@videogameninja: Sony does not have the cash on hand for such an acquisition. It would have to be a merger paid for with stock swaps and even then, Sony's board would almost certainly only consider another Japanese company. Microsoft had over $130 billion in cash at the start of the last reported quarter, which was before the holiday season. They likely ended the year with close to $140 billion, enough to do this deal twice over. Sony ended the most recent quarter with about $16 billion cash on hand. With a market value of about $140 billion, Microsoft could actually afford to simply buy Sony if it wanted.
The only company really capable of competing with Microsoft in this regard without selling a significant number of long term investments would be Alphabet(Google). Apple has around $200 billion in long term foreign investments which are difficult to turn into money and therefore not counted as cash on hand. Amazon has around $90 billion, meaning they could have spent their entire reserve for this deal, which no company in their right mind would do. So really, Sony can't fight this. No one else has the financial muscle of Microsoft, at least outside of China and Korea.
So Resident Evil doesn't have the top 5 graphics, audio, art, design, or narrative but it is one of the best 5 games of the year? What exactly is left if you remove those 5 things?
@illegal_peanut: Yes. In the PS3 era they released several mediocre titles like All 4 One and this tower defense game whose name I can’t even remember.
Yea the pacing issues are the main issue with Skyward Sword. The controls were fine 80% of the time, accessibility issues notwithstanding. I thought the world of Skyward Sword was beautiful, the characters well realized(Fi not included) and the music was great. But it was a slow game made worse by repeated use of the same areas and having to fly back home between each of them.
I tried watching that Dragon’s Dogma show and didn’t make it past the first scene. Awful animation and monster design coupled with terrible English VO made it pretty unwatchable. Kind of shocking considering how good the art, animation, and VO work was for Castlevania. But if this was their big intro I would hate to see what their late season filler episode looks like.
@Wartotehlock: I have good news for you then. They were just sold to Red Venture Capital last month. The transition should be completed at some point next year, so give it a couple months and you won't need to worry. And even better for you, a significant amount of the staff has been laid off, the Australian office will be disbanded, and the focus will be shifted to the very capitalist venture of selling credit cards through affiliate links!
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