Who will buy who?

You'll see Brute Force 2 or Shadowrun 2 before you see Shenmue 3.

Seeing how MS is letting developers go I don't see them aquiring anyone anytime soon.

 

Unless they're making room for a big take over........

 

that makes little sense given Microsoft's recent behavior though. MS has dropped developers that make popular games for the people that actually buy their product. US gamers love racing, FPS, and sports. MS has let go or shut down studios that fall somewhere in those three genres over the past few years. I highly doubt they do all that, just to add a japanese developer to help sales in japan.

With that said, I would rather see MS have the occasional mediocre Sega game than the occasional mediocre Rare game though.

 

That's their next business venture.

 

Sega were already bought by Sammy.

 

The fact is, Microsoft cant beat SONY on home tuirf because the games that japanese gamers want to play are on Playstation and not XBOX. Ergo, if Microsoft used its war chest to get the games japanese gamers are playing onto the XBOX instead of the Playstation, Microsoft could increase hardware (and software) sales in Japan.

Maybe Microsoft needs to throw bags of money at Square Enix to get the next major game from that studio exclusive to the 360 (would even the might of Microsoft be enough to get the next FF exclusive to the 360? would Japanese gamers or even the Japanese government try and stop them?)

 

I would argue FF is more popular in NA then in JPN.

If they could get Dragon Quest however then they would move a MAJOR amount consoles.

 

Microsoft should probably give up on Japan and stop pissing money up the wall, even with Blue Dragon it failed to shift that many consoles and even if Microsoft got the next DQ game on the Xbox 360 I seriously doubt it would shift more then 100,000 extra consoles.

 

Honestly, I doubt any Japanese company would sell themselves to MS. I mean, I imagine if MS COULD, they would just outright purchase Mistwalker, Q?, and probably AQ Interactive as a whole. But I also imagine all of these companies would turn down such offers, since being forcibly tied to a console thats doing so miserable on their home turf probably doesn't sound like too fun of an existence.

MS is trying in Japan. They've got some Square games coming, they've got an exclusive from tri-Ace, and they've got Mistwalker. Its obvious they're pushing for more JRPGs on their system. Will they ever have Final Fantasy? Well... that depends on how shitty the PS3 is doing a year from now I imagine.

But credit has to be given where credit is due, and MS is certainly trying a lot harder to get the 360 to appeal to the Japanese than they did with the Xbox. Rememeber Magatama? :lol:

Also, I would like to note that Yukio Futatsugi was heading up Microsoft of Japan's game studios for awhile there, and for that alone I give MS their due. He recently left though so he could get back to making games, and I for one cannot believe MS let such a talented guy go (and wouldn't let him make his own games when he was there, what the hell!? He gets to make Phantom Dust and then... nothing.)

 

Theres more fanboy fairy dust here than actual possibilities of this happening...

The fact is if MS wanted to buy SEGA they would (and should) have done that like 5 years ago. Today SEGA is the laughing stock of the industry, and MS is trying to stay profitable after whoknows how many billions lost due to both Xbox consoles.

Wheres the deal on buying a torn-apart SEGA at an inflated price (who in their right mind thinks sammy is going to give it away?) when you could buy it working fine not too long ago for a fraction of the price?

And nintendo? the funny part is that they werent doing that good not too long ago, and honestly it seems like the big N likes to play the waiting game (Wii anyone?) so they dont care about buying companies like SEGA.

And about the rebirth of SEGA's hardware division, I heard the rumour and even saw an interview with Naka where he says something like that, but honestly they're teasing the fans, theres no way in hell they'll risk running the company to the ground against just for the fans...

On the other hand, is ironic but just like most people has forgotten Apple's and Nintendo's mistakes in the past, it seems more and more gamers think SEGA wasnt that bad at making hardware and think they should try again with a console.

So who knows?

 

Naka isn't even at Sega anymore. He has his own company called Prope that has a publishing partnership with Sega for now.

 

That interview is from 2003 if I remember correctly, when he was still working at SEGA.

 

Let me ask this do the Majority of Computer users in Japan use Macs or PCs?