This post is a little random as I was writing up the Sony Acquiring Bungle post and went on a bit of a weird tangent that didn't fit the narrative of the article so I took what I had noted and put it to the side to post here so ...
Microsoft Killed Great Studios
- Lionhead Studios (Fable, Black & White)
- FASA Studio (Mechwarrior)
- Ensemble Studios (Age of empires, Age of Mythology, Halo Wars)
- Aces Game Studio (Microsoft Flight Simulator)
Sony Killed Great Studios
- Bigbig Studios (Pursuit Force, MotorStorm, Little Deviants)
- Evolution Studios (World Rally Championship (WRC), MotorStorm, Driveclub)
- SCE Studio Cambridge / Guerrilla Cambridge (Beast Wars: Transformers, Frogger, MediEval, Primal, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone)
- Incognito Entertainment (Twisted Metal, Downhill Domination, Calling all Cars)
- Psygnosis (3D Lemmings, A Bugs life, Adidas Power Soccer, Barbarian, Chrono Quest, Colony Wars, Destruction Derby, Formula 1, Lemmings, Wipeout, Shadow of the Beast and so many more.)
- Zipper Interactive (Crimson skies, SOCOM)
Studio Scramble Bubble?
It's a little worrying that with the purchase of Bungie and Sony pretty much confirming more purchases on the way (here and here that we are entering a new bubble that will eventually pop
Sony is not alone in it's purchases either the astronomical amounts of money Microsoft spent on Activision Blizzard and not to forget the Bethesda purchase which again, astronomical amounts of money despite being far less billions...
A scramble to get the best talent on the side of blue or green and release as many games as possible that are platform locked?
I personally think that yes, eventually we will see some of the smaller studios within the purchases merged down or at least folder into some of the biggest ones.
This won't be an issue for the likes of the Bungie purchase as they have one goal and that is Destiny, if more new IP comes out of them with the Sony purchase thats to be seen but I do feel like Bungie has found it's game and unless Sony do something horribly dumb then Bungie will be fine but I do wonder how long stock holders will be willing to wait before the question of when will we see a return from this studio?
One purchase I legit has no clue happened was Zynga being purchased by Take-Two, Zynga the people that brought you frilling AAA titles like Words with friends and Words with Friends 2 and less we forget .. FarmVille! I joke of course, mobile gaming while not really thought of "hard core gaming" it's still a huge chunk of change just floating around - I noted this in this post in regards to King being part of the purchase - the makers of Candy Crush - your moms favourite game!
In terms of who would be a massive pickup for Sony next if they did it? Some would suggest Roblox to counter back to Microsofts purchase of Mojang and Minecraft - but I don't agree, Roblox is a trash hole by comparison
See this
this
and it's followup
Sony won't want and does not need this junk on it's platform, besides Minecraft is on virtually everything and it's hardly being used as a "come to our platform" game.
EA or Take-Two are names that have been tossed around - I'm not suggesting this is impossible but practical in terms of what it would cost Sony or Microsoft ? Not even in the slightest - you'd be talking 100s of billions for either and anti trust folks would look at that closely
I really do hope we see a few less purchases and those purchased putting out more games that cement as a vital part of Xbox or Sony and I also hope none of these studios fail to produce to the point that the plug is pulled on another promising studio that just needed more time or guidance to get it right ...
Meanwhile over in Japan, Nintendo is doing what Nintendo does.. it's own thing.