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How many studios do you think Microsoft want to have?

How many studios will MS own at the end of their aquisition push?

  • They will stop after ABK which will give them just under 40

    Votes: 10 10.5%
  • They will finish off a few smaller ones giving around 45

    Votes: 22 23.2%
  • They are going after more publishers and will have well over 50 in the end.

    Votes: 63 66.3%

  • Total voters
    95
With ABK slowly coming to an end, it had me wondering exactly where MS will be studio wise, after all is said and done.

To me there is three possibilities.
1. They will be done after ABK. That is a massive buy and this gives them just under 40 studios, and when you look at the fact that a number of them have multiple teams, working on multiple games, they probably have around 50-55 individual games in production at any time.
If we say an average of 4.5 years between games, we could expect between 10-12 first party games a year.
That exceeds the amount of games MS said they would need for Gamepass a year. Last time I heard it was a game a quarter.

This would be an employee count of just under 20,000 world wide.


2. While ABK is the last major publisher that Microsoft will purchase, they will just make a few smaller one off studios here and there where it fits a need.
Studios would include these as an example.
Asobo, Certain Affinity, Squanch Games, Avalanche Games, IO Interactive, Edios, Crystal Dynamics and Platinum.
Not saying they will get all these, but this type of studio.

3. Microsoft have decided that they are going to the biggest games company in the world, bar none.
Expect to see a large Japanese Publisher in the mold of Capcom, Sega, Square involved, and the aquisition of even more smaller studios. At the end of their run, we would easily be talking about some 60 or 70 studios.

The things that point to this being a reality is that MS seem to be pushing this narrative from a political point of view.
These US politicians would not be saying what they are without the input of MS. MS would not be giving them the input if there wasn't a reason for it. This can only point towards a Japanese aquisition that might come under scrutiny of the Japanese government or regulators. A one off purchase of a studio like From Software or Platinum games, isn't going to be stopped. We saw Zenimax buy Tango not a problem for example.

We see that 69 Billion dollar number for ABK, on top of the 7.5 Billion for Bethesda, and we think that is just the limit they could spend. However, the aquisition of ABK for MS is the same as the aquisition of Bungie for Sony. We are talking about the purchase of ABK and Bungie and being 3% of both MS and Sony's market cap. We accept that Sony isn't going to stop at Bungie, so why do we think MS would stop at ABK.

I also wonder just how unwieldy it would be for MS to manage 60 or 70 studios, but then I look at Embracer Group and they currently have 131 studios in over 40 countries and employ over 16,000 employees.
We also have Ubisoft with around 45 studios and over 20,000 employees.
There's no question that MS can handle that many people and studios.

I think that something might have changed in MSs strategy with gaming.
Initially they were looking to have enough studios to give them maybe four new first party games a year for GP, and they had that with Xbox Game Studios and Zenimax already.
At some point they have decided to go all the way. Why that would be the case I'm not sure.
It's obviously for GP, but maybe their plans, or expectations for what GP can be, have altered. They are limited to how many consoles they can sell, and PC Gaming is only yay big, so for this investment to pay for itself, it needs to find another way to allow people to play.(And its not going to involve PlayStation either)
It must be cloud streaming.

MS is still putting their XSX chips into server blades, at the expense of getting XSXs into stores. As it stands, Xcloud is pretty close to capacity, and with the inclusion of GP into tvs and smart phone, as well as their streaming box coming out soon, the future demand is going to be orders of magnitudes higher. You can't sell someone a streaming box and then not have enough capacity to actually let them play without buffering or putting them in ques.
Any excess capacity can be utilised by Azure for AI etc, so there's no over investing in xcloud capacity. We know MS is all about the cloud these days.
Once MS decided that GP is going to be way more than PC and Consoles, then a bigger investment in studios and game output is to be warranted.
Gamepass is going to be successful because it will become undeniable. Imagine a subscription service with a new first party game every month. Imagine having the entire MS, Zenimax, Activision, Blizzard, and say Capcom or Segas entire back catalogue in it. Even the most ardent non subscription people will have to join in.
 
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emivita

Member
Phil Spencer:
Angry Gary Oldman GIF
 

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
Honestly, I'm good if they stop after ABK. They'll have the most elite stable of developers out of the Big 3. All they'll need to do is find some kind of cadence for their releases, and their golden.

Don't think their done acquiring, though. They still need a couple of japanese developers to be set, set.
 

Robb

Gold Member
I’m not sure if there’s a limit. They’re going to want to get as much content on their service as possible that they’ll be able to control.
 
I voted more than 50. But I do not think that they will own 50 studios at the same time. Just that they will do like EA and buy studios and close them a few years after. They are more about IP than the people that made them possible.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
im not sure having too many studios/publishers is a good idea though, the more studios/publishers you have the higher risk you have to bear, including the responsibility of taking care of the employees.

Seems very hard to manage when you have too many studios or publishers.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
The only way ABK is slowly coming to an end is if the CMA shut it down in the next two weeks. If they don’t then the dates extend into next year at the least.
 
All of them.
Pretty much. This, along with the guy who said as many as they're allowed to.

If you can completely dominate the gaming market; you'd be raking in tens of billions in profit quarterly. And when I say dominate, I mean just that; I'm not talking about dominate in consoles, or dominate on PC, or dominate on mobile or TV. I mean everything; console, TV, mobile, PC, cloud or whatever handheld device exists. I don't know what that future looks like exactly, but I'm pretty sure MS doesn't just want to be a part of it, but lead it. I think that's what Phil's vision is, and he sold it to Satya, and Satya sold it to the board. It's a decades-long vision, but I think that's where there head is at.

That said, in the short term, after Actiblizon, I expect to see a few small studio buy-ups, and perhaps another giant publisher within three or maybe four years. Who that publisher would be is anyone's guess... EA, Take-Two (that would be my personal choice, if I was running things there), Ubisoft, etc. I think, in order to win over the Japan market, in the easiest way possible, would be to acquire a big Japanese publisher (Square/Sega/Capcom). Looking at all of these company's financials is also key in determining management style and structure. Highly profitable companies don't require any big changes in management; let them continue to run themselves. The only thing that would really change is realigning their visions to suit Xbox's/MS. They may even start-up a few studios from the ground-up as full studios or support studios.

As for these big purchases being approved by regulators, that's another matter. But the truth is, once MS uses the Actiblizzard acquisition to set an example of "fair use" or platform agnosticism (albeit with a few small caveats), they could potentially see a lot of other purchases being approved later on. I think they'll do just that, as Actiblizon is the perfect publisher to show that you're not anti-consumer or even anti-competitor, and essentially paint yourself as the "good guys" in the gaming world.
 
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Given the recent revelations regarding sales data of physical consoles, upside down manufacturing costs, etc. they’ll get as many as they legally can.

Why? To become the ultimate third party publisher. Sega couldn’t compete in the console market towards the end.

I see the same happening for Xbox.

Hence their push for cloud gaming and gamepass every where (where possible).

I know a lot don’t want to hear that, but you don’t keep bleeding money on hardware for the purpose of “just being everywhere”.

It’s the smart move. Eventually, your IP makes it onto competitors platforms.
 
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It will be interesting how Microsoft will manage their studios this generation. By all reports, Microsoft has a hands off approach with their developers. That hasn't worked all that well in recent history. And I question whether they can properly build the infrastructure to support them properly. Say what you want about Sony, but they have so many successful studios because of the stable environment that Sony provides. It's why I don't want Sony buying up random big publishers. I think that could potentially water down the quality of their output. Quality over Quantity
 
It will be interesting how Microsoft will manage their studios this generation. By all reports, Microsoft has a hands off approach with their developers. That hasn't worked all that well in recent history. And I question whether they can properly build the infrastructure to support them properly. Say what you want about Sony, but they have so many successful studios because of the stable environment that Sony provides. It's why I don't want Sony buying up random big publishers. I think that could potentially water down the quality of their output. Quality over Quantity
There really has only been an issue with 343 and the Initiative.
Alot of their acquired studios have been ramped up from Indie or AA to AAA, and this has taken time and money.
Undead Labs went from a small indie dev to a AAA one including multiple Studios, a new mocap studio and has been working with the Coalition to get to grips with UE5.
Playground Games doubled in size and added a whole new team to work on Fable, which included reworking the Forzatech engine from just a car one to adding all the necessary functions to make it suit an RPG which includes fighting, speaking, animations etc etc. This takes time as does finding another 200 devs in the roles they need them in. Once you have then you need to equip the whole new team with dev kits, and train them up on Forzatech etc. They even had to find a new building to house them in.
How long do you think that all takes before you can even start building the game?

Same goes for Ninja Theory, InXile and Compulsion.

Obsidian has released three games since MS bought them and have another two coming out in the 2024 and 2025.

So yes, as you said, it takes alot to build up these teams, but MS has the money and the resources to do it better than anyone else can.
 
OP must be foaming at the thought of MS might buy everyone
Not really, I'm just trying to work out what their plans are.
From what they initially said about needing maybe 4 first party games a year, to what they headed to with having maybe 10 or 12 a year, makes me think something has changed.
They are building something that exceeds what can be justified by the console and PC GP subs, so I would love to know what their plan is.
 

damidu

Member
great fanfiction towards the end, that future with hundreds millions of casual people streaming gamepass from phones smarttvs is never going to happen. don't get your hopes up for that

even hardcore players dont seem to care to tilt the scale in any meaningful way yet
 
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Mods, can we try and keep this about where people think MS is headed with their aquisitions and what the plan is for these studios and GP moving forward? It appears the usual.suspects are trying to turn it into a war zone by just posting bait posts.
Thx
 
great fanfiction towards the end, that future with hundreds millions of casual people streaming gamepass from phones smarttvs is never going to happen. don't get your hopes up for that

even hardcore players dont seem to care to tilt the scale in any meaningful way yet
The overwhelming majority of people who play games don't do it on their PCs or consoles. They do it on their phones.
With 5G becoming more common place, I think MS think that more people will be willing to play their games on their phones vs a typical mobile phone type game.
MS is all in on the cloud.
MS is also going to release a streaming box. Some people with good internet might be happy to pay only $100 and get a GP sub as their way to play games.
I think MS is intending to change the industry.
People were saying the exact same thing about streaming movies on your phone and TV. Infact, when the Australian government planned the infrastructure for the NBN they widely underestimated the requirements for their fixed wireless part, which led to congestion on the entire network, all because they never thought Netflix etc would take off.
 
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