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[Column] General: MMOG Monetary Miscellany and More
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Do you get the feeling that there has been a lot of recent activity in the area of game-related corporate ownership changes? If so, your impression appears to be very solid. According to information released late last month by UK-based Digi-Capital, the total value of mergers and acquisitions during the first quarter of this year was more than $5 billion.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: MMOG Monetary Miscellany and More.
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Comments
I have found in my lifetime, that the beauty of hating stupid people is, that it crosses all racial boundaries.
Nothing new here one of my favorite games STO was bought and went micro WILD!
Its unlikely we'll see many, if any, out right purchases of western developers or publishers of note. Most of the Chinese and Korean companies with the money to burn aren't interested in the console markets and western companies in general are heavily dependant on console business.
Continued investment in them seems logical though, at some point the console market has to grow in China and Korea and they'll want to be ready for that time.
Most of the western PC MMO developers have stagnated. They are no longer growing, and as such there is not a lot of interest in purchasing them.
However, mobile is the hot new market. I would expect that a lot of the growth in this market is being caused by the money pumped into it. We should expect to see many of the western mobile developers being bought up by eastern publishers with lots of cash.
However, there is also a second movement in play, that does not seem to be showing on peoples radar. There is currently a trend by media publishers (tv, movie, music, print) to add gaming as part of thier entertainment portfolio. This is the beginning of a much larger change.
This report adds to a gut feeling I have that we are going to see the east move west much quicker over the next few years. Trions positioned them self based on this in my opinion and companies such as Prosiebensats seven games will also be used to facilitate the European integration.
Given the Market figures it seems the Euro audience would be the one to go for rather than the NA audience which is an interesting prospect, as a European gamer we are often marketed to as though we should feel lucky to get the attention the NA market does, but this and other reports all point to Europe as a bigger and more growth friendly market.
So, I would be interested to hear you thoughts on how the big 3 would look at moving into Europe more than into America which seems a Market that they are generally indifferent to.