Microsoft paid $117 million for Hellblade developer Ninja Theory to join Xbox
One less mystery.
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What you need to know
As the bigFTC vs. Microsoft Corphearing continues, we’re getting more and more interesting details about the gaming industry that would otherwise stay secret forever.
In some evidence files uploaded by the FTC,Microsoft outlined a plan to buy Segaand bolster Xbox Game Pass. As part of thisdocument, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer and others listed the price of some notable gaming acquisitions, by Microsoft and elsewhere across the industry. According to the list, Microsoft paid $117 million for Ninja Theory, the developer of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and the upcomingSenua’s Saga: Hellblade 2.
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Ninja Theory was acquired in 2018 alongside Undead Labs, Playground Games, Compulsion Games, inXile Entertainment, and Obsidian Entertainment, as part of Microsoft’s push to invest in first-party Xbox content.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is currently scheduled to launch at some point in 2024, where it’ll be available exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. Like all Xbox first-party games, it’ll launch day one inXbox Game Pass.
Windows Central’s take
This price tag checks out, given the size of Ninja Theory (around 100 employees at the time, they’ve grown since then) and the amount of IP that came with the purchase.
For a fun comparison, here’s the price of some other gaming acquisitions that we know about:
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Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter@SamuelTolbert.
