Square enix just Killed a potentially huge franchise.

[Baalzamon]

Egann said:

Baalzamon said:
People seem to think that it is just free for a game to release on additional consoles. It is far from it, with additional programming costs, server costs, advertising costs. Additionally, people would be astonished what Microsoft and Sony are willing to pay for exclusive rights to a game. For example, Microsoft paid $75 million just to get GTA IV onto their console. A game that still only has 11 million lifetime sales (on Xbox). That is almost $7 for every single copy sold. I realize that GTA is a higher profile game, but it goes to show that sometimes the amount paid for deals like this can actually be a pretty good chunk of money when you look at it as a dollar amount per game sold.

This is true, but if the production values are worth having, the cost of porting will not porportionately be that expensive. This is why exclusives are becoming rarer and rarer.

Considering S-E's own investor documentation says Crystal Dynamics only has about $40 million of common stock, if Microsoft were really throwing that kind of money around it would make more sense for them just to buy the studio. You're talking a substantial amount of what the studio is worth to buy an exclusive.

Compare to Rockstar, which has more than three times as many employees and is clearly worth a lot more.

For one, that would be the par value of common stock that Crystal Dynamics has issued, and is in no way whatsoever indicative of what Crystal Dynamics would cost for Microsoft to outright buy it. For instance, Apple's common stock is worth $575 billion, but their common stock outstanding (per their financial statements) is only $20 billion. So for Microsoft to throw $10 million for exclusivity of a game from a company that is worth more along the lines of several hundred million dollars instead of buying the company outright? Yea, it seems incredibly possible to me.