Microsoft Makes a Major Purchase
Making Microsoft’s 2018 E3 The Biggest Ever
Last week, Microsoft via the Xbox Wire, proclaimed that this year’s E3 would be the company’s biggest ever. Let’s try and dream up some scenarios where that would actually be the case.
The Xbox One needs exclusives, and another way Microsoft could gain Xbox exclusives is through acquiring studios. Publishers often buy development studios, but acquiring a major publisher such as EA would make huge ripples in the video game industry.
This would immediately silence those who critique the Xbox One for its lack of exclusive games, as Microsoft becomes flush with series it can keep all to itself. In late January, there was a report of Microsoft doing just that, with “a reliable source close to Microsoft” telling Polygon the company was looking into purchasing EA.
That may sound ridiculous to some, and it kind of is, with EA’s market capitalization currently sitting at $39.6 billion. While that’s not exactly pennies even to a behemoth like Microsoft, the fourth most valuable company in the world dwarfs EA with a market capitalization of $725.2 billion. Likewise, the purchase would dwarf the current largest acquisition in the video game industry, which is the $8.6 billion purchase of Finnish mobile game developer Supercell (of Clash of Clans fame) by the Chinese investment holding conglomerate Tencent in 2016.
