Wow, this is an impressive showing of “wants all the glory for breaking a huge story yet takes none of the responsibility when he gets it dead wrong”
No, news journalism doesn’t work like that. You are supposed to report (true) news, not make wild guesses that could be right, could be wrong.
I like how he’s shrugging it off like a leak of the release date for a dlc happened to be off and not an apparently fictional acquisition of a huge company by a massive one.
Pretty sure Amazon is already making a Mass Effect TV show.
Mass effect could be a pretty awesome show, given how cool the characters were.
The latest Madden seems to be running into some trouble. That’s not going to help EA.
The consolidation of the industry should make for an interesting decade in games to come. I agree with the guy in the article that says it’s mostly due to how cheap it was to borrow money, and rising interest rates should mean less consolidation ahead.
It won’t. It will mean smaller companies lacking loan and investment possibilities, and either fold or get bought by investors funded with other cash cows. If nothing else, they can get 2.5% for free, but there’s still IAPs, platform oligopolies, and other rents to rely on.
The age of rentier capitalism comes to gaming.
It definitely doesn’t feel like it will be a positive long term thing for most of the industry to be just 5 or 6 big companies, although the Tencent guy and the guy from Embracer made some decent arguments in that article that maybe it is good for everyone. I’m skeptical.
I am shocked that the consolidators think it’s a good thing.
Well, it’s not like games will only be available from a handful of power brokers. Now, specific big budget blockbuster games, maybe, but the indie and A-AA scene is burgeoning and should continue to do so.
I am not terribly thrilled with all of the consolidation in the industry but among the things I worry about, it doesn’t rise very high on the pile.
With the amount of indies that come out every year, I’m not terribly worried.
Now, that comes from a dude who thinks pretty much every modern game has unthinkably good graphics, because I started playing games when 16 bits was future tech. When Pirates was the best Open World game you could get (before that actually).
Might be a problem for people mainly going for AAA games.
This right here is the very definition of monopoly control.
Yeah, it’s interesting in that while we see a consolidation of the major dev houses/publishers, we are also seeing an environment where it’s much easier for independent developers to get their stuff out to the market at large than they’ve ever been able to in the past.
The indie game thing seems like it’s great, but many of those games - at least the ones that rise to the top of the heap and get noticed - still need funding. A downturn in the industry\economy will harm their ability to get investment money. This could have an overall chilling effect on indie game dev.
Following that, where will some of them turn? Will large consolidated bloc publishers still sign smaller titles for distribution\publishing deals on a title by title basis? And if so, will these deals be good ones? Or will more and more devs turn to the services (Game Pass, PS Plus, EGS) to get finishing funds and at least break even?
So while it’s easier to get product “on the shelf” (so to speak), the financial side of things that’s fostering that is still unclear in how it’ll impact those devs down the line.
It feels like AAA game development has hit a practical ceiling and that those games are simply too complex and too expensive for the entertainment industry to bear. The recent spate of AAA busts based partly on problems seems to hint this might be true.
Id love too see the comparison of staff and hours worked between a 100mil film and a 100mil game.
Another acquisition.
Sony has joined forces with Tencent to purchase a 30.34 percent share of FromSoftware, the developer behind titles like Elden Ring, Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne. Tencent’s Sixjoy Hong Kong division will own 16.25 percent of FromSoftware’s shares, Sony will take a 14.09 percent interest and parent Kadokawa Group will remain the largest shareholder with a 69.66 percent stake. Tencent already has an investment in Kadokawa from last year.
FromSoftware might not be a developer that’s on the tip of your tongue, but it has an impressive catalog. Elden Ring has been the top selling game of 2022 to date, with sales of 12 million copies in the first 18 days alone. Along with Bloodborne and the Dark Souls franchise, it has also produced the PSVR mystery adventure Déraciné and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
The company plans to use the funds raised (36.4 billion yen or $262 million) to strengthen its relationship with Sony, create new IP and expand its ability to publish globally. Elden Ring is the company’s biggest hit to date, but it’s published outside of Japan by Bandai Namco. Earlier this year, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco called Elden Ring the start of a “new franchise” and announced efforts to “expand the brand beyond the game itself and into everyone’s daily life.”
I for one welcome the flood of Elden Ring toilet paper, toothpaste, coffee cups, and diapers.