decades on the pc side. So developers no longer need a large company to pony up the money to create physical media. You can also now get funding directly from the fans if you want or through other means a lot more easily than you used to. Star citizen has been directly funded by fans to the tune of 600m
Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
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Part of the hardest part of gamedev is visibility. A publisher with a budget to spend on marketing is a huge asset. That's why the chart toppers are well funded games with publishers, save the rare outlier, and never the independent AAA game without a publisher.
Furthermore, an indie can't drum up $200M to make an independent AAA title. You can't access fans for funding if you haven't got any because you're a new studio, and you aren't going to go from zero to $50+ million to fund a big game without a massive history and promotional campaign. You shouldn't use outliers like Star Citizen but typical outcomes as that's what people have to base their decision-making on. Kickstarter yields:
Shenmue 3 got $6 million.
Yooka-Laylee £2 million
The most Indie thing I can see, PuffPals at $2.5 million
If even 5% of AAA titles were coming from publisher-free indies, you'd have the very beginnings of an argument, but effectively 0% are. New publishers or AAA devs is going to need massive, very risky investment. Unless there's a very obvious groups of investors willing to do that, and I think they'd all rather invest in known successful publishers, there just isn't anything like enough new money coming in to fund independent AAA titles.
Furthermore, an indie can't drum up $200M to make an independent AAA title. You can't access fans for funding if you haven't got any because you're a new studio, and you aren't going to go from zero to $50+ million to fund a big game without a massive history and promotional campaign. You shouldn't use outliers like Star Citizen but typical outcomes as that's what people have to base their decision-making on. Kickstarter yields:
Shenmue 3 got $6 million.
Yooka-Laylee £2 million
The most Indie thing I can see, PuffPals at $2.5 million
If even 5% of AAA titles were coming from publisher-free indies, you'd have the very beginnings of an argument, but effectively 0% are. New publishers or AAA devs is going to need massive, very risky investment. Unless there's a very obvious groups of investors willing to do that, and I think they'd all rather invest in known successful publishers, there just isn't anything like enough new money coming in to fund independent AAA titles.
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Deleted member 11852
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I agree, but allow me to re-quote the initial post on which I was responded. There was a debate on what further industry consolidation would mean for developers if there were fewer publishers around. see colon said:
Which I completely agree with. My point is that developers have always had the option to walking away from their publisher to another, or trying to form their own studio. But if you're working on AAA or very-high budget AA titles and walk away from Activision-Blizzard, Microsoft, Sony or Ubisoft, then chances are your options to walking into another publisher funding those types of games are going to be lessened if there fewer independent publishers.
Your opportunity for founding a new studio, given the known costs, are about zero. That is why I asked if anybody could think of any AAA devs/pubs that had formed in the last ten years as I cannot. And that's relevant to the notion that 'developer agency' won't be impacted by further consolidation, because the examples of this happening in the AAA space are limited. They're predicated on particular individuals, or happens a long time ago. Certainly in times before AAA budgets are what they are today. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Indeed. We often hear of devs making new studios. It's rare for these studios to produce self-published, or even publisher funded, AAA tent-pole titles that people remember. And yes, when a studio is successful, notably at getting independent funding, it's on the strength of a potent personality. Curiously we have a couple that were formed and went straight into Sony ownership. That's the 'safe place' where you can get the funding needed. It also means fewer publishers means fewer such places, and more platform-consolidation means more schism of the marketplace for gamers.
OK, I can find common ground here. Consolidation in the publishing space might be an issue. Perhaps countered a bit by more accessible self publishing, and the historical precedent of market vacuums being filled organically. By this I mean, any role Activision may have played in publishing independent games could be picked up by a smaller or an up and comer. Someone like Deep Silver or 505 Games. In fact, with one less large publisher in the market, it creates an opportunity for the smaller to mid sized ones.
At the end of the day, though, I don't think this deal will have a radical impact on independent developers. They will likely have been working with or looking for a publisher anyway. Activision used to publish a fair amount of licensed games. They did some Marvel games, TMNT, Ghostbusters and Walking Dead. Some of those games were developed by studios not owned by Activision. But they haven't done that in years. I think in the last 5 years they maybe published 2 games that weren't from internal studios. Call of Duty Mobile (which is an internal IP) and Sekiro by From Software. So it it isn't like Activision was some publisher that had a big impact on studios that they didn't own. EA, on the other hand, has a whole division for that role. So does 2K, they own Private Division who published The Outer Worlds. Activision left that role in the industry years ago.
I also agree that publisher consolidation is bad but - 1/13 super large publishers out there got bought; a publisher that was increasingly putting all their resources towards only the money makers not funding new IPs.
There are a lot of smaller publishers out there today that dwarf the output that Activision puts out annually. In the last 3 years, Activision has only released 11 titles, 5 of them being Call of Duty, 3 Crash titles, and 2 tony hawk titles, and random publish for Sekiro that any other publisher would have done. Blizzard has only done, Diablo Immortal, Overwatch 2, and Diablo 4 in the last 3 years.
No one pushed them in this direction, so if they start producing significantly more titles (and varied ones) as a result of this consolidation, then technically the opposite is happening.
11 games in 3 years is crazy huge!
We're talking about the diversity of titles, not the same title repeatedly, at least this is my understanding of the issue of publisher consolidation. No one wants to start a new studio etc, has to go to a large publisher to get funded. But ABK was never really into doing that, and they are technically an exception to this generality discussion.
Bandai Namco has released 32 games in the same time period as ABK.
Capcom has released 22 games in the same time period
EA published over 50 titles in the same time period.
For the largest game publisher in the world, ABK have the least number of releases per year.
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AB isn't "1/13 super large publishers out there" - the amount Ms is paying for AB is higher than the current value of all Japanese Pubs + Ubisoft + Embracer + CD Projekt + whatever combined, basically the entire console market outside EA and Take2. It's higher than the current value of Nintendo and 2/3 of what the entirety of Sony is worth. It's by a huge margin the largest acquisition ever in the gaming space.
The discussion about game supply (above) and a discussion of revenue is very separate. ABK is the very definition of all eggs into 1 basket. That nets you the largest gains, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've got a great strategy for when that fails.
AB has the biggest egg in the entire console market with CoD, has huge eggs in the PC market (and just made big inroads into the console market with Diablo 4) with Blizzard and huge ones in the mobile market with King. There is a reason they have that valuation.
You have to dive into the list of games and see why. Can you give me a link of the lists your using?
A quick glance shows the following:
Bandai Namco owns a larger amount of IPs due to Bandai owning a huge amount of non-game related IPs from the realm of Anime. Most of Bandai Namco's titles are smaller scale titles not produced inhouse and are sequels after sequels of the same japanese pop culture material that have been produced since forever.
Something similar goes with EA, whose franchises include all kinds sports licensed games and rehashes or sequels of smaller scale games such as Sims. A lot of its titles arent produced inhouse either.
A similar situation with Capcom, mostly releasing sequels, remakes, remasters and compilations of the same franchises they have been releasing for generations.
ABK's games are mostly produced inhouse and self published. Fewer titles but of which some are exceptionally successful, performing like incredible outliers.
The common catch is that all of these publishers are focusing their efforts on the successful IPs they already own. Some focusing more money on less and others focusing smaller budgets on more. Different business strategies for each according to different opportunities.
Sure but that’s not necessarily a counter argument to the issue that publisher consolidation will lead to less AAA games being funded. ABK only funds a handful of titles for many years now and continues to streamline that further down. The loss of ABK going to MS won’t be felt in terms of studios looking for funding. ABK was likely never a contender.
They have that valuation because MS made an offer. Yes COD and Diablo are huge titles, but how does MS owning them change things for other developers? AAA has become a huge investment and most studios just can't ride out a multi year development cycle without other titles under the roof.
If you want to blame someone for consolidation blame gamers who want more better pixels every iteration. Those pixels aren't free.
But those games made money right?
The current Indiana Jones movie cost $295 million to make. Then who knows what the advertising and distribution costs are.
It won the weekend it premiered but fell to #2 by the second weekend. It may not make up the money in theatrical release, have to depend on various home video distribution windows across the world to turn a profit but it probably will turn a good enough profit that Hollywood will keep spending similar sums of money. In this case it was a 81-year old actor and a lot of the budget went to de-aging him for a good part of the movie apparently.
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Deleted member 11852
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This is the debate on value. Somebody drowning will value a life preserver as understandably high value versus somebody a thousand miles inland less sdo. Everything is relative.
List of Activision Games from 2020-Present
List of Blizzard Games
List of Bandai Namco titles
List of EA Games
List of Capcom Games
What do you mean I have to dive into the list of games and see why? We're talking about new studios with new titles looking for funding for AAA games by AAA publishers and whether ABK being merged with MS will have a result on that. Does the industry at large lose out on a large scale AAA funding with MS now owning Activision? I don't believe so, there's nothing there that indicates ABK does massive funding for various types of titles, they stopped doing that a long time ago.
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Deleted member 11852
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Now you're talking economics, which is very much predicated on effort vs potential reward, factoring in risk.
I used Star citizen as an example. We could also look at Vampire survirors which was made by a single person and has sold millions of copies and keeps getting dlc adn content updates.
It's obvious that a new developer wont have a 200m budget but that isn't the point because Activision didn't have 200m budgets when it launched either. But over the decades budgets grew and you go from Fishing Derby/Boxing/Skiing and the like in the 1980s to Tony Hawk in the 90s and COD in 2003.
So those studios making small budget games now in the 2020s could end up with the next COD or next TONY hawk in the 2030s or 2040s
How many new AAA titles from indepentent studios do you see being funded by publishers? The problem didnt start with MS, but it will become worse as consolidations continue in general.
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