RUMOUR: Polygon - Microsoft is looking to purchase EA, Valve or PUBG

What should MS do with its 90 billion dollars in cash?

  • Buy EA, remaster every EA game ever and make it available on Gamepass and Crossbuy on PC

    Votes: 87 28.9%

  • Buy Valve, fold Xbox Live into Steam and fund DOTA3, HLife 3, Portal 3, Team Fortress 3, Left4Dead 3

    Votes: 96 31.9%

  • Buy PUBG and other small studios to include in Gamepass

    Votes: 58 19.3%

  • Make a Xbox with a 3nm Zen 3+ CPU, 24GBs of HBM3, a 2.4TB SSHD and 24 TFs of GPU Horsepower

    Votes: 55 18.3%

  • Make an OASIS (akin to Ready Player One) with a 8k wireless VR headset with 120fps and 180 fov.

    Votes: 31 10.3%

  • All of the Above

    Votes: 77 25.6%

  • Make a Xboy or Steamboy that lets you play your entire xbox library and steam library on the go

    Votes: 18 6.0%

  • Partner with Valve, EA, Oculus, Blizzard and Ubi to offer a unified library with every game you own.

    Votes: 5 1.7%
  • Total voters
    301
N

Nintendo Switch

Banned

MS has over 90 billion dollars overseas and Trump just gave companies a one time tax holiday to bring this money back to the US and spend it. Valve is only worth $5 billion. MS just bought linked in for 26 billion dollars just because they have too much money and don't know how to spend it. Their purchase of Nokia for 9 billion is illustrative is of just how desperate MS is find a good use of their excess cash. So if MS bought Valve, folded Xbox Live into steam, funded a sequel to every Valve game and made them all available on Gamepass, and made your entire steam library playable on the Xbox One X and the next Xbox, it would offer an insane value for gamers.

I would love to see MS partnering with Valve, EA, Oculus, Blizzard and Ubi to offer one unified library that links to, shows and lets you play all games you own on Steam, Xbox Live, Origin, Uplay, Oculus Store and Battle.net

It's not unprecedented. VUDU, Apple, Amazon and Google Videos partnered to create a free service called moviesanywhere that allows users to link all their accounts together so that digital movie or tv show they own on VUDU, Apple, Amazon or Google Videos shows up on all of them. They found that digital video store purchases increased on all four storefronts since this partnership because people like the convenience of having all their movies show up in all their apps and devices. We desperately need a similar partnership to occur between the various PC and Xbox digital gaming stores especially since the Xbox One X is capable of playing any PC game.

If such a partnership is not doable, then MS outright buying Valve and integrating both stores would make a ton of sense. Think about it, every single game you own on either Xbox Live or Steam will be playable thru either Steam or Xbox Live and on either your Xbox, your PC, or an Xboy/Steamboy handheld device that optionally doubles as a smartphone running Windows Phone OS and also has a tv out port (so you can use it like the Switch) and is compatible with all Xbox One controllers. Remastered 4K versions of all of Valves past games and Half Life 3 included with Gamepass. They can leave Gabe in charge of managing Steam on the PC side, while hiring up devs to make games using Valves IP and making everyone's entire steam libraries also playable on the Xbox consoles (rebranded as SteamboXes if necessary). The convenience and value this would give to both console and PC gamers would put Xbox Steam Live at the top of both the console and PC gaming industry and would generate Microsoft tens of billions in additional revenue over the years. They may need to name the next Xbox, SteamboX, and rename Xbox Live, Steam Live, in order to be able to do that without violating any steam licenses.

In addition to this, they could spend 30 billion to buy TSMC, hire Mark Cerny to oversee the same team that designed the Xbox One X and make a cutting edge Vapor Cooled Next Xbox using a 3nm Zen 3+ 3Ghz 3x3 core CPU, 30GBs of 3D Stacked HBM3, a 3TB SSHD and 30 TFs of GPU Horsepower. Pair it with an Xboy handheld/smartphone with slide out controls using AMDs upcoming 3nm mobile APU that has a TV out and can remote play your home Xbox, and features one unified library that links to, shows and lets you play all games you own on Steam, Xbox Live, Origin, Uplay and Battle.net Launch it alongside an optional 4k per each eye, 120fps wireless VR headset with a 180 degree FOV for Ready Player One's OASIS levels of gaming immersion and market domination. They could simply buy Pimax since they already have a 8k VR headset with these specs (including a 200 degree fov) in the beta testing phase.

While they do this, they should integrate Xbox Live into Origin/Steam for PC gamers and offer crossbuy and crossplay between all PC and Xbox games and most gamers would switch from PS to the Xbox ecosystem. This would guarentee a 150-200 million install base for the next Xbox/Gamepass which would easily pay for itself within a decade.

Alternatively, it would only cost MS 40 billion to buy EA and gain the absolutely dominant Madden and FIFA series, spend another 10 billion to remaster every single EA game ever made in 4k and make them available for purchase for $10 or playable for free with Xbox Gamepass, and Xbox Gamepass would instantly become Netflix for gaming. PC gamers will also get Game Pass, Origin becomes the way to sell games for MS and all these games as well as Gamepass would have full crossbuy and crossplay between consoles and PC.

If MS is willing to spend 10-15 billion to remaster in 4k every EA game in history and make a sequel to every single beloved IP that EA (or Valve) owns, even beloved dead ones like Burnout, Red Alert, Dead Space, Populus, C&C, Ultima, MLB, Fight Night, KOTOR, Wing Commander, System Shock, Merceneries, Dragon Age, Bad Company, Skate, SSX, Medal of Honor, TimeSplitters, Warhammer and many others, they could easily get most gamers to jump ship for nostalgia alone. As a bonus, if MS paid to get the Bond license back, they could rerelease so many classic Bond games alongside Goldeneye. But if they fail to remake all those beloved and ignored franchises, the purchase will fail imo.

If they were really smart, they would also pay bank to lock up Bluepoint to get 4k 60fps remasters of every great EA game ever made for the next Xbox and dominate the market using nostalgia alone, starting with Red Alert 3 (the greatest RTS ever released on consoles) and Burnout 3/Revenge (the open world crap that was Burnout Paradise destroyed the greatest arcade racing franchise in history. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make an arcade racer where you constantly have to look at the map or you risk missing a turn and screwing up the event you wasted 20 minutes trying to get to the starting point of deserves to be fired.)

Update: EA, do you see how all the gamers are clamoring for you to get bought up. Perhaps that should be a wake up call that you stop closing studios, stop abandoning beloved franchises as soon as a single game underperforms and most importantly, start remastering all your old games (Burnout 3, Red Alert 3 and hundreds of others) so that gamers can rebuy them for cheap or play them via EA Access.

Valve, do you see how enthusiastic gamers are to have you bought up, perhaps you should take the hint that gamers want you start making some damn games again instead of abandoning stories 70% of the way through right when they are about to climax. Gamers are pissed about all the blue balls you have given them. And update your ancient looking slow as molasses storefront while you are at. It may have been okay a decade again but it is completely over designed and far too slow and cumbersome by today's standards, take a look at how Origin does it.
 
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On the next Xbox, I would love to see MS partnering with Valve, EA, Blizzard and Ubi to offer one unified library that links to, shows and lets you play all games you own on Steam, Xbox Live, Origin, Uplay and Battle.net

EA Access being folded into Xbox Gamepass would turn it into the Netflix of gaming. Especially if they invest in remastering every old beloved game that EA owns and makes it available on Xbox Gamepass, the Netflix model would be insanely profitable banking on the nostalgia of gamers for great old school IP.

Madden and FIFA with a 3 month exclusivity on Xbox before they show up on competitors would be a death knell for the PS5 with most gamers switching to Microsoft.

Imagine the next Xbox launching alongside an exclusive Burnout 4 that takes the series back to its roots (not the open world crap that was Burnout Paradise). Hell a 4k remaster of Burnout 3 and Revenge would be absolutely fantastic.

If and only if they invest in launching their next console with a crapton of EA exclusive franchises, they could easily dominate the console gaming environment. The sales from that alone would be well worth the 40 billion it would cost MS to buy up EA. An extra 50 million gamers jumping ship from Sony to MS next gen has got to be worth billions considering software sales and XBL subscription fees.

But this would only work if they spend another 10 Billion to remaster every beloved EA game in history and bank on nostalgia to convince gamers to jump ship.

An exclusive Mass Effect 4k remaster Trilogy that fixes the awful ending of the original trilogy.

An exclusive Battlefield, Red Alert 4, Command and Conquer, Dead Space Trilogy and Titanfall 3 at launch, and every game bought on Xbox would be playable on PC and vice versa, the disruption to the gaming scene would be unreal.

It could be horrible for gamers but from a business standpoint, it would set MS up to dominate both the console and PC gaming scene, which combined is a trillion dollar industry.
 
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Valve. ufff - I don't know how I feel about that. On the bright side, we'd have x1 and steam cross play more frequently. But still, bold move Ms.

Damn if they do take EA that means all Maddens will be X1/ PC only?
 
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Out of those three, Valve makes the most sense. If MS were to purchase EA, I would guess that'll give Sony more incentive to lock up 2K/Visual Concepts.

All 3 would be insane if MS is planning on spending the bank.
 
Holy shit. Microsoft buying either EA/Valve would be massive. PUBG Corp not so much.

But to think that PUBG Corp is now a big enough player to be consider along side those 2 is pretty insane.

If Microsoft buys EA. Exclusives would be ripe for the picking. Anthem Xbox exclusive?

Artistic said:
Out of those three, Valve makes the most sense. If MS were to purchase EA, I would guess that'll give Sony more incentive to lock up 2K/Visual Concepts.

All 3 would be insane if MS is planning on spending the bank.
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EA would be a money bank for MS compared to 2K for Sony. Especially since EA has so many more IP's at their disposal. Especially Star Wars.
 
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Unless the NFL and FIFA can and would trigger a licensing termination by such a move, MS buying EA would be an absolute disaster for the gaming community. They would be able to push any anti-consumer policies they could imagine down everyone's throats, and sit back and ignore the complaints until Sony became a has been in the gaming industry.
 
I'm not at all convinced that Gabe would sell his company to MS. I think the chances of that happening are pretty much nothing. It would be advantageous for MS, but a failure for Valve. EA purchase could happen at huge expense. Again, I consider this unlikely. The sum involved would make it not really worthwhile for what is already a software house and publisher. They would be buying IP's that while make a huge amount of money, are easily replaceable or killed off, along with scattered offices and servers they do not need. I think it would be daft, frankly.

Which leaves PUBG, which IS incredibly likely. Anyone trying to buy them is likely, but I would think MS would take the long road as with MC and see how it retains players once the hype has fallen a bit. I don't see them buying up the company at this point just to retain the current buzz to its own platforms.
 
Microsoft buying EA would be huge, but given how they leveraged Minecraft, I think Microsoft buying PUBG Corp. makes a lot more sense and is a hell of a lot more realistic. If they just apply the exact same Blueprint to PUBG that they did to Minecraft, they could very well have similar (read: strong) results.
 
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Valve makes the most sense with how Microsoft wants to create a steam like set up. Dunno if any of these would happen though. PUBG just seems pointless to me. These games cycle in popularity too quickly.
 
If they are after exclusives for the Xbox then EA makes the most sense because they actually make games. Valve is a PC storefront at this point, and without the income from it, as an entity Valve ceases to exist, so beyond Newell being able to buy even more knives with whatever billions M$ could throw at him, I'm not seeing the incentive for him to sell.
 
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Nintendo Switch said:
Madden and FIFA with a 3 month exclusivity on Xbox before they show up on competitors would be a death knell for the PS5.
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Pretty sure this in contractually impossible due to the deals with the leagues. None of this is likely to happen and if it did, I'd guess MS would behave about how they have with Minecraft. MS is about making money. Not winning a console war.
 
I can't decide which one of these would make me happy...or be good for the games industry as a whole....

EA - Seems like the biggest stretch, but would have a huge impact if MS was stingy with their portfolio.

Valve - Also seems like a stretch, but MS could solve a lot of their PC Store issues by just folding their First Party stuff into steam and killing the Windows store.

PubG Corp - Most likely I guess? Would be cool given the way that MS has still taken Minecraft to the masses no matter what platform you are on.

This all is crazy though right? EA? Merger or acquisition? I just can't see a world where EA or Valve is owned or merged with MS...
 
MisterR said:
Pretty sure this in contractually impossible due to the deals with the leagues. None of this is likely to happen and if it did, I'd guess MS would behave about how they have with Minecraft. MS is about making money. Not winning a console war.
Click to expand...

Madden isn't available on Nintendo consoles. So I doubt there is a stipulation that Madden must be released on PS consoles on the same date as MS consoles. Even if there was, there are almost certainly loopholes such as releasing an old engine inferior Madden on PS and the latest and greatest on Xbox. Would be a horrible move but I wouldn't put it past any company to do that.
 
This would be an incredible commitment to the XBOX brand by MS. I think this would show they are going all in with Game Pass and positioning themselves as the Netflix of gaming for decades to come.

If they can grow their Game Pass base with the help of EA content/IP to 30 million users (current XBL Gold members are 48+ million), the EA acquisition pays for itself (EA valued at ~36 billion) in 10 years.
 
Somehow I doubt this. Perhaps it's been played around a bit in terms of positioning for the next generation (EA specifically), but I doubt it has been talked about as a strategy they've set their mind on.
 
I have a hard time seeing how they would handle Valve/Steam in accordance with their UWP strategy. Unless they'd merge the Win10 store with it and keep a "legacy" part. But it seems like a huge amount of work to merge both stores, and a lot of redundancy to own the two of them as separate entities.
EA seems too huge to be bought, but you never know. I suppose they'd need to go the Minecraft route and keep them multiplatform, or it would be a waste of money.
 
I don't think much of EA. But this would be bad for the industry imo.

These are 2 companies that have had many issues when it comes to the consumer.
 
PUBG is the only one that sounds halfway realistic to me, if nothing else because (as mentioned) they had similar success with Minecraft.

Valve makes sense too, but it's impossible to tell if Gabe Newell and company would be interested.

EA doesn't seem realistic to me, because when you buy a big third party publisher and then cancel most of their products (ex: Playstation 4 versions) you're just burning money. That only makes sense in context of some Console Warz kind of thought process, and nothing I've seen of MS suggests they really care about that.
 
Have MS fucked with all none Xbox versions of Minecraft?

If not, then why would they do it with fifa, madden etc?
 
Artistic said:
Out of those three, Valve makes the most sense.
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I always thought that Xbox needs to announce "all Steam games playable on Xbox One," since they're blurring the line between Xbox and PC anyway

Nintendo Switch said:
EA Access being folded into Xbox Gamepass would turn it into the Netflix of gaming.
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This. I think this is the future and their game plan, especially long-term leading into next gen.
 
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If the rumor is true i expect it to be Pubg.
I do not believe they whould invest that much money on EA OR valve, to risky a believe
 
Raizing said:
LOL if Microsoft buys out Valve the fallout from the gaming community will be incredible.
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Not that it will happen, but people said the same about MC and that turned out just fine for everyone. They are not stupid, they have some of the smartest people in the world in their employ. Something like that would be left mostly untouched if it ever happened. You would just see it becomes a core part of Windows while retaining its identity and features I would think.
 
Don't see the value in buying PUBG devs / company. That game will burn out in time only to be replaced with a new fad. And there's no saying they will make another hit to replace it.

Maybe lord gaben has got bored and is looking at the retirement bucks. Spend the last third of his life doing something meaningful. You never know.
 
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I don't see Valve getting bought up by them. It would cost several kings' ransoms and I was under the impression that Gaben wasn't keen on Microsoft in the first place, especially after his big Linux push a few years back.

PUBG seems like an obvious choice. Small developer that has done well for itself and could just as well cash out their chips and do whatever they like similar to when Notch sold Minecraft to MS. EA might be doable but they'd have to get their house in order, or MS would clean house right after the acquisition.
 
if MS bought EA, I can see them going the timed exclusives way with Xbox consoles, along with the Netflix model. The Netflix model generates LOTS of money, so it makes sense for MS to go that route.
 
Purchasing Valve will come at a hefty, hefty premium. I also have doubts it's going to help unify Xbox with PC. But Valve is undoubtedly an obstacle to bringing together the two ecosystems.

Buying EA as well won't come cheap. I don't know why they don't try to go after the exclusive licenses instead - maybe because it would irrevocably burn bridges with the company? Maybe they're after the development studios more than they want IP (DICE, Bioware, etc.).

TBH, why would you want to purchase Bluehole if only for PUBG? They should revive their interest in going after Epic or AMD before they go that route.
 
MS buying EA seems most likely. I think they watched quite closely how the EA/Origin Access programs unfolded and they see it as the future. Xbox Game Pass is their first stab at games-catalog-as-a-service, imagine what they could do with Origin on the PC ... they'd be able to ditch the Windows Store and have a real Steam competitor. I believe this is about MS trying to find a way to compete with Steam on their own PC platform. GFWL, Microsoft Store, etc have all failed to make an impact and that comes down to software library more than anything else. If they own Origin and then open it up, who knows ... maybe GOG would be next.
 
MS buying Valve sounds like a nightmare scenario. They'll ruin everything good about it within a few years.
 
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In 2012 Valve was worth 4.1 Billion, so I'm retrospect it's not as much as I thought.

Wonder what it's worth today — $12 Billion maybe?
 
The original article clearly lists these under the heading of "Acquisition Rumours". When we're talking about rumours can we please make it clear in the thread title that's what's being discussed to reduce the chance of potential confusion.

Thanks
 
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