Embracer Group Announces New Acquisitions
Embracer Group is gearing up for several more acquisitions. The company is looking for developers worth buying in several countries.
Recent years in the gaming industry have been a period of increased consolidation. The Embracer Group is one of the companies most active on this front. Its CEO, Lars Wingefors, revealed in an interview with the Financial Times that the group is preparing for further acquisitions.
Embracer Group will continue to acquire developers
The group has acquired a number of developers in recent years and has no plans to slow down.
- Since 2020, Embracer Group has bought out 62 other companies for a total of $8.1 billion.
- The group intends to finalize a similar number of acquisitions in the coming months and years.
- Embracer is looking at potential companies for buyouts in countries such as United Kingdom, United States, France, Poland and China.
- The group also plans to acquire companies that specialize in free-to-play games, as it wants to strengthen its position in this market.
- Wingefors explains that the company's growth strategy is to find successful companies, buy them out and then stay out of the acquired entities.
- He points out that many competing publishers, after buying out established developers, started to interfere too much in their decision-making processes, which caused big problems. Embracer Group wants to avoid repeating the mistakes of its rivals.
The scale of the group's acquisitions is all the more impressive given that it is a relatively small company compared to the industry giants - Embracer Group is valued at $9.9 billion. By comparison, Microsoft is currently in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion.
Embracer is betting on smaller teams, and it's doing well - it currently has 115 development studios divided into ten groups. Its biggest purchase to date was the last year's €2.75 billion acquisition of Asmodee, a French publisher of board games and their digital adaptations. Other notable purchases include Gearbox Entertainment and Saber Interactive.
The company's strategy is best illustrated by a quote from CEO Lars Wingefors
"If you make just one game, it's a big business risk, but if you make 200 games, the risk is smaller."
This number does not come from nowhere. Last year, Embracer Group reported that its teams are working on 197 games, only 25 of which are big-budget AAA productions.
