Microsoft recently promoted Xbox chief Phil Spencer to Executive Vice President, Gaming and he’s now going to be responsible for leading the company’s entire gaming business across all of its device and platforms. The company recently announced that its Game Pass subscription service will offer Xbox exclusive titles on launch day. Word on the street is that the company wants to significantly improve its first-party exclusive lineup and may be considering acquisitions to make that happen. The companies it’s rumored to have considered include Electronic Arts and Valve.
Microsoft is sitting on a cash pile of atleast $130 billion so it could, in theory, acquire a company like Electronic Arts with a market cap of around $35 billion.
Citing a reliable source close to Microsoft, Polygon reports that Microsoft has considered and may still be considering an acquisition of Electronic Arts. There have also been whispers about Microsoft being interested in picking up Valve and PUBG Corp. The latter is the Korean company behind the massively popular PlayerUnknown’s Battleground game.
It’s said that if Microsoft is going to make an acquisition, it should make an official announcement in the near future. There’s optimism about an acquisition because of the “internal shifts” that the company has made, they include the promotion of Spencer to the head of the entire gaming effort at Microsoft. He is now responsible for charting out the company’s games strategy.
Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella hasn’t been apprehensive about spending money on gaming companies, it purchased Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014. It was actually one of the first major acquisitions Nadella made after taking the top job at Microsoft.
The rumors are tied to a belief that Microsoft wants to have more exclusive games for the Xbox, it sees the lack of exclusives as a major culprit for lagging behind Sony’s PlayStation. Sony does have several internal studios and generally has more exclusive games than Microsoft.
Bear in mind that all of this is a rumor at this point in time and Microsoft has not hinted at any upcoming acquisitions. We’ll update if and when more information comes in.
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