Well it took Microsoft a long time, but they finally got some mascot characters in Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. It's funny to think they now own some PSX era Sony mascots.
This could actually be a good thing. Now Microsoft owns Call of Duty, Halo, Overwatch, Doom, and whatever open world FPS Bethesda is putting out at the moment...they also own Quake, Wolfenstein, whatever FPS Arkane is doing at the moment, and while they haven't done anything with it directly lately they own MechWarrior too. Now that's a lot of first person shooters. And you might not want to be releasing, say, your big new Call of Duty right along side your big new Halo and your big new Doom. So maybe, maybe Call of Duty isn't a every year release anymore. And if Call of Duty isn't coming out every year anyone there's not any reason to have three main studios making the games with like two or three other studios cycling on backup work. So maybe this means Raven Software gets to make games again. Maybe those Dead Space guys at Sledgehammer get to do something beyond CoD now. It's only too bad this couldn't have happened like in 2009 before Activision went kill crazy on a bunch of developers.
Interesting development. Microsoft seems to be buying all video game developers.
Can someone explain how Arcanum was bought by Acti-Blizz?
Sierra was the publisher. Sierra was owned by Vivendi Games (formally Vivendi Universal) who also owned Blizzard. In 2008 Vivendi G and Activision merged and formed Activison Blizzard.
So they own all the old Sierra stuff now like Kings Quest, Police Quest, and Gabriel Knight.
What are the chances of Sony following suit with Japanese companies? Their just lost future CoDs after losing future Bethesda games. Acquiring Square Enix would for example give them all their popular JRPG IPs plus few viable Eidos IPs like Tomb Raider.
I'd guess zero. Sony Interactive shifted its focus to the west during the PS4 era, and just last year shut down Japan Studio. Although Japan Studio people were leaving before that; like that Silent Hill guy that'd been doing the Gravity Rush games recently already has a new independent studio and is making that Slitterhead game.
It seems more likely some other big Japanese company like Bandai Namco would do that. I'd actually expect Microsoft to throw money around like that in Japan more than Sony at this point. There was also that rumor last year Microsoft was buying Sega, which was something they were thinking about doing when they first entered the console market.