What studio acquisitions do you predict we could see this year and why?

[martymcfly]

Last year saw a lot of game devs/publishers being acquired across the industry. Xbox easily reigned supreme with their acquisition of Zenimax Media the parent company of Bethesda, Arkane, ID Software and many others. Tencent Sony and Embracer Group also made a volley of acquisitions throughout the year (Embracer's acquisition of Gearbox and Sony's acquisitions of Housemarque and Bluepoint being standouts) heck even the elusive Nintendo opened their wallet and snapped up Luigi's Mansion 3 developer Next Level Games. With that being said what are some studio acquisitions you think could happen this year. Also are you okay with the number of studios being scooped up recently or do you think it's a bad thing for the industry?

[weirdfeline]

Sony may pick up Ember Lab.

[koemo1]

Bad development

[ignition365]

Some I've been waiting for:

WBIE buying IO interactive.
Inti creates being bought by just about anyone.
CI games being aquired by Embracer Group
Microsoft aquiring Asobo
Kojima Productions getting aquired by Sony or Microsoft... thought to be realistic, I see a new publishing agreement with MS just being the realistic outcome.
Sony acquiring Supermassive games.
1C Company aquired by Embracer Group

And nothing specific, but you know Embracer, Keywords Studios, and Microsoft/Sony will be acquiring studios for sure.

[weirdfeline]

Sony acquiring Supermassive games.

This seems highly unlikely since they've been working with Bandai Namco for a few years on The Dark Pictures Anthology games and even ported another Bandai Namco published game Little Nightmares II to PS5 and Series X|S. Their last game with Sony, Bravo Team, was a critical bomb so that probably soured their relationship.

A lot of Sony second party studios have left recently. Clap Hanz, developers of Hot Shots/Everybody's Golf since the second game back in 1999 released Clap Hanz Golf on Apple Arcade last year.

Qunatic Dream is doing a new Star Wars game that doesn't seem to be published by Sony.

Ready at Dawn and Sanzaru are both owned by Meta.

Seems like most developers of PS VR exclusive games have already released new games without Sony.

One team that seems to go mostly unnoticed is Creative Vault Studios. They've only ever worked with Sony and may be worth picking up for PS VR2 development.

[kamikazekeeg]

Normally I don't care a ton about studio acquisitions, but there is one single company I want to see get picked up or bought out by someone else...Konami.  They have a stockpile of great IP's and they've done absolutely nothing with them other than a couple collections for Castlevania.  Games they've inspired are coming out every year, but we don't have a new Castlevania to go along with those or the new tv series that is awesome? We clearly don't seem to be getting anything Metal Gear anymore after Survive sucked, so why aren't we getting a remastered collection of all the old games like Castlevania?

The hope is that someone like Sony buys them or their IP's and then they can dole out the properties to different studios.  Like even if Kojima didn't get to lead another Metal Gear, that way he could be involved at least.

[mrkonasoni]

I don't care much about it but I think some companies will cut the acquisitions this year since we are still recovering from the pandemy.

If anything I can see more big companies siding with indies just to revive old franchises or make more games for the backlog, that being said, Kojima Productions being bought by Sony or Microsoft seems clearer than the water, unlike of course Kojima has finally learned to spend less money with developments.

[telekill]

I'm not a fan of the mass acquisition of talent. The smaller studios seem to have the talent now as they're able to make the games they want vs be told what the masses "want" and to make it.

I hope to see no acquisitions in 2022. I know I will be disappointed.

[ignition365]

I hope to see no acquisitions in 2022. I know I will be disappointed.

Take Two Interactive has entered in an agreement to acquire Zynga.

[telekill]

I hope to see no acquisitions in 2022. I know I will be disappointed.

Take Two Interactive has entered in an agreement to acquire Zynga.

I know. I don't count Zynga as having talent though.

[ignition365]

I hope to see no acquisitions in 2022. I know I will be disappointed.

Take Two Interactive has entered in an agreement to acquire Zynga.

I know. I don't count Zynga as having talent though.

rofl

They're doing it so Zynga will make Take Two interactive licensed mobile games.  Probably GTA, Bioshock, Borderlands, etc.

[ignition365]

2022 is fucking weird

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/

Microsoft agrees to acquire Activision/Blizzard

[Cartagia]

Nearly $70 billion.  Microsoft would still be smaller than Tencent and Sony, by revenue, but still... Damn.

Also, this likely spells the end of the road for Kotick, as he was mostly still around because his contingent owns the majority of shares and will get a fat bonus of the sale, no doubt. He's gonna have people above him for the first time in a couple of decades.

[weirdfeline]

Man, this is disappointing as a non-Xbox owner.. I love Call of Duty, Overwatch, Spyro, Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero. I guess I may have to consider picking up an Xbox in the future if all these are gonna end up as exclusives..

The good thing is that I feel like Xbox may be interested in not having their studios only make Call of Duty and now with this acquisition it seems that may have actually been what they were doing.

Just make Spyro 4 already come on.

[telekill]

I'm not a fan of Activision or Blizzard games so this doesn't affect me personally... though I did just get my wife Spyro on Switch. It does affect a majority of gamers though given CoD was probably the biggest reason they were bought.

In other news... glad to not be part of toxic fanboy forums anymore. They are surely blowing up at the moment.