In the past year or so, the acquisition of big factories has repeatedly refreshed the game industry's understanding of "sky-high prices", from Microsoft spending $7.5 billion in 2020 to win the Bethesda studio, to investing another 68.7 billion yuan to acquire Activision Blizzard in January this year, Take-Two to acquire Zynga for 12.7 billion at the end of the month, and Sony to buy Bungie for $3.6 billion in February. In the first quarter of this year alone, there were 387 mergers and acquisitions in the gaming industry, with a total value of $98.7 billion. The dark tide is surging and the big news of Musk's $44 billion acquisition of Twitter is coming up next door.
At first, we thought it was a tactical containment of console wars, but when tens of billions of dollars were thrown, the center of the contest was far from a game console, or how many game consoles and games would have to be sold to earn back the purchase price? All the contestants were drawn into a war of capital about the future, an apocalyptic battle for the definition and entrance of the future Internet.
Generally speaking, in the acquisition behavior, the seller is the active party, since there is a market for a thing to find, it can be sold at a price, and it is not common for sellers who are in a hurry to sell, and when a thing is sold too cheaply, we will think that there is another hidden plot, most likely there are not many buyers.
Such speculation comes in the latest deal in the game industry, where The Emeraldr Group from Sweden has won three of Square Enix's overseas European divisions, as well as all of the studio's more than 50 game IPs, including the familiar Crystal Dynamics/Tomb Raider; Eidos Montreal/Out of the Siege, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thief. Such a big package, the final price is only 300 million US dollars. For players, compared with the previous prices of billions and tens of billions, these game IPs and characters that have brought countless good games seem to be a bit "cheap", after all, these games are far from reaching the point of pearl dust, and many of them even have a hundred responses.
From the SE side, these studios focusing on stand-alone games do not coincide with the company's future development direction, and SE should invest more in blockchain and cloud games.
This explanation obviously cannot convince the outside world, after all, SE is still a company that relies on selling games as its main business, and its games that are not as famous as these IP are everywhere, and even continue to open "new pits", talking about business transformation? Taking a step back, even if the assets are cleared, it will not affect Crystal Power and Montreal to continue to develop "Tomb Raider" and Marvel games that support next-generation functions, you know, the projects sold this time also include "Laura Crawford GO", "Deus Ex Go" and other new mobile port manufacturers - SE Montreal Studio.
"Just Cause" didn't sell it because no one really wanted it?
Therefore, the reason why SE dropped overseas assets may be much more pure, that is, it does not make money.
Business analysts pointed out that the overall operating margin of SE in 2021 was 14.2%, while Crystal Power and Eidos were 3.6% and 0.65% respectively, and the contribution of overseas studios to SE's overall revenue was almost negligible. Considering that neither of them has launched a new work in the past year, it is understandable to rely on the long-tail sales of the old work. But on the other hand, the new work of "Tomb Raider" has only recently been put into development, Crystal Power also needs two-line combat and Microsoft's The Initiative to cooperate in the development of the rebooted "Perfect Darkness", the new game must be far away, Eidos Town's "Deus Exodus" has pressed the bottom of the box, the "thin water and long stream" of overseas studios will remain for a long time, and "turning profit into loss" is in front of us, under the balance of the two phases, overseas studios have many administrative inconveniences. SE believes that it is better to put it on the shelf than to break it when it is broken.
When you slaughter a player, you are fierce
But in the real business field, there are some "losers."
On the other hand, the profit margin of selling games is quite considerable.
As we all know, se's own Japanese studios develop games are almost never discounted, no three years and five years will never let go, and the game can maintain more than one million copies of sales, such as the recent "Triangle Strategy" such a small cost of new IP, as a full price of AAA games can easily break 100. Not to mention SE's large number of IP mobile games, so works like Tomb Raider are also eclipsed.
Lara is a very representative and landmark character in the history of the game, and can enter the global pop culture as early as Mario and Pikachu to become a household name. In fact, before joining SE, Eidos is also developing Tomb Raider related games, after joining SE in 2009, the rebooted version of "Tomb Raider 9" is very amazing, and the follow-up "Tomb Raider: Rise" continues this new model, making this classic IP glow for the second spring.
But after the development of "Tomb Raider: Rise", Crystal Power has cooperated with Eidos Montreal so far, developing "Avengers" and "Guardians of the Galaxy", and the subsequent reboot of the third "Tomb Raider: Shadow" has a poor reputation, not from Crystal Power, but from Eidos.
In addition, marvel games are getting better, "reunion" performance is mediocre, but "Guardians of the Galaxy" is deeply popular, and also got the best narrative of last year's TGA, so overall, the combination of crystal power and Eidos is still very reliable, the game's wind rating is also good, but the profit margin has never come up, so SE said helpless.
Put down SE, let's look at the buyer's side, Embracer Group players may not be familiar with, but when it comes to some games and studios, it will suddenly open up, THQ Nordic, Gearbox, Subway, Sopranos, The Sopranos, Temple of Heroes... Some of these assets are THQ's "legacy", some are leaks from various hands in recent years, and there are independent small teams that bet on treasure. In fact, the industry has long lost the position of an intermediate volume publisher, and all the markets are controlled by first-party and top issuers, under which brokers have been born to find room for growth in assets that have fallen to the bottom.
According to Embracer's post-acquisition, it is completely a decentralized management model, and the excessive centralized management of Japanese companies has confused these studios, and the acquisition has unlocked their commercial shackles, and may be able to reproduce the success story of "Killer".
The IOI studio that developed Killer is also an overseas studio that broke away from SE, and perhaps for Tomb Raider and Crystal Power, free range is indeed a decent way to do it. The form of the acquisition is also in line with this motivation, the debt and cash of the three studios are handled by themselves, Embracer only needs the IP and the name of the studio staff, and even the acquisition has been financed from a Swiss bank, and in the end it is really a good deal for "picking up the leak". In se's AAA games that are not enough to attract gold, in the hands of Exbrizer, it may be applauded and sold.
On the acquirer's side, another topic raised by players is, "Why sony Microsoft did not win this competition" .
You must know that $300 million can only be counted as a "small goal" in this war. Overseas studios these games are closely related to subscription users, basically SE came out to cooperate with the platform side is these series, and even last year Epic directly sent a trilogy. So it may also be because of the cooperation, these old games have long been not rare. Or it is more likely to know the roots, understand the gold content of the studio, it is better to wait until the new game really "creates brilliant", and then strongly buyout, resulting in a good topicality.