owners (stockholders) in a publicly traded corporation want to see the value of their shares increase. In EA and SE - especially SE - the majority of the operating revenue comes from non-MS platforms.

Things would change however if they were only on MS platforms.

Dragon Quest sells how much a year? Imagine Microsoft getting the full rights to that. Needless to say the 360 in Japan would be renamed to Dragon Box.

People bought XBoxs just for Halo. I don't see that changing if Final Fantasy, Fifa or whatever is only on the XBox.

I rather have EA remain independent because if MS buys them, Activision (the NEW evil empire) have no one to compete with and it won't be long before Activision completely dominate the market with generic rythem games.

Dragon Quest wouldn't sell as much on the XBOX.....  There's a reason they put Dragon Quest IX on the DS and they're putting Dragon Quest X on the Wii.  That's the systems Japan wants.  If Microsoft bought SE and forced Dragon Quest to become a XBOX exclusive, Dragon Quest would lose massive sales.  It would be like putting God of War or Halo on the Wii.

Furthermore, Dragon Quest is one of the few series which follows a strict formula of quality control, overseen by its creators (Yuji Horii/Akira Toriyama).  If Microsoft suddenly bought SE and started demanding changes from them (like a set platform and alterations of markets), Yuji Horii would probably rebel and try to move his series to a new company.  Because he's always stated that he tries to do what is best for the series, not what is best for a perticular 'platform' or company.

Why not buy Activision-Blizzard and Ubisoft as well...then it will OWN nearly all of western gaming sales...muaaahhhhh!

I think another big reason wasn't given, Microsoft has faced various suites over the last decade about being a monopoly. If Microsoft purchased the second/first largest games publishers I'm sure someone (Their competition or government) would push for the government to intervene and prevent the sale.

Why did Microsoft close Ensemble and allow other studios to leave or merge with other companies. Simple Ensemble created only one franchise (AgeOfEmpires) and were good at only one genre (Real Time Strategy). Microsoft milked them for every last dollar by allowing them to finish HaloWars before terminating the studio.

So why doesn't Microsoft purchase smaller studios? I really don't know. Why doesn't Nintendo or Sony for that matter. It probubly has something to do with the gamble. Every time you aquire a studio you are taking a major gamble. First your gambling on their talent, if the studio isn't that great then buying them up might not be a good idea. Secondly your gambling on their IP's, notice when Nintendo took over Retro suddenly all their IP's were shelved and the studio was assigned Metroid. Thirdly your taking a gamble on the market, will the world be ready to buy these games and so fourth.

Now you can say, well why doesn't Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony buy more established studios and publishers? Their are alot of complications to buying a bigger studio. Look at what happened to Rare, Microsoft bought the studio and the staff loyal to Nintendo bailed. Then Microsoft began assigning some new projects and more of the studio bailed. Today Rare is not the same Rare that Nintendo owned, all that really remains are the IP's which Microsoft has been unnsuccsful at capitalizing on.

Then lets also remember bigger studios and publishers need to agree to a merge. If the studio/publishers board of directors don't agree on selling then a forced take over is required. In order for a forced take over to work 51% of the shareholders need to agree to sell their shares. Take Rare as another example. Microsoft tried to buy it from Nintendo outright. But Nintendo chose not to sell. Nintendo owned roughly 49% of Rare and their decision and the boards decision meant Microsoft had to buy the studio from its investors (Stamper Brothers...etc...etc..) this lead to a ballooning cost of over 200-million. Once Microsoft owned controlling shares of Rare Nintendo had little to no choice but to liquadate its remaining percentage.

But do first party publishers have hundreds of millions to blow forcefully taking over bigger studios? I remember last year EA tried to take over UbiSoft. UbiSoft took notice and urged share holders to cease selling out. UbiSoft fought off EA, sure EA got tons of shares but they were unable to rest control of UbiSoft.

Would it be in Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony's best interest to sieze assets? For that 200+ Million what has Rare brought in for Microsoft? Nothing close to the sales and success it had with Nintendo. If EA successfully took over UbiSoft (Which some estimates said would cost over a billion). Would EA really make its money back on UbiSoft or would they loose alot of dedicated staff studios and IP's leaving them with just UbiSoft's owned catalog?

Is it really worth the gamble for any of the bigger publishers to take one another over?

Hmmmm...maybe I'll vote for you now.

Microsoft paid US$375 million for the company, a record for a video game developer. A big big mistake IMO. XBOX can't sell kiddish games. Rare need to learn how to make games like Halo, Fable or Gears if they want to sell on 360 or to focus on casual/Natal games.
Bioware was much better bite for MGS. Dragon Age and Mass Effect will sell millions on XBOX 360 and PC. Promoting Ray Muzyka as Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios - Canada to keep him not to leave.

Rare is a filler company. Whenever MS is lacking in a game within a genre, that is where Rare comes in. During the 360 launch, MS needed a shooter to fill in Halo's gap so Rare made Perfect Dark Zero. Perfect Dark can't compare to Halo or Gears, but it was still a good shooter. As for platformers, Rare has released Kameo and Banjo.

Its understandable that people think Rare is not that great of a developer anymore when compared to the N64 days, but its only because N64 only had two good games that was not made by Rare, Mario 64 and Star Fox 64.

@Kenryoku_Maxis

That's nice and all. But a lot of things change when money is thrown around. Plus when you own a company you get the rights to the name and It's entitties, and I don't see the entire company walking out just because MS owns them. Theres also this thing called the PC, which is owned by more people then the Wii and DS.