It's very rough maths, but I don't see how such a thing could appease the shareholder gods.
There is no way Microsoft will spend close to 40-50 billion dollars (probably minimum) to purchase EA. I will believe this rumor when I actually see it happen, but until then I'm calling shens to the max. Who the fuck is Polygon's source, Towers? Stop prank calling the US tomas, did you learn nothing from The Simpsons?
SupremeAC said:But if the endgame is to give the games away for free, that defeats the whole point, no? Say that attracts an additional 20 million hardware sales with XB passes next gen, which I doubt, that would mean it'd take 13 years of subscribing to the XB pass for them to make their money back. Even more if you factor in the indirect losses from the sales of EA games on their platform that they would cannnibalize that way.
It's very rough maths, but I don't see how such a thing could appease the shareholder gods.
They would make money off selling the EA content on other platforms. Give it away with their subscription service for Xbox (though "giving away" is a bit strong given that you have to subscribe to Gamepass, and XBOX Gold for the full appreciation of the games that are online). Also puts EA's amazing back catalog onto Gamepass.
Gagan said:There is no way Microsoft will spend close to 40-50 billion dollars (probably minimum) to purchase EA. I will believe this rumor when I actually see it happen, but until then I'm calling shens to the max. Who the fuck is Polygon's source, Towers? Stop prank calling the US tomas, did you learn nothing from The Simpsons?
$40 billion is the new $30 billion 
EA is irrelevant to me at this point. Even the Star Wars games I was interested in aren't great.
I would have a lot more respect for Microsoft if they took 30 billion and created new studios with talented people who want to create new IP's. But they won't because there's no sexy brand name to justify the pricetag and it would take too much actual work to do it that way as opposed to buying a huge corporation that's already established.
The sports franchises alone would be worth it. Particularly if they switched them to a subscription model.
My uncle used to love the sports games on the PC back in the day, and then they just stopped making them for PC. I wonder if it's because modders could just update the games so well that there was no need to buy them every year?
I think if they do purchase EA their games would still be multiplatform.
Just look at Minecraft after Microsoft purchased Mojang it's still releasing on every current platform. I think they even announced a New 3DS version.
Though I saw a lot of post that said it would be funny if and ironic if Microsoft purchases EA just to make them defunct a couple of years later.
Microsoft is known for killing developers and so is EA.
SUPER MARIO MAKER LEVELS:
- SMB Mix-Up! (1AB2-0000-0047-5A7D)
- Storm the Castle (77BD-0000-00E0-A9C0)
Nintyfan17 said:I think if they do purchase EA their games would still be multiplatform.
Just look at Minecraft after Microsoft purchased Mojang it's still releasing on every current platform. I think they even announced a New 3DS version.
Though I saw a lot of post that said it would be funny if and ironic if Microsoft purchases EA just to make them defunct a couple of years later.
Microsoft is known for killing developers and so is EA.
Oh yeah, still multi-plat, just first on xbox.
The rumor I heard was Valve, which sounds better to me.
Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom
With Microsoft sitting on more cash than the US Treasury (actually I think I have more money than the US Treasury) with even more money coming back into the country because of the tx re-patriation changes the rumour is they need to spend that money to appease shaeholders.
So with various things Phil Specer has said the rumour is that they'd buy something like EA. They spent roughly $30 billion buying LinkedIn last year, and that sort of money is what it would take to buy EA.
I think it's not a bad idea, it's not like MS would make EA games platform exclusive (as seen with Minecraft, MS know the value in putitng IP on every platform), but may be they would include all of those games as part of their games subscription service (which would entice gamers to XB and Windows from Sony and Steam).