The company behind Minions and streaming service Peacock is considering a move into the video game business, but are they serious about taking Xbox’s place?
Between mass layoffs, the component crisis, and skyrocketing development costs, the video game industry is in a very unhealthy state at the moment.
It doesn’t help that the industry has been increasingly monopolised over recent years, by a small handful of companies, with the likes of Embracer and Microsoft hoovering up studios and shutting them down in catastrophic fashion.
Now, it seems like a new media conglomerate could be about to enter the fray, in the form of NBCUniversal.
According to Reuters, NBCUniversal is ‘eyeing opportunities’ in digital gaming, as the company assesses its options for future growth. This comes after its planned spin-off from Comcast, into a separate media business.
Gaming is apparently amongst a ‘broad range’ of options the company is considering, and there’s no indication of how they would enter the industry, but no doubt it’ll involve a similar process of buying up existing games companies… and then not knowing what to do with them.
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NBCUniversal is a entertainment conglomerate named after its biggest divisions: the NBC TV network and film studio Universal Pictures. Together, it owns the Universal theme parks, streaming service Peacock, as well as film studios like Illumination (Minions, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie) and Dreamworks (Shrek, How To Train Your Dragon).
It’s difficult to gauge the current worth of NBCUniversal, because it’s been owned by Comcast since 2011, but the acquisition deal at that time valued the company at nearly $40 billion (£30.2 billion).
For context, this is smaller than EA ($51 billion/£38 billion) and Take-Two Interactive ($46 billion/£34.4 billion). While that means it won’t have as much money to throw around as a company like Microsoft, it’s certainly not a small business either.
It could leverage its Peacock streaming service to include games, much like Netflix, or set up internal development studios, if not outright buy existing ones.
According to Reuters, Comcast has previously considered acquiring the likes of Activision Blizzard (which was snapped up by Microsoft) and EA (which is in the process of being bought out) or investing in Fortnite company Epic Games.
It’s unclear, though, if Michael Cavanagh, who will take charge of NBCUniversal post-split, is similarly interested in such investments. In fact, it’s also suggested NBCUniversal’s assets, like its film and TV studios, could be bought out, with Netflix namedropped as one potential buyer.
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The report doesn’t mention any game studios that could be eyed up for a potential acquisition, but it does name Take-Two as having ‘the most valuable trove of intellectual property’ – most obviously GTA.
However, Take-Two is an extremely large company itself, reportedly worth an estimated $46.61 billion (about £35 billion) and its value is only going to go up after GTA 6 comes out, making it far too expensive for a company like NBCUniversal to purchase – unless it borrows the money to do so or teams up with someone else.
Reuters also notes that Microsoft is reportedly considering spinning out its own Xbox business into a separate company. Those reports say Microsoft would still own it as a subsidiary but with all the rumoured layoffs and studio shutdowns, we’ve seen more than a handful of suggestions online that Microsoft just sell the Xbox business to someone else.
If that were to include Activision Blizzard and Bethesda, it’d certainly be an enticing offer but even without adjusting for inflation, it would also be extremely expensive if Microsoft wanted to turn a profit.
As a reminder, it bought Bethesda’s parent company, ZeniMax Media, for $8.1 billion (about £6.05 billion) in 2021 and then Activision Blizzard for $75.4 billion (about £56.4 billion) in 2023, which remains the largest acquisition in the history of both Microsoft and the games industry at large.
NBCUniversal could try and leverage its working relationship with Nintendo, maybe by lending its own franchises to turn into games or by trying to convince Nintendo to make its games available through Peacock, if it were to go the Netflix route.
Ultimately, nothing is set in the stone but with the state the games industry is in right now, NBCUniversal may find that a number of publishers and developers come onto the market in the next few months – ready to be snapped up by another giant corporation.
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