The hidden premise among all these acquisition rumors is that Microsoft genuinely has an interest in significantly growing their first party output, but their actions for the last 10 years simply do not support that at all. I don’t care how much smoke Phil Spencer is blowing up Polygon’s ass, MS isn’t not spending $30+ billion on a huge publisher that will immediately lose half that value by virtue of being acquired. It would be a more sound investment to shoot rocket loads of Xbox One X’s at Mars.
Didn’t Gabe Newell use his fuck you money from being an early Microsoftie to start Valve? I can’t imagine he would want to go back.
As far as I am aware no. It is not a significant driver of profit for EA. The latest version seems to have had sales coming in well below what would be regarded as a hit or even interesting to be honest.
“Star Wars Battlefront II sold 882,000 units including bundle units, well below our estimate of 1,720,000 units,” says Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter.”
Patchter doesnt make things up and this is his estimate. He could be off by a million here and Battlefront still wouldnt count as a big deal for a company like Microsoft.
Even assuming this is just a blip (although messing up a Star Wars game takes some doing) I still dont think the Battlefield franchise would be worth Microsoft aquiring EA for. Even if it was, dropping over $36B for Fifa and a shooter franchise which has , to put it politely, had some ups and downs, doesnt seem worth doing. Besides they already own a far bigger shooter franchise in Halo.
I just dont see it. Then again when it comes to acquisitions, rich companies can go nuts sometimes so who knows? But I would be very surprised if Microsoft bought EA. It brings them nothing strategic and one licensed property which drives the whole business.
At least with Oculus, which was relatively cheap, Facebook could rightfully say they were making a high risk bet on the future. In EA’s case there is nothing like that I can point to.
Just because MS let their previous stable of first-party games/franchises stagnate, doesn’t mean they aren’t in need of a new stable of first-party games now. I mean, the only Microsoft games I recognize in their current lineup are Minecraft (no longer an exclusive) and Forza.
And Age of Empires.
The more I think about it the more I would like to see this happen. EA has a ton of excellent IP in their stable and I’d argue they have cocked up most of it. Microsoft is a very different company these days. Bash on Windows, excellent cross platform apps, the hard push of PWAs all illustrate the massive culture change underway at Microsoft. At least they couldn’t make EA any worse.
The only way it makes sense is if they’re interested in reviving things from EA’s past that are long dead now and can convince the rights holders at the NFL and FIFA and Disney that locking their games to the Xbox and PC is a smart thing (It’s not). Road Rash, Populous, Command & Conquer, the Strike series… I mean, jeez, just look at the list of studios under “Defunct” on their Wikipedia page and think about how much IP they’ve got that is dormant, mostly because they bought it and forgot about it! The funny thing is, it’s just like Microsoft who also have a bunch of IP they created and forgot about! Two peas in a pod?
It’s obviously a good catalog if you’re willing to invest, but then the problem you have is their studios aren’t doing anything with any of this stuff now and you have to find the right people to make these games. I think that can happen, but it’s investment over years of time and won’t bear fruit til the next console, if they decide to make one.
Another jewel is The Sims, which I think has some consumer excitement around it. If these rumors are for real, that’s part of their interest I’m sure. It could have a big impact if expanded to become their avatar system or something like that.
The idea isn’t crazy, but you need someone with vision and you need a really strong group that wants to execute it working on the games. Is EA a publisher that’s able to bring their studios together like that? I just don’t know…
The idea IS crazy. Microsoft is not going to buy EA, folks. As much as you’d like to fantasize about it, it’s not going to happen. Microsoft is not going to spend $40 billion to acquire 7000 new employees and a handful of games.
Fake news, sheeple!
Polygon posted a followup article.
I think exclusive games are a problem.
🥁
It was a jewel I agree and could be again. But yeah you would have to go rehire a bunch of talent to resurrect it. It is difficult to overstate how big a disappointment The Sims 4 was to the fan base. But yeah the fans are still around for sure and could come back for the right game.
All the Maxis titles have stagnated in one way or another.
As do I. This is really the only comment in this thread that makes business sense.
Exclusives can only do so much for your platform. Make it easier to code to, easier to host on, easier to license, and easier to make money off of, and developers will solve the exclusive problem FOR YOU.
Microsoft has always had the issue with the yo-yo support of their gaming and Xbox divisions. To be honest, if those were spun off as a gaming company, it would probably be better off than fighting for executive time between the giant units for OS, business applications and hosting. Them suddenly highlighting that they want to buy a company to solve an exclusives problem sure sounds like some new guy got put into the position of what to do with a quick and dirty funding of the gaming division that will dry up next business cycle.
Here is my prediction:
The strategy is to turn the Xbox into a PC. The Xbox OS will be an app, like Steam, you can run on any Windows 10 PC. Any game you can run on a PC will run on the Xbox One X, which is a dedicated gaming PC but still just a PC in the end, and we’ll get new Xboxes with better specs every 3 or 4 years. PC developers will be encouraged to target the specs of the latest Xbox iteration, since it will simplify things for consumers.
Want to run this game? You don’t need to know RAMs and GPUs watercool your gigawatts and whatever the fuck (but you can if that’s your thing), just whether or not you have a “Super Xbox One EX Plus α” or whatever naming convention they come up with. Your Windows Gaming Experience Score will tell you where your PC stands on the Xbox generation scale. The Xbox Store will show you games guaranteed to run on your PC or console.
Well, sure. They launched a new console last quarter. If sales didn’t grow that would be an enormous red flag.
I would vote for:
Battle for Middle Earth
Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch King
Battlefield 1942
Surface division released a bunch of new products and barely saw any growth.
Adding another reason to the bad idea pile: going out and doing a bunch of M&A when the markets are at multi-year highs seems bad if you are using cash.
It’s less bad if you are using stock, but as others have said, why splurge on this when the real fight is with Google and Amazon for cloud services. I don’t see the consumer arm of Microsoft doing anything more than treading water.
If they really needed some exclusives, couldn’t they go after smaller private studios? Anyways - Gaben cracked the code. The real money in all of this was owning the marketplace platform.