As in everything else, the big fish always swallowed the small fish in the game world. Despite this, these purchases were not very common and did not catch our eye as much as they do now. So what has changed?
A lot has changed. For example, the gaming industry… The gaming world achieved a higher market share than the music and movie industry combined, and world’s largest source of entertainment became. When this is the case, every company has started to make plans to consolidate its own place or to take an important place in the game world.
The inevitable end started with these purchases that we hear almost every few weeks. Let these purchases to the results And let’s take a look at the effect they have on the players.
What happened that these companies we know started to be sold one by one? We may have to get used to the buying news now.
Riot Games, Supercell, Bethesda, Bungie, Activision Blizzard, Quantic Dream and many more… we grew up with the games each of these popular game companies has been acquired by other big companies.
Big companies wanted to be included in the potential of the game world and started to invest seriously. Companies that have been in this industry for years, such as Sony and Microsoft, wished to further strengthen their positions. In particular, Microsoft versus its rival Sony too much backwardshas changed its policies for Xbox drastically and has decided to take a much more user-friendly path.
This process The birth of Xbox Game Pass and caused the game industry to change completely. Although Microsoft bought Bethesda to strengthen its own game library, there is a different reason behind a huge acquisition like Activision Blizzard. And that is to act before other huge companies like Apple and Meta.
We can say that Tencent, a China-based company, is currently the highest-paid company in the gaming world. Tencent, which has taken some of the most powerful brands in the gaming industry together with Riot Games and Supercell, also has a large share in Epic Games. Recently, we have started to hear the name of Embracer Group frequently. These are the names we counted, we’ll get used to hearing now looks like.
It is important to remember that the main purpose of every company is to make money and it will not be good for us to end the competition in the sector.
If you wish, let’s give a small example of the competition between game companies. It was such a beautiful and memorable rivalry that it even split the players for years, and everyone stuck to their favorite game. Yes, we are talking about PES and FIFA. Competition between Konami and EAAs of the past years, it had begun to lose its old taste. Despite this, there was a rivalry and we were still trying to preserve that spirit. Afterwards, Konami announced that it could no longer compete with EA’s FIFA and would change the name of PES to a different path.
The competition is completely over and EA’s FIFA is completely unbeatable. EA has become unrivaled in FIFA as in The Sims, and now a person who wants to play football has only one option, not two. While this ended diversity, it also greatly slowed the development of FIFA. Despite all these examples, the monopolization of a company in the game world, Contrary to fear, it is not so easy. Because new studios will always be established, there will always be independent producers, and companies with hundreds of billions of dollars will not be able to easily buy each other.
Although it has been following a seriously user-friendly policy lately, everyone is afraid of a monopoly on Microsoft.
Xbox is a 20-year-old console and has a lot of experience in the game world. There are many famous game developers and game brands in the company. However, with the Xbox One generation heavily screwed up and the company, which has a very serious difference from its rival PlayStation, now attaches great importance to the game world. The biggest purpose behind the purchases made is to strengthen the Xbox Game Pass library with first-party games. Xbox wants to make the Game Pass system the main foundation of the gaming world and wants it to reach hundreds of millions of users.
Some gamers wonder why Microsoft “buys ready made studios” instead of building a game studio from scratch. even though he criticizes The fact that Microsoft is a trillion dollar company is forgotten. As one of the three largest companies in the world, Microsoft can foresee the years it will take to build a studio from scratch or make a long-term investment in a small studio. This makes buying an existing company with many successful brands a much more logical option.
While we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, the worry behind Microsoft’s monopoly that it is unnecessary we think. Xbox is a company that lags behind its rival PlayStation (at least for the moment) in many respects. It takes a very long process for this type of company to monopolize and change people’s habits. In addition, we already know all these companies we mentioned and we know their experience in the gaming industry. But what about when huge tech companies with no experience buy big game studios? Gamers should be afraid of something like this, not Microsoft.
Amazon, Netflix and many other huge companies have started to increase their investments to enter the gaming world. Although it is debatable how successful Netflix and Amazon are, let’s not forget the rumor that “Amazon is buying Electronic Arts!”. Maybe Amazon didn’t buy it, but there are many companies that want to take their place in the game world such as Apple, Meta and Alphabet. Companies that are inexperienced and will not understand what the players want enter the sector by acquiring huge companies, one of the scariest scenarios Let’s say there will be one.
These purchases are now a part of our lives, and we will see them more often as the industry continues to grow.
It was inevitable for us to enter such a cycle as the demand for the game world increased. For example, recently We witnessed the sale of Quantic Dream. The studio, which appeared with successful interactive story-type games such as Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, was sold to NetEase Games, a company operating in the mobile games side. Although NetEase Games does not have a very positive record in the game industry, it seems that it will meet the capital needs of Quantic Dream and will not interfere with the operation of the studio.
Companies that continue to actively incorporate game studios at the moment; It looks like Embracer Group, Tencent, Sony, Microsoft and Netflix. It is also rumored that companies such as Apple and Amazon are also interested in some studios from the gaming world. When the acquisitions made by mid-size companies such as NetEase are also included, these news we will continue to hear looks like.
If the Activision Blizzard purchase is completed, it will be a huge turning point in the gaming world.
Although we want the studios and companies we love to continue on their own, giant game companies such as Ubisoft and EA can sometimes be ridiculous. Activision Blizzard was one of these companies, and was managed in the worst way we can say. Among the allegations were cases of harassment within the company, mistreating employees and not giving studios the value they deserve.
Another thing that makes the management of the company bad is that old Activision, which we love that made many brands of our childhood, such as Guitar Hero, Blur, Skylanders and Crash, it’s like a thing. Call of Duty production machine had become. Even Crash’s dev team is involved as a Call of Duty support studio. More than three studios were working on a single Call of Duty game. This is how Call of Duty, which we come across every year, was produced in series.
We don’t even want to talk about the current situation of Blizzard, where we feel to our bones what a quality job awaits us even when we hear its name. Phil Spencer, president of Xbox, at Activision Blizzard that they will bring their old brands back to life and announced that they would give all studios the value they deserve. It was also said that the company was saved from being a Call of Duty production machine and that Call of Duty would be released at longer intervals.
Phil Spencer also said that Activision Blizzard’s most popular brands over the years. It will also be released for PlayStation on the same day. He says they will bring each one of them, including Call of Duty, to Xbox Game Pass from day one. In other words, this purchase, which many people fear, will affect the game world in a very positive way, contrary to what is believed. Especially for the tens of thousands of employees within Activision Blizzard. So what do you guys think about all these purchases?
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