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This Week in Games - Bungie Buyout




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AksaraKishou



Joined: 16 May 2015
Posts: 1410
Location: End of the World
PostPosted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 1:28 pm Reply with quote
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The timing of this announcement suggests a reaction to Microsoft; a shot fired saying that Sony's not afraid to lay out cash for big-name developers and publishers either.



From what i gather, the Bungie deal has been in the works for the last 6 months while ATVI's was actually super fast, taking 2/3 months. So yeah, probably just a coincidence for the announcements. That said, stuff from here on probably WON'T be a coincidence. Neutral
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TranceLimit174



Joined: 21 Jul 2004
Posts: 958
PostPosted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 2:14 pm Reply with quote
Acquisitions: It is funny to me that many comment as if they are experts, but then seem to be under the impression that deals like this happen overnight. The only thing timed really are the announcements and not the deal itself. But yes, brace yourselves for many more in 2022.

What is fascinating is how things have come kinda come full circle for Sony & MS. Nintendo has always been their own thing, but for the last 10+ years there was largely a move away from exclusivity to multi-platform because "game development is expensive and we need to reach the widest audience possible." But then PS Studios started cranking out their library of exclusives which led to their decade of domination. Now, we are back to exclusivity in the form of an IP acquisition war.

Quote:
All of our big entertainment options may soon be in the hands of a very powerful few, and that's more than a little concerning…


On its face, this is nothing new as many Entertainment companies were already subsidiaries of larger conglomerates. But I do agree that now this issue is considerably magnified. And pretty soon, consumers are going to suffer the consequences cause companies are already raising prices to make up for the price of these mergers. In about 5 years we will start seeing the ramifications of all this.

Club Sega: Always sad to see an institution like this go. I still remember visiting an Astro City in a mall many, many moons ago.

KOF XV DLC: This reveal was a "take my money" moment. Everyone is a fan favorite, and the re-designs particularly for Team South Town are top tier. SNK knows what they are doing.

Unfortunately, I can't speculate on teams since they have been leaked; so no guessing there. That said, we still need Rugal & his son Adelheid in this game. If SNK gives me that, then this will be the GOAT roster for KOF. And yes, I'm assuming Kim will make it back eventually. Also, still waiting on that Masami Obari anime short...
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5886
PostPosted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 2:51 pm Reply with quote
TranceLimit174 wrote:


On its face, this is nothing new as many Entertainment companies were already subsidiaries of larger conglomerates. But I do agree that now this issue is considerably magnified. And pretty soon, consumers are going to suffer the consequences cause companies are already raising prices to make up for the price of these mergers.


Video game companies were raising prices on their systems, games, accessories etc for years before they started dropping massive amounts of money on this stuff.


Quote:
I doubt this is the end of 2021's acquisition announcements.


2 can be as bad as one.
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FunkyDude88



Joined: 01 Oct 2021
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 3:19 pm Reply with quote
Yacht Club resorting to Kickstarter after Shovel Knights success seems kind of scummy Not as scummy as when AAA companies do it, but it did make me go "Really?" That game was really popular.
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ThatMoonGuy



Joined: 13 Oct 2017
Posts: 364
PostPosted: Fri Feb 04, 2022 9:43 pm Reply with quote
About the acquisitions... Something something something invariably leads to the formation of monopolies something something something

Sadly, it makes sense for large companies to acquire smaller ones and markets tend to consolidate each other, specially markets where competition is pretty hard to come by given the sheer cost of getting into the game (a bit more literally, in this case). My gripe with this is more that Sony is leaving behind its japanese roots more and more and becoming a very westernized company. I mean, given the dominance of Nintendo over Japan this can be understood but it's still a bit sad. Ah, well. We'll see what happens once the Big chinese companies start getting deeper in the console and PC market.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Sun Feb 06, 2022 7:07 am Reply with quote
Seems Sony is getting serious into live services GAAS expertise - that's one thing that Sony isn't strong at

This sounds like a Minecraft type of deal. Bungie values their independence - that's why they negotiated a buyout from Microsoft in the first place. (But didn't MS retain a minority equity stake within Bungie when they split? So what happens to that now?)

Funnily, Sony and MS have now switched properties. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro used to be Sony's - now those are MS's. Bungie used to be MS's - now it's Sony's. And Activision and Bungie used to have a tie-up too Laughing



Sony's acquisitions can only help Microsoft's case with the FTC


As for Sega getting out of the arcade management business, they see the writing's on the wall:

Quote:
According to a police white paper, the number of gaming arcades has been decreasing since 1986, from where there used to be 26,573 of them across Japan to now only 4,022, as of 2019. This number has declined even more since the Covid pandemic, as many businesses that rely on physical interaction have closed down. If you’ve played the famous Yakuza video games series, you’re probably familiar with the Shinjuku Playland Carnival arcade in Tokyo’s Kabukicho entertainment district. However, that too closed down in November 2020.

The numbers released by the Japan Amusement Industry Association (JAIA) in February 2021 indicate that the size of the market for arcades, valued at 705.5 billion yen in 2019, had in fact grown by 3.5% from 2018. While the market had actually been shrinking in size from 2011 to 2014, dropping to 588.3 billion yen in 2014, it started to see steady growth from 2015 to 2019.A contributing factor to the rising popularity of arcades before 2020 was the changes to the Law on Control and Improvement of Amusement and Entertainment Businesses – typically known as the “fueiho” in Japanese – in 2015, which made it so that children below 16 years age would be allowed into arcades up to 10 PM when accompanied by a parent or guardian.

This is not to say, however, that traditional video game arcades were doing particularly well before the pandemic. Though the arcade business as a whole was doing better, a closer look at the numbers indicates that a lot of this growth had come from “prize games” such as crane game machines being installed in venues that are not arcades: It is not uncommon to see such machines in department stores, restaurants, and assorted amusement facilities, and these are counted as part of the market.

Prize games (which are 89.46% crane games) accounted for a whopping 55.3% of the arcade game market in 2019, with second place going to medal games at 29%. Video games, trailing in third place, accounted for only 11.7% of the market in that year.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5294
PostPosted: Mon Feb 07, 2022 2:17 pm Reply with quote
enurtsol wrote:
Funnily, Sony and MS have now switched properties. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro used to be Sony's
That's not enterally true, The rights to Spyro and Crash were originally owned by Universal, who helped bring Sony and the two studios together. I think they were only exclusive to PS1 due to an agreement between Sony and Universal, or maybe it was just not worth the time and money making them multiplat.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 8:16 am Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
enurtsol wrote:

Funnily, Sony and MS have now switched properties. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro used to be Sony's

That's not enterally true, The rights to Spyro and Crash were originally owned by Universal, who helped bring Sony and the two studios together. I think they were only exclusive to PS1 due to an agreement between Sony and Universal, or maybe it was just not worth the time and money making them multiplat.


Sony didn't own the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro rights (as you mentioned, it's owned by Universal Interactive, and then Activision, and now Microsoft). But Sony did publish the PS1 games and used them as PS1 mascots, so Sony had a big stake

It wasn't until after the PS1 era when Universal Interactive's publishing deal with Sony ended, and then Universal took them multi-platform
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