Microsoft Picked An Interesting Week To Start Acquisition Talks With Activision Blizzard

@Royalblues dont know if they could buy sega. Its a Japanese company who would not want hostile foreign takeover. Moreover they are in a good position financially unlike Platinum Games who is about to go under likely. Thirdly their games players are on Playstation/Nintendo so u would likely face opposition there and potentially kill franchises

@Royalblues @Rmg0731 Whilst Sega would be an 'easier' acquisition than many Japanese companies - its on a lower tier, its much more complicated due to 'Sega' gaming being just a part of Sega Sammy which includes Hotels and Golf Courses so buying Sega's gaming studio's and IP's will be a LOT more complicated.

Platinum Games could be a potential option - to join Tango Gameworks as a 'Japanese' based Studio 'owned' by Microsoft. I also think they could look to 'China' too to bolster their 'Asian' based studio's - GameScience, the Studio behind Black Myth: WuKong could be a good acquisition - especially if that game became 'exclusive' to Game Pass platforms.

I think Ubisoft will be 'next' of the 'big' publishers. At least Sega as a whole seem to have a more 'positive' outlook in their immediate future -Sonic movies doing 'well', Sonic game coming and success with games like yakuza, persona etc - compared to Ubisoft who seem to losing sales in most franchises, games in development 'hell', Staff dissatisfaction (Pay, working conditions etc), PR miss-steps (NFT's, Sexual misconduct allegations) and becoming more 'reliant' on GaaS and milking 1 or 2 franchises as they are most successful. Its on the same trajectory as Activision was - Will AC become the 'only' franchise they churn out yearly again to milk it because their other franchises aren't selling well anymore?

Its going to get much harder for 3rd Party Publishers who rely on sales to fund development as they need 'sales' to cover development costs and competing for your money and time. Why spend £60 on a 'decent' game at launch when you can play 'great' games on Game Pass for a small monthly fee and can wait for Ubisoft's reskinned sequel?

Hence I think Ubisoft are in more precarious position than Sega. Of course things could change with a couple of releases - either doing very well to significantly improve their publishers position or make things much worse...

I used to not really mind Phil but this is pretty disgusting. Seeing the widespread abuse of employees as a business opportunity is utterly scummy behaviour.

@nessisonett the actions of Kotick don't speak for everyone there though do they? It's nothing to do with using the "widespread abuse of employees as a business opportunity". They have stacks of great studios under them and MS would have brought either way. They would have been looking at buying them well before that. Discussions would have happened inside MS much earlier.

It's also not just down to Phil so crying about Phil is useless. He's one of the few people at the top that actually play games and the stuff Xbox have put out especially service wise the past few years is top notch.

@Rmg0731 they can buy sega, they arent considered a company with strategic military tech....thats the only thing that stops any non japanese company buying certain companies...if Sega wants to sell and MS wants to buy then as long as the governing bodies are ok with it they can do that.....technically same with sony just they will be under a hell of alot of scrutiny as they do have military tech in image sensors and the like.

So they saw the reports of abuse (though there'd been PLENTY of public reports before last year, and likely a lot more industry talk), and thought "ooh I'll have some of that".

If the acquisition offer had leaked at the time that would have been a really bad look for Microsoft.

@Royalblues Sega absolutely. They are the only ones that I can see selling to Xbox.

@BAMozzy I don't think any company is going to be making big moves that tie them to China for a little while until the near-future shakes out. Even big finance is getting markedly skittish.

@NEStalgia well things do seem to be 'deteriorating' but there are many other industries outside of gaming that have made big investments to numerous Asian companies.

As a musician, I know a lot of Guitars are made in China - Gibson opened a factory in Qingdao and makes all their Epiphone guitars there.

In some businesses, they operate 'independently' from the political landscape - but can get 'complicated' of course when the Politicians create issues. There are a LOT of companies that rely on the Asian continent, rely on countries that could get caught up in the changing political landscape etc. Korea has Samsung/LG and TSMC which produces the majority of silicon chips for the entire world.

If things escalate with China, that will have a Massive impact to Japan, to Korea, to Taiwan etc etc.

However, my comment was more from a gaming perspective and not considering the changing political landscape which has no place in this discussion. It's like talking about your plans for the year ahead, without factoring in everything in the world that can go wrong and indirectly impact on those plans.

I still think that MS could 'tackle' that lack of 'Asian' style games that they often lack by looking outside of Japan. Black Myth: WuKong attracted a lot of positive attention and excited many gamers the world over. That 'small' team managed to pull off an impressive looking demo and if MS were to acquire them and secure that game exclusively for Game Pass, that would be help them a LOT in Asian territories.

I don't want to 'think' about the political situation when I am discussing Gaming and potential future plans.

@BAMozzy Manufacturing at this point is inextricably controlled by China, so manufacturing is going to be in a very strange place if anything breaks down, and to a degree things literally can't break down fully due to most of the word's manufacturing being there. It would take a decade plus to move it out, and that isn't going to happen. That gets complicated in many ways (or if it does break down the consumer economy and electronics industry literally ends overnight, everywhere.) But where Xboxen may or may end up getting assembled, is a different issue form investing in services/software buyouts/partnerships there.

From a financial/institutional level, companies right how are calling their chips. Big finance is reigning in the money and getting nervous. No company, but especially GSA-contractor-Microsoft is going to dive into non-manufacturing financial entwinement with anything in China right now. Politics or not, it's just bad business with high risk in many ways. And MS being a government contractor has to be extra careful of their involvement internationally, as does Amazon (DOD/NSA data storage contractor) in ways that, say, Google or Facebook, or even Sony, EA, etc. (not a government contractor) does not. That's not politics, it's business, albeit business risk analysis as affected by politics.