In Cold Blood
Banned
With ABK slowly coming to an end, it had me wondering exactly where MS will be studio wise, after all is said and done.
To me there is three possibilities.
1. They will be done after ABK. That is a massive buy and this gives them just under 40 studios, and when you look at the fact that a number of them have multiple teams, working on multiple games, they probably have around 50-55 individual games in production at any time.
If we say an average of 4.5 years between games, we could expect between 10-12 first party games a year.
That exceeds the amount of games MS said they would need for Gamepass a year. Last time I heard it was a game a quarter.
This would be an employee count of just under 20,000 world wide.
2. While ABK is the last major publisher that Microsoft will purchase, they will just make a few smaller one off studios here and there where it fits a need.
Studios would include these as an example.
Asobo, Certain Affinity, Squanch Games, Avalanche Games, IO Interactive, Edios, Crystal Dynamics and Platinum.
Not saying they will get all these, but this type of studio.
3. Microsoft have decided that they are going to the biggest games company in the world, bar none.
Expect to see a large Japanese Publisher in the mold of Capcom, Sega, Square involved, and the aquisition of even more smaller studios. At the end of their run, we would easily be talking about some 60 or 70 studios.
The things that point to this being a reality is that MS seem to be pushing this narrative from a political point of view.
These US politicians would not be saying what they are without the input of MS. MS would not be giving them the input if there wasn't a reason for it. This can only point towards a Japanese aquisition that might come under scrutiny of the Japanese government or regulators. A one off purchase of a studio like From Software or Platinum games, isn't going to be stopped. We saw Zenimax buy Tango not a problem for example.
We see that 69 Billion dollar number for ABK, on top of the 7.5 Billion for Bethesda, and we think that is just the limit they could spend. However, the aquisition of ABK for MS is the same as the aquisition of Bungie for Sony. We are talking about the purchase of ABK and Bungie and being 3% of both MS and Sony's market cap. We accept that Sony isn't going to stop at Bungie, so why do we think MS would stop at ABK.
I also wonder just how unwieldy it would be for MS to manage 60 or 70 studios, but then I look at Embracer Group and they currently have 131 studios in over 40 countries and employ over 16,000 employees.
We also have Ubisoft with around 45 studios and over 20,000 employees.
There's no question that MS can handle that many people and studios.
I think that something might have changed in MSs strategy with gaming.
Initially they were looking to have enough studios to give them maybe four new first party games a year for GP, and they had that with Xbox Game Studios and Zenimax already.
At some point they have decided to go all the way. Why that would be the case I'm not sure.
It's obviously for GP, but maybe their plans, or expectations for what GP can be, have altered. They are limited to how many consoles they can sell, and PC Gaming is only yay big, so for this investment to pay for itself, it needs to find another way to allow people to play.(And its not going to involve PlayStation either)
It must be cloud streaming.
MS is still putting their XSX chips into server blades, at the expense of getting XSXs into stores. As it stands, Xcloud is pretty close to capacity, and with the inclusion of GP into tvs and smart phone, as well as their streaming box coming out soon, the future demand is going to be orders of magnitudes higher. You can't sell someone a streaming box and then not have enough capacity to actually let them play without buffering or putting them in ques.
Any excess capacity can be utilised by Azure for AI etc, so there's no over investing in xcloud capacity. We know MS is all about the cloud these days.
Once MS decided that GP is going to be way more than PC and Consoles, then a bigger investment in studios and game output is to be warranted.
Gamepass is going to be successful because it will become undeniable. Imagine a subscription service with a new first party game every month. Imagine having the entire MS, Zenimax, Activision, Blizzard, and say Capcom or Segas entire back catalogue in it. Even the most ardent non subscription people will have to join in.
To me there is three possibilities.
1. They will be done after ABK. That is a massive buy and this gives them just under 40 studios, and when you look at the fact that a number of them have multiple teams, working on multiple games, they probably have around 50-55 individual games in production at any time.
If we say an average of 4.5 years between games, we could expect between 10-12 first party games a year.
That exceeds the amount of games MS said they would need for Gamepass a year. Last time I heard it was a game a quarter.
This would be an employee count of just under 20,000 world wide.
2. While ABK is the last major publisher that Microsoft will purchase, they will just make a few smaller one off studios here and there where it fits a need.
Studios would include these as an example.
Asobo, Certain Affinity, Squanch Games, Avalanche Games, IO Interactive, Edios, Crystal Dynamics and Platinum.
Not saying they will get all these, but this type of studio.
3. Microsoft have decided that they are going to the biggest games company in the world, bar none.
Expect to see a large Japanese Publisher in the mold of Capcom, Sega, Square involved, and the aquisition of even more smaller studios. At the end of their run, we would easily be talking about some 60 or 70 studios.
The things that point to this being a reality is that MS seem to be pushing this narrative from a political point of view.
These US politicians would not be saying what they are without the input of MS. MS would not be giving them the input if there wasn't a reason for it. This can only point towards a Japanese aquisition that might come under scrutiny of the Japanese government or regulators. A one off purchase of a studio like From Software or Platinum games, isn't going to be stopped. We saw Zenimax buy Tango not a problem for example.
We see that 69 Billion dollar number for ABK, on top of the 7.5 Billion for Bethesda, and we think that is just the limit they could spend. However, the aquisition of ABK for MS is the same as the aquisition of Bungie for Sony. We are talking about the purchase of ABK and Bungie and being 3% of both MS and Sony's market cap. We accept that Sony isn't going to stop at Bungie, so why do we think MS would stop at ABK.
I also wonder just how unwieldy it would be for MS to manage 60 or 70 studios, but then I look at Embracer Group and they currently have 131 studios in over 40 countries and employ over 16,000 employees.
We also have Ubisoft with around 45 studios and over 20,000 employees.
There's no question that MS can handle that many people and studios.
I think that something might have changed in MSs strategy with gaming.
Initially they were looking to have enough studios to give them maybe four new first party games a year for GP, and they had that with Xbox Game Studios and Zenimax already.
At some point they have decided to go all the way. Why that would be the case I'm not sure.
It's obviously for GP, but maybe their plans, or expectations for what GP can be, have altered. They are limited to how many consoles they can sell, and PC Gaming is only yay big, so for this investment to pay for itself, it needs to find another way to allow people to play.(And its not going to involve PlayStation either)
It must be cloud streaming.
MS is still putting their XSX chips into server blades, at the expense of getting XSXs into stores. As it stands, Xcloud is pretty close to capacity, and with the inclusion of GP into tvs and smart phone, as well as their streaming box coming out soon, the future demand is going to be orders of magnitudes higher. You can't sell someone a streaming box and then not have enough capacity to actually let them play without buffering or putting them in ques.
Any excess capacity can be utilised by Azure for AI etc, so there's no over investing in xcloud capacity. We know MS is all about the cloud these days.
Once MS decided that GP is going to be way more than PC and Consoles, then a bigger investment in studios and game output is to be warranted.
Gamepass is going to be successful because it will become undeniable. Imagine a subscription service with a new first party game every month. Imagine having the entire MS, Zenimax, Activision, Blizzard, and say Capcom or Segas entire back catalogue in it. Even the most ardent non subscription people will have to join in.
Last edited:
