Shane Kim: ‘Acquiring a studio isn’t always the right answer’

In an interview with Shacknews Microsoft Game Studios corporate VP Shane Kim has said that while Microsoft is planning to keep growing its slate of products and studios with the expansion of MGS, the company isn’t just out to buy companies wholesale for the sake of it.

"We don’t have any stated strategy or objective to own a certain percentage of the studios we work with," he explained when asked about the Microsoft strategy towards studio acquisitions.

"We’re fairly agnostic about that, actually. We’ll do it where we think it’ll make sense for us and for the partner, and that was the case with Lionhead. In particular, [Lionhead founder] Peter [Molyneux] was ready to be acquired. He didn’t want to deal with all the headaches of running an independent studio.

"We cared a lot about the Fable franchise, because we saw that it’s very important to us. That was a good marriage of needs and desires. Acquiring a studio isn’t always the right answer. It isn’t always the solution that the studio itself wants, so we take it on a case by case basis."