Polygon: Microsoft's Current Dilemma With Games

[DonFerrari]

Machina said:

DonFerrari said:

Basically MS can buy anyone as long as it isn't something you like =p

Just Valve as far as second and third party developers goes, because there's something unique about the way they develop their IP that makes it almost impossible for another company to pick them up and maintain the Valve standard.

TF2/Dota 2/CS:GO - All have cosmetic-driven funding models that allows continued development. MS would be sorely tempted to introduce pay-to-win I imagine. The latter two also have very healthy and enormous community-supported pro scenes that were only possible because of Valve's hands-off approach and grew organically. If MS took over I've no doubt they'd handle them to be more like the LoL or StarCraft pro scenes, which is not something either community would be happy with.

There's something very personal and personable about the Dota 2 pro scene (possibly the same for CS:GO but I'm not as familiar with that scene) - it's highly community driven, from the development lead (one of the original Dota developers), to the updates (Valve clearly uses r/Dota2 to sound out fixes and updates to the game, reacting to reasonable community backlashes quite quickly), to the personalities (casters, hosts, and so on have almost all risen up through the community, rather than being imposed from above), to the prize pools with tens of millions being raised each year by players purchasing cosmetics. 

Half-Life - Even Valve obviously doesn't think it can deliver a game worthy of the Half-Life name, that's why there's been no third entry. Anyone buying Valve or the IP will almost certainly have to use the IP to cover such a major investment. It won't deliver, and a game that doesn't deliver is worse than no game at all.

Portal - I can't think of a developer that delivers the sort of witty dialogue that's synonymous with Portal, let alone a developer within MS's limited stable. Again, I'd rather the franchise went dormant than received a lacklustre entry.

L4D - Probably the one Valve IP which, although I really enjoy it, could be taken on and made just as well by another developer as it has been by Valve. No issues with this one.

Steam - I mean everyone knows that MS's approach to PC storefront has been useless, it's part of the reason Steam has come to dominate the digital PC marketplace. If MS took it over and made only the most modest changes so that users didn't really notice any change of ownership that'd be fine, but there's no guarantee of that at all. Now Steam is far from perfect, and could certainly be improved, but I've seen nothing in Microsoft's own past that shows it's up to the task of doing so.

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I think, for the health of the Xbox brand in general, it is important for MS to start splashing some cash. Buying a few small-to-medium sized developers, or one large publisher, is something I'd be happy to see, so long as they were then actually let loose to make games and not just vaporware. Xbox sorely needs exclusives to remain competitive for the rest of this gen and perhaps more importantly next gen, and strong competition is the best way to keep Sony (primarily) and Nintendo (secondarily) on their toes.

I just don't want Valve to be the company MS buys xD

I would say that almost all games become different when change dev and can't really be replicated... several times even the sequels can't replicate staying on the same dev due to the time it was developed being different, team and corporate culture, etc.

A company could buy Valve as a publisher but keep its freedom as a dev like Sony perhaps would, but I can see you having worries about what MS would do.