Whats the point in microsoft and sony wasting shit loads of money to buy out studios when they do fuck all with the studios they already have.
The only reason I can see Microsoft buying Activision is to get exclusive rights and have call of dog shite first on its shitbox.
Because they cant be arsed with halo and like gears, just run it further into the ground.
Rare, well, litrally have done fuck all with them since taking them over.
Now sony are playing the same game, that said, buys studios that are like the leftovers.
Its as if Microsoft say, we bought this ner ner, sony in a panic be like whoa whoa erm hurry hurry...... ah haa! Snap we bought...... darn it!
They should leave these studios alone, just because they have or had made titles that millions for some reason like and buy its shit year after year.
They should take a good look at the studios it already owns and give them more freedom to be creative and make new games rather than buy out other studios and then poison them with your already flawed negative input.
But saying that, sony have had some quality games coming out of its studios, cant really say the same for microshit.
Its obvious the reasons behind Activision is to get first dibs on its future cod games, that been said isnt anything to brag about and Microshit can keep it exclusive for all I care.
Not like cod games are worthy of anyones time these days, just the same old usual recycled bug infested shit that todays sheep blindly throw money at.
Various reasons to buy companies out beyond taking the long view, or gamble in the case of game industry*, on return on investment from projects (traditionally such things were measured in terms of income/profits and number of years, today the overinflated share price tends to be more commonly considered though even those will have people discuss PE ratios aka price to earnings which right now are insane but different discussion).
*the game industry is noted as huge potential returns to money in, however as we can probably all name 50 bankrupt companies with smash hits to their name then it is also very risky. This is also why publishers buy them up -- the cost of 20 duds being made up for, and then some, by 1 mega hit so get enough in and you are bound to make something.
1) Technology. So you don't want to pay Epic's fees for Unreal engine. "if you don't like it then make your own" and all that. Epic have been doing this now for decades but you can probably skip a fair bit of that as you don't need to make it 3dfx compatible or run on a pentium 3 in current space year. Assuming you have a team (more on that shortly) that is still going to be years of you developing something, possibly training people in its use, and then making a game to use it, all the while Epic have had another 5 years do polish their craft and rake in profits all the while.
Buying a company that already did all that might then be cheaper and quicker, or at least quicker which can be all you need.
Does not have to be engines -- can be network code (
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3374/the_internet_sucks_or_what_i_.php?print=1 and for all else that might be said Bungie's network code is tight where Sony does not really have much here), shaders, compression, audio handling, physics simulations...
2) While I do normally quip about game devs being replaceable with freshly minted students (
https://datausa.io/profile/cip/computer-science-110701 reckons some 47000 graduates in computer science per year, wind in a few more for physics, maths and electrical engineering and yeah), hence why pay and conditions are so awful (don't like it, we will get someone else in and there are 47000 more kids this year that think game development is sexy vs corporate programming job**), it does still represent a cost of acquisition vs finding a new cleaner. If you can buy in a company with an established setup and people that have proven themselves (vs some kid you have no idea if they will perform) you can dodge recruitment costs***, and probably gain a nice building and some computers while you are at it.
**never mind that it is solving the exact same sorts of problems, just for a lot more money in a 9-5 with a lot nicer environment.
***Sony and MS probably have their own in house stuff but costs for other places that might hire in a recruiter to find new devs will usually be measured in significant percentage of final salary per person found (this is not your high street recruitment firm that hires warm bodies to do things anybody with a pulse could probably do, and those are costly too), never mind if you also pay relocation.
3) Competition killing. So someone has indeed built a better mouse trap, your billion dollar mousetrap empire does not want to retool for this new upstart. Right now they are only worth some pocket change so buy them out (founders and early investors can retire tomorrow with the sum, having presumably been starving and sticking their life savings in before, which is less than a 10th of what you will lose if their product comes to market) and bury them, or deny your competitors the chance to get in on the action (for games this gets into discussion of exclusives -- if MS take a 30% cut of anything released to their shop then 30% of many millions plus console sales is nothing to sneeze at)
4) Some kind of tax writeoff. There are all sorts of ways to structure it so you don't have as much in the way of assets or profit when the tax man comes looking.
There are a few others (Bungie then getting to plug holes if one of their other projects is going sideways or suddenly needs to ramp up to finish where before it was a slow burn) but those are the big ones, and most others are combinations and variations on those themes. Said combinations could also make sense to the financial analysts whose whole job is to analyse such scenarios/purchases and say yay or nay. I don't know that I would pay billions but I was also surprised by this development so... yeah.
Source
what a weird timeline we're in.
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