Broderbund has an excellent balance sheet but a limited pipeline. Myst and Riven are and will be cash generators for the company. But I have maintained in the past that they are in trouble for the future.
Brod, if I am correct has little if any console presence, but has good edutainment and general home entertainment lines (Printshop, #D Architect, etc.), good adventure games, limited presence elsewhere. Warbreeds has been favorably received but can't compete against Starcraft. The problems with the home productivity market is that it is very difficult to distinguish your products from a competitor and you certainly don't have the avid "buyer frenzy" that you have with hit games. I think if BROD is going to stay around for a while, it needs to beef up its offerings to bring in games that will eventually replace Myst and Riven. I don't think they can do that alone with Red Orb.
So rather than BROD being such a good takeover candidate, which I don't feel that it is, it is a much better acquirer. MPRS is a company that just doesn't have the time or resources to do their games right. They have all of this great content...Star Trek, MechWarrior, Falcon, Civ, etc.....just the execution is bad. They would greatly benefit from BROD's deep pockets and marketing muscle.
As far as MSFT goes, they have been working hard to build their gaming empire. Frankly, the only game they do in-house that is much of a hit is Flight Simulator. Even Age of Empires was done by a third party developer. But I think Gates sees that there are two major arenas that people buy computers for....work (Office suite) and play (games) and as always, he wants a piece of every pie.
Tom |
