The Witcher, Destiny, and Elden Ring devs were almost acquired by Xbox

A list of developers has come to light that seemingly reveals a list of studios Microsoft was considering acquiring including, among others, the teams behind The Witcher, Destiny and even Elden Ring.

According to a report by The Verge, a number of these studios even made it down to a ‘final watchlist’ as per a number of internal documents and emails they’d seen. They included Sega, home of Sonic the Hedgehog, with Phil Spencer even requesting a “strategy approval” from MS CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft CFO Amy Hood in November 2020 to approach Sega parent company Sega Sammy with the bid. “We believe that Sega has built a well-balanced portfolio of games across segments with global geographic appeal, and will help us accelerate Xbox Game Pass both on and off-console.”

The documents and a list of 100+ developers and publishers, said to be from April 2021, has been brought to light by way of the currently ongoing court case between the FTC and Xbox, as the agency seeks to legally block Microsoft’s ongoing $68.7 billion USD purchase of Activision Blizzard. The longlist itself, published to Twitter by IdleSloth, includes a number of other big names that were also under consideration at one time or another, including The Witcher developers CD Projekt Red, Hitman studio IO Interactive and Elden Ring creators From Software. Other studios on the list included those who’d later be acquired by other companies, including Gearbox (famous for Borderlands) who were snapped up by Embracer in November 2021, and Destiny developers Bungie who were themselves snapped up by PlayStation a few months later.

A number of publishers were also on the Xbox shopping list too alongside Sega, it seems – although it’s worth pointing out that these were “considerations” and not necessarily an indicator of any substantial movement by Xbox to pick them up. In fact, the shortlist of companies was much smaller, though Bungie and IO Interactive were among two that made it through to a Final Watchlist, according to The Verge’s report. In the end, it seems, none of them came to pass for one reason or another, but it’s not clear on the specifics at the time of writing. The court case between the FTC and Xbox, meanwhile, continues on.

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