Two of TICGN's editors try to come up with theoretical answers to an increasingly popular question: What studios should Microsoft look at acquiring?
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
Today, Koei Tecmo announced its financial results for the full fiscal year 2025, related to the period between April 2025 and March 2026.
Playground Games is the studio Microsoft should most logically purchase. Playground is a proven developer, I am very interested to see how the studios non-racing project (likely Fable). However,we don’t know if Playground wants to be bought. I would rather Microsoft enlarge the Coalition, 343i and Turn 10, and give creative freedom to the 3 studios.
Additionally, looking at how Sea of Thieves is being received. Rare need some new management or restructuring. It is unacceptable for Rare to be so inefficient when compared 343i, the Coalition and Turn 10. The latter studios make AAA games in 2-3 years and thier titles have a good amount of content and review well. Meanwhile, Rare over the cross of 3-4 years made a title with marginal content and a lower reception. Rare may have affectively killed their game from release....
I have high hopes for Ori 2 this year. I also have some interest in Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2. However, if the rumours of ‘Fable 4’ and the rebooted Perfect Dark aren’t true. The only true high production quality AAA games one could expect from MS would be Halo 6, Gears 5 and more Forza.
They should be investing in the ones they have, and supporting brand new IPs from those studios.
Microsoft needs to purchase platinum games because MS needs some fast-paced action game like Nier, devil man's cry, etc. The next studio MS should purchase is sega because they have the franchises that I think will grab many gamers attention, including the Japanese gamers. Third devs MS should purchase is playground because they have proven themselves to be a good fit for MS. Last but not least, MS should purchase From software because they have showcased some of the best action horrors in gaming and FS would be a great addition to MS's line up of studios.
The ones that they are getting game previews from.