Why does Microsoft keep buying game studios if they don’t actually want to have a game studio?!
Gutting game studios doesn’t actually yield any returns - making and selling successful games does.
So what’s the point? If they don’t like having functioning game studios, they can just stop buying them.
They’re not interested in sales from the product. They want the IP, the patents, and a few of the talent, perhaps if they’re particularly good.
You spend years making a large game, all negative profit. Then you launch, make most of the money you’ll ever see off that title and go back to hibernate.
They buy the studio, own the ip, flip the crunch switch to on and wait for attrition. If anyone survives that, they put them somewhere else to make them money.
I don’t know what the landscape is like in the gaming industry these days so I can’t say if it’s the case here, but often that kind of pattern is about eliminating competition (i.e. market manipulation rather than innovation).
Companies that have more than 4% of market share are financially incentived to buy out the competition rather than innovate - it’s cheaper. The first study on that is from iirc 60s, still holds true.
Why does Microsoft keep buying game studios if they don’t actually want to have a game studio?!
Gutting game studios doesn’t actually yield any returns - making and selling successful games does.
So what’s the point? If they don’t like having functioning game studios, they can just stop buying them.
They’re not interested in sales from the product. They want the IP, the patents, and a few of the talent, perhaps if they’re particularly good.
You spend years making a large game, all negative profit. Then you launch, make most of the money you’ll ever see off that title and go back to hibernate.
They buy the studio, own the ip, flip the crunch switch to on and wait for attrition. If anyone survives that, they put them somewhere else to make them money.
I don’t know what the landscape is like in the gaming industry these days so I can’t say if it’s the case here, but often that kind of pattern is about eliminating competition (i.e. market manipulation rather than innovation).
Companies that have more than 4% of market share are financially incentived to buy out the competition rather than innovate - it’s cheaper. The first study on that is from iirc 60s, still holds true.