Obviously, aside from certain regulations regarding monopolies, nothing can be done in the free market to stop Sony or Microsoft from acquiring more studios. However it would be good for the industry if they refrained from anymore acquisitions.

The list of studios shutdown by the two companies after being acquired is ridiculous. Meanwhile, when was the last time anyone can remember hearing about Nintendo closing a studio?

A lot of the times the studios being acquired stated that being part of a major publisher provided more stability. But is that really the case?

In any event, I think Sony's and Microsoft's actions will make it harder for them to buy new studios even if they are willing to spend the cash just because of the track record they developed. If I were a studio they offered to purchase I would put in the contract guarantees of having the chance to at least ship one or two games so they aren't shuttered before even releasing anything or after just one underperforming title. I would also ask for a clause allowing the studio to spin off independently rather than be shutdown. 

I think they should be able to buy IP if they want and of course free to form new dev teams.

What do you think?

im cool with a law or even like a rule within the gaming industry that says nintendo can buy studios but sony and microsoft cannot because theyve proven to not be mature enough or responsible enough to be entrusted with a responsibility like that.

good luck on selling that to everyone else though, theyll claim its "not fair."

Considering the rate at which they're laying off employees and shutting down studios, I'd say their acquisitions in recent years were a net negative for gaming.

I'm not ready to form an opinion about whether they should or should not be allowed to do so (it's not reasonable to target it at two companies or even just gaming companies of some sort, so it's a much bigger question in reality), but I believe I've been consistently opposed to any major acquisitions by them. Consolidation into particularly large entities in general is something I don't really like, because it centralizes power too much and might be detrimental to competition.

Given the amount of developer studios that are complaining about big companies not wanting to finance them anymore I would say that first every developer is in a different situation before acquisition and second the companies who acquire are as responsible as the companies who sell because at the end of the day someone gets paid and that someone should also be accountable of what could happen after the acquisition. It's very naive from you to not see it.

If you want to use Bungie as an example. Bungie was near closure in 2022 they sold because of that, multiple ex Bungie developers have said so in these 3 years. Selected mployees were individually compensated for the acquisition. Bungie is in this situation because the Bungie administration basically scammed Sony with promises that never were going to happen LOL. Sony is the bad guy I get it but what, you would have preferred for those people to lose their jobs 3 years ago instead of actually having time to find something else while making money? Because a lot of employees who weren't fired moved while they could, meanwhile the ex Bungie CEO made bank and fucked off.

At the rate of studio layoffs and closures for studios not owned by MS and Sony are happening it doesn’t matter.

I want to agree but something tells me these studios would have shut down even faster without big corporations investing in them. The industry is experiencing change, and a lot of it is negative.

There's too much behind the scenes that we know nothing about, and not every case of studio closure is the buyer's fault. Regardless, I'd take supporting independent studios via funding and publishing over acquiring them.

I don't think that they should be prevented from doing it... ...but it doesn't seem to work out well for the huge corp.

A lot of people who work in games don't want to work in a huge corp, and there are plenty of mid-sized developers to take the place of the companies that get borged...

Consolidation of the gaming industry under massive corporations is just a bad thing.

I didn't mind the insomniac acquisition as they may as well have been a Sony first party already, but in general I don't think acquisitions are good.

There is of course a huge difference between acquiring a developer and acquiring a massive publisher like Bethesda or Activision.

Activision at the time of being acquired by MS had almost as many employees as the entirety of SIE.

Microsoft has purchase this topic and has fired everyone in it.
Sony has purchase this topic. They have fired everyone but OP and Curl6.
Nintendo has bought the topic and without crunch just put out a brand new award winning entry in a storied IP.