What Disney Can Teach Microsoft in the Gaming Wars

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Good content is hard to find. Look at Microsoft Corp. It's paying $69 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard Inc. — and by extension, the rights to that company's marquee videogame franchises, including Call of Duty.

That's still less risky than the alternative: building games from scratch. Budgets can balloon and all the outlay doesn't guarantee success. A new game can bomb and hobble the entire business, as the botched release of Cyberpunk 2077 showed. Shares of CD Projekt SA still trade about 70% below the high recorded before that disastrous launch.

There is another way. As Microsoft, Sony Group Corp., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and other giants engage in acquisitive wars for content, they should consider the Star Wars strategy.

When Walt Disney Co. bought Lucasfilm Ltd. and Marvel Entertainment Inc. for about $4 billion apiece, it picked up fan-friendly properties that had seen better days and were in need of fresh management. The likes of Black Panther and Thor were second-tier heroes who had never been box-office tentpoles, and Star Wars was languishing after the Jar Jar Binks years. Under Disney's tutelage, once-obscure characters like Boba Fett and Moon Knight have become the pillars holding up its Disney+ streaming service as the company deploys a multimedia strategy that spans film, television, cartoons and more.

But are there Star Wars-like franchises still out there? A number of Japanese gaming firms might fit the bill: Capcom Co., Square Enix Holdings Co., Konami Holdings Corp. and a few others. They don't have a blockbuster game like Call of Duty among them, but they've got deep catalogs — and would be much less expensive than $69 billion.

Square Enix not only has the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest