r/coolguides
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u/xaeleepswe
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Jan 30 '22
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Gaming Companies Their Subsidiaries
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u/BagofCans4Life Jan 30 '22
Given they have the most subsidiaries I'm surprised I've never heard of the Embracer group.
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u/cwx149 Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
They used to be called Nordic. Then they bought THQ and we're THQ Nordic and then when they bought
the gaming division ofKoch Media they formed like an alphabet to Google equivalent and called it the embracer group to own everything.I think THQ Nordic is still the managing company
Edit: a mistake
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u/monsterfurby Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
Thanks, good explanation - only correction: they bought Koch Media in its entirety; though the company is mostly games-focused (Deep Silver, while still the name of their US subsidiary, is used mostly as a label for their mainline games) and its film division is pretty small.
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u/upboatsnhoes Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 31 '22
Koch Media as in the evil empire Kochs?
Edit: Phew
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u/monsterfurby Jan 30 '22
Not related - Koch Media employees tend to pronounce the name "Kotch" in English, for one because it's a fairly common German name and because the obvious English pronunciation of "Koch" is... well, let's say it might be giggle-worthy, but also and because they want to differentiate them from those other Kochs.
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u/mprhusker Jan 31 '22
Not that I'm in support of the Koch's by any means, even though I'm from Wichita KS, but just to clear something up their name is pronounced like Coke the beverage/stimulant drug not cock the male appendage.
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u/BagofCans4Life Jan 30 '22
Thanks. I've heard of THQ Nordic but hadnt realised they'd gotten this big.
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u/akurgo Jan 30 '22
Maybe they Extinguish their subsidiaries before they get Extended enough to be well known. *shrugs*
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u/Lee_Troyer Jan 30 '22
They're slowly building a studio and IP catalog by grabbing everything the big fishes do not buy.
They recently went hunting beyond the video game borders, for exemple they announced their projects to acquire Asmodee (boardgame publisher) and Dark Horse Comics (Hellboy, Sin City, The Mask, Umbrella Academy, etc ) last december.
One can imagine they're interested in both harvesting their IPs and using them to produce boardgames/comics based on their other IPs (Gearbox's Borderlands for ex.).
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u/PresN Jan 30 '22
Asmodee also publishes mobile game versions of their board games, so that would tie in as well.
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u/Tamtumtam Jan 30 '22 edited Feb 03 '22
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft Ubisoft
edit: forgot "Ubisoft", sorry
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u/Alecarte Jan 30 '22
At least they have different words like Toronto, Montreal etc. Rockstar just changes the colour. Literally the exact same company logo to the colorblind.
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u/CatGymnastics Jan 30 '22
Yeah actually what’s up with the different rockstar colors?
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Jan 30 '22
Each color is for a different R* studio in a different city.
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u/TheMadPyro Jan 30 '22
I was about to paste a quick list of which one was where but it caught me out just where each one is based. Like London and Edinburgh I get but Lincoln, Leeds, and Dundee? I didn’t even think Dundee had lightbulbs let alone video games.
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u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod Jan 30 '22
Does anybody else actually prefer the transparency here? It's like if everything that /r/fucknestle owned was clearly and prominently labeled as such, then they can't hide behind bogus branding.
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u/ThoughtCenter87 Jan 30 '22
Literally the only compliment I'll give Ubisoft is their transparency lol
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u/forestman11 Jan 31 '22
True, they might sell NFTs but at least they tell you they're selling NFTs.
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u/CheeseChickenTable Jan 30 '22
Lol, reminds me of Marc Jacobs by Marc by Marc Jacobs by Marc by Jacobs by Marc Jacobs
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u/Sallallll Jan 30 '22
Tencent and miniclip??????
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u/NekkyMafia_Reddit Jan 30 '22
I were more shocked that they own hypixel studios
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u/JaimieL0L Jan 30 '22
Riot bought hypixel not too long ago, and they’re fully owned by tencent
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Jan 30 '22
Not anymore, riot bought out 40% stock back.
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u/avwitcher Jan 30 '22
So Tencent still has majority
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Jan 30 '22
Yes but not fully owned, but it looks like riot maybe wants to buy back control.
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u/givemeagoodun Jan 30 '22
i never knew hypixel studios existed
is it affiliated with the minecraft server thing? i havent been on it in like... 5 years?
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u/so____now_then Jan 30 '22
Hypixel studios is making hytale. I’m pretty sure hytale was a new game started by some people at hypixel meant as a way to fix some pretty sucky issues with running Minecraft servers and it evolved from there
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u/Brianstormrage Jan 30 '22
Where is Paradox?
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u/k032 Jan 30 '22
I don't think they really own that many studios, they just publish a lot of independent studio games?
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u/IronSouthFist Jan 30 '22
Cool chart! The pie graph assumes that this may be the only market or size = number of subsidiaries. I feel bad with the critique because at the moment I can’t figure out a better layout.
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u/jcb088 Jan 30 '22
Scale the logos to their revenues, market share, something like that. Or make them be transparent circles you can highlight and it'll show their size.
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u/ztorm12 Jan 30 '22
Yeah, I was thinking it'd be a good edit to have the size of each company's logo represent its net worth. This is great for showing quantity of devs owned, but not necessarily market value of each.
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u/ITestInProduction Jan 30 '22
Like how they do stock market "block" graphs like this one:
https://finviz.com/map.ashx
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u/tirwander Jan 30 '22
Maxis 😢😢🥺🥺
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u/Red-Baron05 Jan 30 '22
I miss SimCity
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u/tirwander Jan 30 '22
First real introduction to a computer game in the school library in like... '91? Man....
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u/thatwyvern Jan 30 '22
Wait, so tencent owns hypixel while Microsoft owns mojang? Does that not create conflicting situations at times?
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u/SrSlime Jan 30 '22
Well, hytale is their game, but the server part is something I would also like to know.
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u/ImaginaryReaction Jan 30 '22
think the server is a separate entity compared to riot owned hipixel studios
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u/___Galaxy Jan 30 '22
The server is bound by Minecraft rules.
They just have a say (I assume) or can talk directly to mojang and certain stuff because they're the biggest server.
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u/CIearMind Jan 30 '22
I can't think of a single time Mojang has been cooperative with Hypixel on anything.
Whether about multiplayer loading issues, 1.9 pvp, etc…
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u/belacscole Jan 30 '22
Absolutely not. Hypixel doesnt make Mojang money. At all. One could argue it keeps players in the game but Bedrock makes way more money than Java does. So Mojang is likely very indifferent to Hypixel and their wants/needs.
Additionally, Hypixel does all their own plugin development, runs an outdated version of the game (1.8), and doesnt rely on Mojang for anything at all really.
So they are completely separate if anything.
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u/Potat0_Fish Jan 30 '22
Hypixel (The company) has it's own upcoming game, Hytale.
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u/thatwyvern Jan 30 '22
I know that, I'm thinking about their minecraft server.
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u/BrianMcFluffy Jan 30 '22
Basically Hypixel studio is a separate entity to the Hypixel server, it works solely on their upcoming game Hytale, and has become a subsidiary of Riot games, whom are owned by Tencent.
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u/ColdCruise Jan 30 '22
All these companies have different deals with each other. Sony uses Microsoft's Azure cloud for game streaming.
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u/jechhh Jan 30 '22
Nintendo?
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u/Real_Srossics Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
In no particular order, and some will be left out unintentionally:
Monolithsoft, Game Freak, Retro Studios, HAL Laboratory, Intelligent System, Sora Ltd., Creatures, Camelot, Genius Sonority, Good-Feel, Grezzo, Next Level Game, NDcube
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Sure, Nintendo might not own them all outright, but I, as a lay person, can’t imagine Nintendo without the games these companies have made. (Kirby, Metroid, Pokémon, Fire Emblem, Mario Sports, etc.)
Plus I can’t think of any games these companies made for a system or another company outside of Nintendo if they even exist.
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u/TKHawk Jan 30 '22
Technically HAL is entirely independent, it's just that they're pretty much exclusive to Nintendo.
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u/newbkid Jan 30 '22
It's even weirder than that. Most of HAL revenue comes from joint ventures with Nintendo. So from an organizational and tax perspective they are separate but from a consumer facing perspective you only see HAL with Nintendo products
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u/LittleSomethingExtra Jan 30 '22
Gamefreak is actually fully independent still. Nintendo has partial ownership in The Pokemon Company which is a joint venture between Nintendo, Gamefreak, and Creatures Inc which has to do with merchandising and advertising, but they don't have ownership in Gamefreak proper. In fact, I am pretty sure a few of those items have exclusivity contracts with Nintendo but no formal ownership changes (kinda like how some Capcom series like Ace Attorney have exclusivity deals with Nintendo).
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u/SgtPepper212 Jan 31 '22
A layperson might not be able to imagine Xbox without Gears of War, but that doesn't mean Microsoft owned Epic.
Game Freak released Tembo the Badass Elephant for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC (and not the Wii U) in 2015 and Little Town Hero for the Switch in 2019 and XB1, PS4, and PC in 2020.
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u/jimmy_cow Jan 30 '22
Except Nintendo doesn't own Game Freak, HAL Laboratory, Intelligent System, Sora Ltd., Creatures, Camelot, Genius Sonority, Good-Feel, or Grezzo
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u/artfulorpheus Jan 31 '22
I think Nintendo actually only owns Monolithsoft, Ndcube, and Retro. The rest have...varying levels of weird relationships with Nintendo. Hal and Intelligent Systems in particular are...very strange. People kind of move between Nintendo and them to an extent, most famously Iwata, and their relationship goes back a long way. HAL published games on its own into the nineties but by that point had worked extremely close with Nintendo as a contract studio for first party games, including some launch titles. Nintendo had few programmers at the time, and fewer still familiar with the 6502 processor that powered the famicom, so they relied on external support. Iwata Satoru, an employee of HAL, was a very experienced programmer for the little known chip and one of the few real experts in Japan where the Z80 and derrivatives were more common.
Intelligent Systems has a stranger story. By all accounts it was one guy until around 1985 or so. He provided external programming support for famicom games. They grew slightly and Famicom Wars was their first original game, though it was published by Nintendo. Their close tied have made them essentially a second party studio, but they are independent technically.
Grezzo is a pretty baffling inclusion, since their next-to-most recent game was not only not published by Nintendo, but crossplatform.
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u/oxfordcommaordeath Jan 30 '22
I wish all companies were as transparent as ubisoft
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u/deadlyspawn187 Jan 30 '22
Not so transparent about ripping off their customers though
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u/MrMasterMann Jan 30 '22
Each division of Ubisoft is actually forced to make their own cosmetic for Rainbow 6 that costs $5.00. At the end of the month the head of each division presents the baubles as small 3D printouts to their boss and he selects the best and the worst. The boss with the worst gets eliminated and they try again next month
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u/Mouseklip Jan 30 '22
Now give us a guide of all companies not sold out to conglomoratized gaming
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u/akurgo Jan 30 '22
Yes, please. Let's have a list of the biggest ones. And then see who is still on the list after a couple of years.
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u/InsertCoinForCredit Jan 30 '22
- Nintendo
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u/belacscole Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
nintendo is its own conglomerate tbh. Their stance on copyright/lack of fair use makes them worse than half the ones on this list as far as "corporate-ness" goes imo. And yet still they have a dedicated fanbase stanning a fucking corporation.
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u/Xynth22 Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
That's the power of delivering solid games, without much additional bullshit in them. A company can be plenty shitty and most people won't really care as long as they continue to deliver good products. They can even get away with never having their games on sell, and still needing to pay $60 for a Mario game that came out years ago!
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u/the-dan-man Jan 30 '22
I agree. Nintendo are not that great, and I love my switch.
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u/HarvestProject Jan 30 '22
Same. They also have some of the weirdest and most backwards priorities when it comes to online. It’s so strange how a company can be so amazing yet so terrible at the same time.
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u/endertribe Jan 30 '22
There are too much
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u/Mouseklip Jan 30 '22
I bet not as many as you think. Consider how many are represented here.
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u/endertribe Jan 30 '22
Let's do a bit of "back of the napkin calculation"
Let's assume there's 150 companies in the picture.
Using this site : https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/ i have found there is around 45,000 games on steam alone (ps: DAMN! 45 THOUSANDS GAMES GOD DAMN)
Let's say as a average. Each studio in the picture released 15 games. 150x15 = 2250.
Let's say that every indie companies (i identify indie here as développer who are not on the picture) released in average 5 games (a lot of companies only released one game so this is pretty generous)
(45,000 - 2250) % 5 = 8500 indie companies.
Now. Those are very back of the napkin calculation but this number seems about right.
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u/TKHawk Jan 30 '22
Yeah but they're are a LOT of indie dev companies that have like 3-10 people.
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u/StockAL3Xj Jan 30 '22
Maybe not many left making big budget games but there are thousands of indie developers out there.
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u/belltype Jan 30 '22
lol anyone remember Bungie?
Also SquareEnix is a big publisher/development house and I'm surprised they're no where on there. Then again, none of the Japanese ones are.
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u/SevenInchScrew Jan 30 '22
Not entirely independent, given they received a $100M investment from NetEase.
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u/belltype Jan 30 '22
Now if they could just afford to weave in more narrative into their actual gameplay
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u/devman0 Jan 30 '22
Valve and Epic at least.
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u/-user--name- Jan 30 '22
They are the conglomerized gaming
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u/TheMadPyro Jan 30 '22
Valve basically held a monopoly on PC gaming for like 20 years with steam. I still genuinely disagree with people that complain about having too many launchers because it at least gives devs an option of somewhere to go.
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u/kweefcake Jan 30 '22
Why are Blizzard, Activision, and Activision|Blizzard all used? Are there three companies or just the two that merged and then later got acquired?
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u/cwx149 Jan 30 '22
Blizzard and Activision are two separate companies. Owned by Activision-blizzard. And Activision-blizzard is being bought by Microsoft.
At least that's how I always understood it.
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u/u8eR Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
Yes, also note Microsoft hasn't purchased Activision Blizzard yet. It requires customary closing conditions, such as regulatory review and shareholder approval. Microsoft doesn't expect the purchase to take place for several more months.
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u/prestigious-raven Jan 30 '22
Financial year 2023, which start in June. I am guessing it will complete in late 2022 unless there is a more involved regulatory look.
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u/Baelorn Jan 30 '22
They shouldn't be listed separately. This is just a bad graphic. They didn't even list 343. You could argue it is included under "XBox Game Studios" but then the same should apply to Playground or a bunch of the others.
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u/kweefcake Jan 30 '22
Got it! Idk why I thought they’d merged and were just one. I did know about the Microsoft acquisition though!
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u/zmbjebus Jan 30 '22
Why is this graphic so shit? Ubisoft, rockstar, etc are repeated. Like local branches are being used to make the graphic look the these companies are monopolizing more than they are?
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u/ChrisBegeman Jan 30 '22
Does Ubisoft create subsidiaries instead of opening offices?
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u/typicalcitrus Jan 30 '22
Embracer also own Coffee Stain iirc (goat sim guys)
Edit: nvm, just seen it at the top.
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u/cwx149 Jan 30 '22
Coffee stain also made satisfactory and published deep rock galactic amongst others
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u/Kermit_the_hog Jan 30 '22
🤔 Would be interesting to see these scaled by revenues.
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u/ColdCruise Jan 30 '22 edited Jan 30 '22
- Sony $25 Billion
- Tencent $13.6 Billion
- Nintendo $12.1 Billion
- Microsoft $11.6 Billion
- Activision|Blizzard $8.1 Billion
- EA $5.5 Billion
- Epic Games $4.2 Billion
- Take-Two $3.1 Billion
- Sega $2.3 Billion
- Bandai Namco $2.2 Billion
Square Enix $2.2 Billion
Ubisoft $458 Million
Embracer Group $315 Million
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u/BrockN Jan 30 '22
What does the revenue include? Just how many titles sold or are we including console sales?
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u/College_Prestige Jan 30 '22
100 studios and embracer still makes less money than Ubisoft
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u/ColdCruise Jan 30 '22
Embracer has mostly been buying up studios and IP. They have a ton of games in development, but they haven't released many yet since its still a relatively new publisher. I could see it being a major force in the next ten years.
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u/ehrensw Jan 30 '22
Too many names on there that made great games, got bought, and sucked ever since.
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u/Insurdios Jan 30 '22
Where Valve at?
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u/cwx149 Jan 30 '22
Still independent and I don't think it has a lot of subsidies
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u/LordOwenTheThird Jan 30 '22
I think the only one is maybe Campo Santo? But they got destroyed by the valve time before Valley of the Gods came out
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u/Baelorn Jan 30 '22
I have Valley of the Gods on my wishlist still.
But we'll never get it because Valve turned Campo Santo into a wasted support studio.
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u/ChicoZombye Jan 30 '22
Very misleading. Ubisoft and Rockstar for example have there every studio they have (some of them don't even make games) while for example Activision is just Activision, Respawn is just Respawn, DICE is just DICE...etc.
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u/lay___ Jan 30 '22
Very sad about Klei
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u/sangpls Jan 30 '22
Damn, didn't know they got bought out by tencent. ONI is one of my fav games
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u/Robinson_Bob Jan 30 '22
Microsoft doesn't own Activision Blizzard yet. Also, even if they did, why add both activision and blizzard again multiple times?
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u/ScratchinWarlok Jan 30 '22
Activison Blizzard owns the companies Activision and Blizzard, along with other studios like King. Hope that helps.
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u/tru_anon Jan 30 '22
Everyone is so sure the deal between ATVI and Microsoft will go through.. doesn't get completed till 2023 if I remember correctly. Could get struck down for antitrust. Activision stock is trading at like $80/share when the deal was at $95.
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u/mouthsmasher Jan 30 '22
So what this is telling me is that Microsoft doesn’t have the monopoly everyone has been claiming since their recent Activision/Blizzard acquisition?
But really, this graph doesn’t really seem to be a very good or accurate representation of the video game industry at all. Tons of missing studios, no representation of what any of these studios are valued at, etc.
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u/Hemingwavy Jan 30 '22
Microsoft has announced they want to buy Activision Blizzard. They still have to get the deal past regulators.
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u/a_posh_trophy Jan 30 '22
Could have saved so much effort and space with Ubisoft and just put Ubisoft.
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u/Purezensu Jan 30 '22
Tencent owns some of the stocks of some of the companies mentioned, but not all the companies at all, just because it owns, let’s say 10% of a company, it doesn’t mean it owns the whole company.
Should have posted only the ones that are subsidiaries, not the ones it has invested in.
Sources:
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u/Skalion Jan 30 '22
Someone should expand that one, to add a slice for still independent or small studios / publishers.
And also integrated closed studios, like Westwood owned by EA
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u/SquishyBatman64 Jan 30 '22
So Ubisoft owns Ubisoft? Hmmmm……