Xbox has gobbled up a lot of studios over the last handful of years. And according to newly surfaced internal emails, a few other suitors were in Xbox’s sights.
Xbox was looking at a few other developers
As reported on by The Verge, these emails came out during the Federal Trade Commission hearing regarding Activision and Microsoft. One of these emails between Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Microsoft CFO Amy Hood laid out how Sega would benefit Xbox.
“We believe that Sega has built a well-balanced portfolio of games across segments with global geographic appeal, and will help us accelerate Xbox Game Pass both on and off-console,” said Spencer in an email from November 2020.
Spencer also said that Sega’s “beloved IP” had global appeal and would help expand Game Pass’ reach, especially in Asia. It’s unclear what happened after that email, but Sega was still listed as a target from a document from April 2021, as stated by The Verge. Very loose rumors had circulated that Microsoft was trying to buy Sega in September 2020, but nothing substantial came out publicly during that time, and it may have all just been a coincidence.
There were other teams on a “final watchlist.” A few were meant to bring “audience expansion” to Xbox Game Studios like Thunderful, likely Thunderful Publishing, the publisher behind games like Lego Bricktales; Supergiant Games, the developer of Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and Hades; Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go; Playrix, the developer of free-to-play mobile games like Township; and Zynga, the company behind Words With Friends and Farmville. This was before Take-Two Interactive announced in 2022 that it wanted to acquire Zynga for $12.7 billion.
These are quite different from the other teams in the “engagement and social interaction” section of the chart. These studios were Bungie, known for Destiny and the earlier Halo games; IO Interactive, the Hitman studio that’s also now working on a James Bond game; and Scopely, the developer behind smaller games like Monopoly Go and Stumble Guys.
Bungie was, according to The Verge, listed as valuable because of the Destiny IP and “integration of its dev & live ops infrastructure into Xbox Game Studios.” The latter point seems somewhat close to what Sony used the team for after its acquisition, as it cited the studio’s “expertise in multi-platform development and live game services” in the announcement post. However, Xbox stated that there was a “high burn-rate” risk for Bungie.
