Embracer Group is a company holding company that owns THQ Nordic, Saber Interactive, Deep Silver, and Koch Media, as well as many small game studios that operate under one of its company’s umbrellas. The company’s notable franchises include Darksiders, Dead Island and Destroy All Humans. Asmodee holds several board games, including Fantasy Flight Games, Atomic Mass Games, Z-Man Studios, CATAN Studios, and Days of Wonder. The company’s strategy, for the last time, consisted of buying small games and integrating them into the company as semi-independent publishers, while adding their games into their portfolio. The company also owns the board game stadium software. Some of the many games that Asmodee has published include the Ticket to Ride, X-Wing Miniatures Game, Marvel: Crisis Protocol, Marvel Champions: The Card Game, Arkham Horror, and Pandemic. Asmodee also holds the French rights to the Pokemon trade card game. Asmodee has already licensed their various games for digital video games in the past few years. The announcement is interesting for certain reasons. Embracer senided that Asmodee could be used for multiple video games, so they can move many of their game franchises into a board game. Asmodee shares a large pot of IP that could be adapted to video games, albeit as straight adaptations or as an inspiration for video games. For example, Cyberpunk 2077, one of the biggest releases of the year, was a video game adaptation of the Tabletop RPG that was powered by Cyberpunk. Assuming that the sale goes through, it could be a huge disruption to the board game industry and is likely to be an indispensable force in the industry in months or even years.
