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

WB Games's key IP is all licensed. Warner are not going to be selling their rights to use the Batman and Harry Potter IP as part of selling the assets of their studios. At this point, why would Microsoft even be wanting to buy IP - they have enough teams to develop their own new IP. Spider-Man is Sony's only licensed gaming IP. Pokemon is Nintendo's only licensed gaming IP.

Microsoft can (and need to be) self-sufficient in creating new appealing IP, this is part and parcel of being a creator. It's not all going to pan out but as long as most of it does, it's all good. New IP can be so much better because you're not bound by the creators and licensing restrictions.

 

I completely agree, they dont in any way need WB, but it would stop amazon/google getting them and leveraging the ip, even if licensed, to get people to use their services. If those other companies didnt have WB I dont know what other companies would be a good pick for them. If they are looking at publishers, specifically with a western focus that produce a variety of content there are only really three options, EA, Activision and Ubisoft, of those ubisoft is the only realistic ish one they could go for, but the CEO is staunchly independent so that likely wouldn't happen. EA is 40 odd billion, and all their properties are licensed so you couldnt make them exclusive anyway.

WB, imo, is the last western focused publisher that amazon/google could buy that would give people a compelling reason to use their services because of the variety of content they produce and the brand recognition that the licensed properties have.

 

I think its time we move away from the anti trust and windows talk and just go back to the purchase speculation.


Anyway if medium does well do you think that company would be a good purchase for MS ? They seem to make a bunch of horror type games and that is something MS doesn't really have

 

could be a good fit, however blooper team is publicly traded, with a current market cap of $103m, I would have to guess that an acquisition would be ~125-150 ish million. Could certainly big a good niche filler, especially because Shinji Mikami from tango said he doesn't want to do a horror game again.

The only reason I could see them not going for it are because they are publicly traded, since they haven't acquired any public companies so far. But who knows, that could change, especially for smaller purchases like this.




blooper team stock info - Note default prices are in PLN, but you can change them to USD
Stock | BLOOBER TEAM Stock Price Today | Markets Insider (businessinsider.com)

 

Blobber Team gives me the similar to Ninja Theory vibes, but on a smaller scale.

For horror games it seems Capcom pivoted quite nicely with Resident Evil franchise. I wonder if the new waves of horror games will arrive, especially when VR will be more widespread, where horror games just fit naturally. It would be interesting if Facebook started developing horror games considering their VR investments.

 

Lets get back on topic, about Microsoft acquisition rumors.

 

Its really low cost though at 103m even if they paid 150m they would get a steady out put team

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloober_Team

They seem capable of releasing 1 to 2 game a year. Seems like a good work horse for a yearly horror game for game pass. Perhaps the medium's success or failure will be the turning point on if they are bought or not

 

If they were to be purchased I am really interested to see what their AAA project would look like. Though horrors usually something between AA AA+.

Personally I think that each first party studio should have at least one team dedicated to AAA project and at least one team dedicated to smaller scale/support of other project.

 

Yeah true, and they haven't just done horror games, they did an action game as recently as 2015.

I have to wonder if microsofts strategy of waiting to see how a game does is going to backfire again with the medium, wasn't there a rumour that they were going to buy capcom but wanted to see how monster hunter did before buying them? Bet they regret not acquiring capcom when they had the chance lol

 

I don't think so. Capcom is a bigger company altogether.

 

That goes way back then to 2004 when monster hunter released ?

 

It's probably a mistake to assume that MS want all their studios to deliver AAA. They just need a steady delivery of interesting title for 'this month on Gamepass' + some big hitters every so often.

 

I believe that any non-AAA output game can be brought to gamepass without involvement of first party studios at all as there are a lot of smaller developers and more studios to come. Non AAA can be easily found without wasting resources of the first party.

 

No it was apparently just before monster hunter world released in Jan of 2018, according to Jez Corden, they had an offer letter in hand but wanted to see how monster hunter world performed before signing the deal, unfortunately, as the rumour goes, monster hunter world performed a little too well and capcom decided not to sell.

At the time monster hunter world was released capcom's share price was 13.60, currently its trading at 54.90

 

I think it depends, I do get what you mean about AAA vs AA, but what would you consider grounded? Even when fully released imo it will be a 'AA' experience, but thats fine! well done 'AA' games can be just as much of a draw as AAA ones.

Which do you think got more people into game pass, grounded or gears 5? I have no idea, but its an interesting comparison.

 

I suspect co-op is one of the reasons why Grounded became successful. If Grounded was single player game only it be would much less successful.
But multiplayer games is the different beast altogether. I don't even separate them into AAA or AA or whatever, because the success their quite often does not even depend on production values.

Regarding Gears 5...I believe it has a dedicated core fanbase - similarly to Halo - and single player that brings other players.

 

Discussion about Monopoly concerns moved to https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/the-monopoly-discussions-2021.62235/

 

Just to add to this, not all developers are capable of transforming into a large AAA studio. Management of a large development house is significantly different and more challenging than running a smaller AA or indie studio.

Heck, not all AA/Indie developers want to become large enough to be a AAA studio.

In terms of Game Pass, MS are probably perfectly fine if they acquired a studio that wanted to stay small and focus on innovative games that can cater to gaming niches. Something that isn't possible as a AAA developer where you have to make the appeal as wide as possible (and thus watering down the game in most instances) in order to attract a large enough audience to support a AAA development budget.

If it suddenly explodes in popularity, the studio can either expand, or allow a different MS studio to take over and turn the IP into a AAA franchise.

Regards,
SB

 

I think that it would be a good move for microsoft to acquire some support studios, especially because they have such a high demand right now. tencent seems to be heavily investing in them and eventually there could simply not be enough to go around. (assuming that tencent starts using their multitude of studios collaboratively, making their owned support studios unavailable for outside work)


In that vein:
SkyBox labs is an obvious one, they have near exclusively worked with microsoft since their founding in 2011, they are privately held with 120-150 ish employees. They have worked on all the age of empires 2 expansions with forgotten empires, and did the bedrock version of minecraft for the ps4 and switch. They are currently working on halo infinite.

Sumo digital

Sumo digital has worked a lot with microsoft in the past, the most recent obvious one is crackdown, which obviously had a mixed reception, but they are also the outsourcing studio that playground uses for the forza horizon series, and I would imagine are also the outsourcing studio for fable. They are likely the 3rd party studio with the most experience in forzatech and its derivatives. They have lots of experience in a variety of areas, for instance they made the sackboy: A big adventure game, which is a platformer. It would definitely make sense to get them making more family friendly content between working on other studios work, and at 700+ employees they are obviously big enough to work on multiple things concurrently.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/oth...vices-its-a-problem-for-hollywood/ar-BB1cSmuv

Obviously a gaming service is going to face different issues than a movie/ tv streaming service but I think its important for MS to have a constant flow of new content in order to keep people subscribed

I think once bethesda deal is done you will see another deal pop up from ms.