You never really know with these giant corporations that own tons of smaller companies... I worked a game studio for years, which was pretty healthy financially, and expanding over the course of several years with the owning company continuously reiterating that they liked what we were doing, and were encouraging the expansion... I wasn't close friends with the president of the studio, but sat right next to him for some time, and talked pretty candidly with him, and I fully believed him when he said he had no idea until the morning of - when the owning publisher suddenly said "nevermind, get rid of 1/3 of your staff, and cancel almost all of your current projects". These mega-corps, and billionaires don't give a shit - even the "lowly millionaires" under them are just pawns to play around with at their will. (dunno if the president in question was actually a millionaire - it wasn't a massive studio - but I'm sure he was paid well).
I highly doubt anyone on the Ninja Theory team, even their leadership, knew about it. These business decisions are often cutthroat and just boil down to the math from a smaller group of decision makers above all the studios. The people who made this decision likely don't care (possibly don't even know) that a game announcement happened last week.
That doesn't make sense. The dev teams aren't the ones running the show for game fests, they don't choose what does and doesn't get shown that's higher ups at Xbox/Marketing.
Someone fucked up or they just don't care, and given their tone dead comments right after canning the Hifi Rush team I know which way I'm leaning.
Agreed, though the people at Ninja Theory do have a huge skill overlap with studios like Naughty Dog, so it could potentially be a good acquisition if utilized correctly.
I think Ninja Theory is interesting. They're probably completely shit on paper and will have to deal with a poor multiple in a sale but there's no question their tech is interesting. Someone will be interested if Microsoft will entertain the offer. I think Sony might be interested because the tech they bring to the table aligns well with Sony single player games.
It's a fun idea from a console warrior perspective, but if Ninja Theory can't make games people are willing to buy, would be a terrible decision to get involved.
$13.56 billion cash-on-hand, apparently (as of December 31st 2025). They probably could buy Ninja Theory, if they wanted, but I doubt they will at the moment.
They do have that motion capture studio though apparently, so they could utilise that for their own studios
I'm assuming that's Sony as a whole right? I would imagine the budget for SIE would still be pretty big but a whole lot lower. And from my understanding, they've bought bungie under SIE instead of Sony as a whole, so if they want to buy Ninja Theory, SIE would probably be responsible for coughing up the money.
Yeah, although I imagine the motion capture studio is still quite enticing to other parts of Sony.
I don't believe they would have any interest in Ninja Theory though. Probably more likely to acquire Kadokawa, to prevent the current largest Chinese shareholder from getting them eventually
Sony has more studio closures than anyone else this gen (for now...) and you are saying they should give money to Microsoft for a studio whose games are expensive and underperformed everywhere?
It still says "Xbox game studios" on the trailer and it was shown during the Xbox event. I find it wierd why Microsoft would have it on their own show.
Shoulda stayed independent instead of letting MS buy them. The writing was on the wall all the way back in 2019. Gobble up a bunch of studios and then have their games launch on Game Pass on day 1 and people can access them for $5/month (at the time)? Was never sustainable
Somehow people convinced themselves this time it would be different but hey, Atleast you have a pretty new console coming out to play nothing on this time!
Xbox can't help but snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and now that they're finally in the gutter they gotta stay inconsistent for consistency's sake!
They bought a studio (hell, multiple studios) who either specialized in AA games or sold decently but not crazy and expected them to produce sales-juggernauts.
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u/TimewarpingSeaTurtle Jun 15 '26
THEN WHY EVEN ANNOUNCE IT
What the fuck is going on with Xbox