Dragonbums said:
I don't think any of the above companies you listed will buy out Metal Gear or Silent Hill (and if I'm not mistaken the American companies wouldn't be able to even if they wanted to due to Japanese laws.) but I wouldn't be surprised if they just willy nilly let anyone and their dog have license rights for one game and quality goes to the trashcan.
I actually looked in to that the other day, and I don't think it is strictly true. So you as a person can definitely own stock in a Japanese company, you would just have to own it 'second hand' through a Japanese broker, or someone who has been licensed to trade in Japan. Similar to how it works with a regular broker here where you give them money to manage your stocks and accounts for you, but rather in this case you have given a broker money so they can buy stocks for themselves, but you get the dividends and decide how they manage their stocks. That works small time, but I think it wouldn't large time because its a little legally sketchy. I was surprised at how readily people were willing to do it though.
As far as IP goes though, Metal Gear or Silent Hill are just properties. Anyone can buy them, because you aren't taking partial/full ownership of a company, just buying the copyright, distribution and development rights to a product. As to whether they would do it, I dunno. If they are just flat done with gaming in general, they may as well sell it to the highest bidder. If they want to continue with game development on PC/mobile, then they would probably keep it.
