While Microsoft has said they’re done acquiring studios for the foreseeable future, one company isn’t by long shot. Bigben Interactive has made its ambitions known to be the premier midrange, or “AA,” publisher in the industry. Now, they’ve signaled that more studios are about to be under their belt to help them achieve that goal.
In an interview with GamesBeat, Benoît Clerc, Head of Publishing at Bigben, spoke about the company’s ambition. Some is not entirely clear, as he states he wants the company to be the first AA publisher in the next few years (despite several midrange companies, such as Focus Home Interactive, still being active), but when it comes to buying studios, he says the company isn’t near done yet. He doesn’t seem to be hinting at anyone specifically, but says the acquisitions will be based around genres where the company wants to improve.
“We do think that there are other fields in which we want to be a serious player. There are other genres in the game industry, and we think that there are other genres and proposals that we have to make, even some genres that are not defined as genres today that we have in mind. I mentioned the narrative RPG, which is a big sidestep for those two genres, mixing them with equal balance, the RPG elements and the narrative elements. We have other ideas, and we think we need other experts. The strategy will always be the same when it comes to developer acquisitions. We want people who are the most passionate in each genre, people that want to become the best of the experts in their specific genre.”
The company recently bought out Spiders, the developer behind the upcoming RPG GreedFall, so they are definitely growing. Midrange/AA development has seen somewhat of a resurgence in the later half of this console generation, and it seems Bigben wants to lead the charge.