Its about time Microsoft start acquiring developer/s

[Scoobes]

Squilliam said:

Scoobes said:

In your previous post you stated:

"You as a game buyer would also prefer one sublime game to three good games, wouldn't you?"

That's more what I was responding to (should have made that clearer). It read more like you were stating that it's better for consumers to have less games, less choice and potentially, less innovation. From the manufacturers POV this is not neccessarily the case but they each seem to recognise the value of having exclusives in a range of genres. Yes, it's very important to sell large numbers of units (and to sell to the 1-4 title per year group), but exclusives for console manufacturers also have the added incentive of expanding the consumer base. By having stand-out titles in a range of genres you effectively make the console more attractive to a wide array of potential customers.

The other plus side to this is that 3rd-party software in the same genres are likely to get a boost if an exclusive can garner interest. How many purchased more FPS' due to their experience with Halo for instance?

The thing is, games which sell to people who buy fewer games are the ones which sell consoles. These are the titles which stand out from the crowd. The majority of games which cater to more niche tastes have always generally and will probably even more so continue to come from third parties given the wide pool of developer talent and general experimentation. There is no really good reason for a console maker to pursue these kinds of games as major retail releases because they don't tend to sell consoles nor are they safe bets in terms of making money overall.

Since a console maker has a dual incentive to release console software to both make money and sell consoles, their biggest objective can be summed up by 'go big or go home'. So in the context of Microsoft aquiring developers, they already have the biggest single console RPG series in Fable  so why would they want to spend $700M on a developer whose games thus far haven't exceeded 3M on a single console, in a genre they already do well in? It is a bad purchase which makes me wonder why EA did it in the first place. There aren't any real developers in the wild worth aquiring outside of Respawn or Harmonix which I can see. However given the fact that both have gained their independence recently they would be hard targets to aquire.

On the flip side though, it's increasingly difficult to predict what the next big thing is. I don't think even Microsoft expected Halo or Gears to be as big as they became, or Sony with Gran Turismo and Uncharted. If they concentrate solely on their massive franchises, then they risk putting too many eggs into a single basket.They need to continue to innovate and release a variety of software in a range of genres as a means of looking forward and covering their bases.

As for Bioware I agree that MS having Fable meant that there was no point in purchasing them. But I think EA is probably quite happy with Bioware as a whole. They are a huge studio that release regular games that regularly top a million on each console/PC they release on (even with new IPs). Dragon Age for instance is nearing 3 million on consoles alone, even though it was a new IP designed pre-dominantly for PC. They also seemingly release a large quantity of DLC for their games which may as well be pure profit.