No doubt Phil Spencer has already picked up the phone and called IO Interactive at some point, but on the off chance he hasn’t, I certainly hope he will. But hey, too much is never enough, right? Microsoft would be wise to snap them up – again, if the studio is even willing to sit down at the negotiating table – and add hundreds of talented developers as well as one proven franchise (in a genre Xbox currently has no presence in), one potentially huge licensed game that could be to Xbox what Goldeneye was to Nintendo, and one fantasy-RPG that, well…OK, I guess Xbox already has plenty of in-house RPG talent. That it has not only survived but thrived in the years since speaks to a well-managed organization. They were owned by Eidos Interactive (later Square Enix) for many, many years, but the studio eventually negotiated its independence. Of course, that’s if they even want to be bought. The online fantasy-RPG is more of a wild card, but it’s so different from anything the studio has ever done that it’s bound to be, at the very least, a project that has creatively energized the IO team.Īs such, I’m not sure there’s a better bang-for-your-buck acquisition target out there than IO. However, the studio seems like the perfect fit for James Bond, and if it works, that could develop into a long-term partnership with the licensor. The two Kane & Lynch games were also a long time ago, and they weren’t awesome. The original Xbox third-person strategy shooter Freedom Fighters was awesome, but that was a long time ago. To be fair, IO’s prowess outside of Hitman is, for now, relatively unproven. Embracer Group bought Gearbox (and a whole bunch of others), Sony took Bungie off the market, Microsoft has spent the past several years acquiring the likes of Obsidian, inXile, and Playground, etc. The fact is, there aren’t a lot of independent AAA game development studios left on the market. All of this preamble is to set up what I’m about to say, and that is this: Microsoft, if it isn’t already, should be taking a long, hard look at IO Interactive as its next potential acquisition target – regardless of whether or not the Activision-Blizzard deal is approved by regulators, but especially if it isn’t.
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