Microsoft could be the next company to drop big cash on a Facebook game maker.Bloomberg reported last week that the Xbox 360 maker is one of the companies in talks to buy CrowdStar, supposedly valued at $200 million.

Who is CrowdStar? And why would they command a $200 million buyout? They make Happy Aquarium, one of those Facebook apps that survives financially on the purchasing of virtual goods. As insane as that may seem to those of us without a spare few hundred million, the market for these types of applications may reach $2 billion by 2012, according to one research firm cited by Bloomberg.

That buyout figure, big to some of us, is still half of what Electronic Arts paid for Playfish, the makers of Pet Society.

And it's way less than what Microsoft paid for Rare in 2002, a $375 million acquisition.

According to that report, there's still plenty of time for plan to change or some other buyer to snatch up CrowdStar. We'll be stocking up on virtual seahorses, sure to be our new currency at some point, just to be on the safe side.

http://kotaku.com/5472457/report-microsoft-may-drop-200-mil-on-facebook-game-dev 

I've been seeing a lot of threads lately discussing how Microsoft spends their money (with regard to 3rd party timed exclusivity/ads/etc), so this article especially popped out at me as I was browsing Kotaku. They'll spend $50M for timed GTA DLC, and various amounts of money for other timed exclusivity....but when it comes time to do some first party acquisition, it's for someone who makes games for Facebook? Sure it says "less than what they spent for Rare in 2002" but take into consideration inflation, and that $200M goes up significantly.....and at least Rare makes games for the 360. 

Thoughts on this apparent consideration to buy them out?

Edit: Pretty much did the inflation thing backwards

i think microsoft just wants piece of the growing facebook game market, smart move by MS if they buy them

Thing is though....most of those games are F2P, so what profit can come of this? Unless I'm misunderstanding something

I think its smart, what better way to get casual flash computer gamers to become console gamers than to hook them on face book, and have a console game similar but more in depth than the flash ones they play of facebook. But if its worth 200 million, I dont know, I dont play those games so I have no idea what the userbase is, but I think some of us would be suprised.

already posted http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=101320&page=1&str=369683515#

Seems like a waste of money to me but then again i really dont know much about it

This would be a smart move.

but I don't want to pay for extra DLC that should have come with a facebook app in the first place. okay dick comment but I smiled.

for some reason, people spend money to buy points (godfather points in mafia wars, farmville cash in farmville) to further themselves in the game. I don't understand why that do it, but they do. so that's a good cash grab. I guess the rest would come from some form of advertising associated with the product. maybe get a cut of the FB banner ads? I'm not sure. It would be really interesting to find out how these companies are profitable (if at all).

Either way.....that $200M could have went to getting a 1st party studio that could continually pump out great, TRUE exclusives to the X360. Instead, it's going to making cruddy FB games.

Like I mentioned in the OP, there's been a lot of discussion lately about why they should focus on their 1st and 2nd parties, and some dissenters say it's smarter to just moneyhat 3rd parties. But when I see them spending their BIG bucks on something like this.....it confuses me