The video game industry is experiencing a stronger wave of mergers and acquisitions than in previous years. Embracer group, a Swedish holding company, has become one of the latest protagonists in this wave of mergers and acquisitions. Most players haven't heard of this name a few years ago. Now its scale in the game industry has overtaken traditional forces such as Ubisoft and Capcom. After announcing the acquisition of the development studios of Tomb Raider and marvel Avengers of skwell Enix yesterday, it is even more powerful.
The rise of embracer group can not be summed up in a few words. It started by investing in a retail company. Now it has a variety of independent operating publishers and independent studios, interwoven into a complex network, and has the ability to make and sell all kinds of games you can imagine. Led by Swedish businessman Lars wingefors, the company was established in 2011. After brewing for a long time, it began to wave money to major game manufacturers in the industry.
The company was initially called Nordic Games holding, and gradually grew up based on the experience accumulated by wingfors in selling a large number of tail goods of video games in the international market. After selling the tail goods for EA for a period of time, Nordic finally decided to sell its own things First, they ate the assets of Australian publisher jowood (Gothic Dynasty and spell power) in 2011, and then made heavy news in 2013. They won THQ (dark blood and homeland defense) in one fell swoop and directly renamed themselves THQ Nordic
At that time, it seemed that these operations were a bit of taking advantage of the fire, but they probably didn't make much money. However, then Nordic games took out "dark blood 3" to let everyone know that their ambition is far from taking the empty shelf of several bankrupt companies* The company was listed in 2016 and renamed embracer in 2019. Now it has more than 100 studios and publishers and tens of thousands of employees in terms of number, the scale has surpassed Activision Blizzard *.
In addition to buying, the group was also involved in a scandal in 2019 because of its cooperation with the 8chan forum suspected of abetting crime. The company's boss, wingefors, then publicly apologized to calm the situation.
Yesterday, embracer group made another big news by acquiring three se overseas studios crystal dynamics, Eidos Montreal and square Enix Montreal for us $300 million. It also won more than 50 games such as the thief, Kane's heritage and Tomb Raider, and 1100 game developers were added to the group.
However, embracer group is not a "blockbuster" this time. To be exact, it has been "buzzing" in recent years.
The main acquisitions of embracer group in recent years are as follows:
April 2020: US $525 million acquisition of saber interactive, a transplant studio
February 2021: US $1.3 billion acquisition of gearbox entertainment, the developer of ownerless land
April 2021: US $640 million acquisition of advertising mobile game publisher easybrain
August 2021: US $313 million acquisition of 3D realms and seven other studios
December 2021: US $3 billion acquisition of French board game and RPG publisher asmode
Big publishers like EA and Activision now stick to their annual sales strategy, while embracer keeps picking up [eggs] in its basket( ?site_id=242986&euid=&t=https%3A%2F%2Flist.jd.com%2Flist.html%3Fcat%3D737%2C752%2C902 )。 They have biochemical variants, zombie World War, 4A Games' subway series, dambus's homeland defense 2: revolution, and even death Island 2, which has been dystocia for eight years. In addition to THQ's legacy (such as the purchase of Amara kingdom in 2018), they also stare at emerging independent studios, such as ghost simulator and little nightmare.
Next, they will launch the "Underworld saints: restart version" produced by volition studio. The experience of this studio is more magical. In 2000, THQ bought volition. When it went bankrupt in 2013, volition was sold to Koch media and became a member of deep silver. Nordic games first bought their "Summoner" and "Red Faction", and simply bought Koch media in 2018. Now volition is mixed with THQ again.
In addition to restarting the old IP, embracer is also reorganizing the old studio. Free radical design studio, composed of developers of the 1999 N64 version of 007 golden eye and perfect darkness, went bankrupt and sold to Crytek in 2008. They were sold to Koch media after the operation was bad. See here, you understand again. Last year, embracer cooperated with the original founders Steve Ellis and David Doak to restructure free radical design, so that the classic work "time and space splitter" was reborn.
After the bankruptcy of THQ, the industry seems to have no place for medium-sized issuers, and the market is controlled by first-party manufacturers and hundreds of millions of large issuers. Embracer blazed a new path. Their goal is not to be a top-notch masterpiece in the industry, but they often gain from betting. For example, last year's "Temple of heroes" well illustrates this problem.
What we hope now is that Eidos Montreal can make a difference in the new environment and make the series of "out of the siege" look new. At the same time, I hope Tomb Raider can find its former glory( ?k=WP0ZSPklWdlZyN4MTPklWYmYDO5IDNy0DZp9VZ0l2cmYiRyUSbvNmLsxWYtZnL3d3dGJTJGJTJBNTJzBHd0h ) Status.