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Phil Spencer: Nintendo and Sony are not going to do anything that damages gaming in the long run.

I don’t understand why PlayStation has so much more respect than Xbox from many on here. The PlayStation brand is only 7 years older than Xbox. Xbox has been in the gaming industry for more than 20 years. Most of us play games on windows devices.

Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard is fair business. They wanted to sell, and Microsoft got the deal. If you are upset about this, you are most likely a big Sony fan who doesn’t want to join the Xbox ecosystem. BTW Sonys biggest IP, Spider-Man, wasn’t always theirs. It’s not even close to being a monopoly, as it’s only ~10% of industry.

Phil Spencer has been at Microsoft longer than PlayStation has existed. He’s been a gamer longer than most of us. He is the best out there for the Job, and he’s right.

Nintendo is the only big player that does their own thing, and has been doing it the longest. Sony and Microsoft bursted into the industry, and now they both have their spots. Both have made anti-consumer moves and have flunked a generation.
Seriously. I thought most posters on here were on the older side. I remember PS1 coming out and finding out Nintendo isn't getting Final Fantasy after 6 games. People even older than me would also be able to note Nintendo bursting on the scene to supplant Atari, and Nintendo having a period of iron-fist dominance, but that was a tad before my time. I started with NES. But yes, I remember 3D0 and Jaguar trying, and then the first Xbox. Loosely speaking, Sony did to Nintendo what MS is doing to Sony at the moment. They were a bigger, richer, multi-media company with income from areas outside of gaming.
 
isn't there a bigger chance of games not going exclusive, if either facebook, Amazon or google was the buy a Publisher?
so for the whole gaming community?
Not a fan of either company and can't wait to get my games on gamepass.. But looking at the bigger picture, the falesy of microsoft buying up publishers to "protect" gaming.. sounds kind of hollow.

It is. I gotta applaud MS PR: They have convinced so many people of the hypothetical threat that Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple might represent, while proceeding to gobble the major gaming publishers themselves. It is so ridiculously in your face, and yet it fails to raise any red flags on account of the ultimate "I am satisfied right now, so who cares for the repercussions later" trump card: Gamepass. As long as I can get it for $15 a month, I will support MS owning the whole market...
Brilliant! I expect them to acquire another couple of publishers in 2024, using the exact same slogans! "Is that Apple knocking on the door?", Hop! Ubisoft in the right pocket! "Beware! Evil foreigner Tencent is lurking", Hop! EA in the left pocket! 😎
 
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darrylgorn

Member
I think he's right to be concerned about what those competitors can do but the way he frames the context is naive.

No company owns gaming - whether it's the traditional platforms or these new entrants.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Phil is protecting us from Facebook and Apple.

Bm_Vg3ECcAAH8-9.png
 
Microsoft have been making games for 30 years.
Nintendo 50+
Sony 40 or so

Everything MS brought to gaming is monetization of services that were free, a copycat streaming service, gaas without shame... Very few games, or play related.

Their track record is nothing to brag about, the stuff Google, Apple or Amazon could do to "damage" gaming has been mostly done.
 

Azurro

Banned
Seriously. I thought most posters on here were on the older side. I remember PS1 coming out and finding out Nintendo isn't getting Final Fantasy after 6 games. People even older than me would also be able to note Nintendo bursting on the scene to supplant Atari, and Nintendo having a period of iron-fist dominance, but that was a tad before my time. I started with NES. But yes, I remember 3D0 and Jaguar trying, and then the first Xbox. Loosely speaking, Sony did to Nintendo what MS is doing to Sony at the moment. They were a bigger, richer, multi-media company with income from areas outside of gaming.

That's oversimplifying and changing historical facts to suit your narrative. I was a Nintendo fanboy as a kid, I remember when Sony burst into the scene in 1994. Sony's claim to fame was the simple to develop for console paired with very attractive costs of publishing on Playstation, including the very low cost of CDs while Nintendo was hoping to continue with their grip on the industry alongside their lucrative cartridge business, didn't help that Nintendo's machine was very difficult to develop for, while Nintendo restricted access to certain parts of the machine to first party companies only.

Sony didn't have to give out any super extravagant money hats, their exclusivity deals were nothing compared to what MS is doing now, publishers really wanted to have all their games on Playstation and the library showed this.

Sony earned its place in gaming, while MS is buying and destabilising the industry for the sake of gamepass.
 
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darrylgorn

Member
That's oversimplifying and changing historical facts to suit your narrative. I was a Nintendo fanboy as a kid, I remember when Sony burst into the scene in 1994. Sony's claim to fame was the simple to develop for console paired with very attractive costs of publishing on Playstation, including the very low cost of CDs. Sony didn't have to give out any super extravagant money hats, their exclusivity deals were nothing compared to what MS is doing now.

Sony earned its place in gaming, while MS is destabilising the industry for the sake of gamepass.

Destabilizing it how?
 

Edgelord79

Gold Member
What Airbus is talking about is With the purchase of this giant Publisher, Microsoft has started a bidding war where more consolidation will occur. And in doing so will cause a ripple effect. Sony and Nintendo are expanding just to studios and the likes, not buying whole giant publishers. I mean Sony might buy Square, doesnt mean its good.

The future of owning nothing is kind of scary with Video games compared to other mediums like music/tv/film. WHich are much easier to host and archive than a game that has online components that require dedicated servers. WHich costs lots of money to upkeep over along period of time when people start to drop off.

If physical PC was still a thing, even a game that its publisher or developer went belly up, you could install it, setup a lan or personal server and literally have people play. Also with the way games are designed now, most games are almost unplayable without a giant day one patch. Imagine if that game server's just get removed? Or its entry removed from the store because it no longer exists developer/Publisher wise?

Music and movies dont require any server/network for patching. They just play.

This path of owning nothing and having a sub is cool in terms of the money spent for entertainment compared to people paying full price. We get it, getting to play games for basically nothing is awesome. But it's a double edged sword. Because of the nature of sub services, you need constant content like Netflix, and only way to do that is you internally have enough developers to do so. Microsoft knows even with the developers they bought not every game is going to land let alone make someone sign up like a call of duty, diablo, WOW would.
Sure can understand that. Thing is I would rather Microsoft than say Tencent. I get it sucks for some folks, but as someone who used to be a Blizzard fan, this gives me some hope whereas before I had none.

I can respect another point of view however.
 
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Honey Bunny

Member
I don’t understand why PlayStation has so much more respect than Xbox from many on here. The PlayStation brand is only 7 years older than Xbox. Xbox has been in the gaming industry for more than 20 years. Most of us play games on windows devices.
It might be the quality of their consoles and the videogames that released on them. Just a thought.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Nintendo 50+
Sony 40 or so

Everything MS brought to gaming is monetization of services that were free, a copycat streaming service, gaas without shame... Very few games, or play related.

Their track record is nothing to brag about, the stuff Google, Apple or Amazon could do to "damage" gaming has been mostly done.

Xbox Live brought online gaming to consoles as we know it. Before that, the options on the PS2 were laughable at best. It also brought other forward thinking options like including a HDD that other consoles would copy later.

Come on now, I'm a die-hard PS2 fanboy but you're just being extremely unreasonable and biased against Xbox in your post about not bringing anything new or relevant to the table.
 

Kiraly

Member
That's oversimplifying and changing historical facts to suit your narrative. I was a Nintendo fanboy as a kid, I remember when Sony burst into the scene in 1994. Sony's claim to fame was the simple to develop for console paired with very attractive costs of publishing on Playstation, including the very low cost of CDs while Nintendo was hoping to continue with their grip on the industry alongside their lucrative cartridge business, didn't help that Nintendo's machine was very difficult to develop for, while Nintendo restricted access to certain parts of the machine to first party companies only.

Sony didn't have to give out any super extravagant money hats, their exclusivity deals were nothing compared to what MS is doing now, publishers really wanted to have all their games on Playstation and the library showed this.

Sony earned its place in gaming, while MS is buying and destabilising the industry for the sake of gamepass.
You and I remember the Dreamcast/early PS2 days very differently.
 

Azurro

Banned
Destabilizing it how?

Removing big publishers from the industry and making them exclusive, restricting growth in the industry with the sole intention to only have those games on gamepass, which is a huge money hole as has been discussed in length before. This model is not good for me personally, as I don't play GaaS or spend hours in mmos, nor is it good for the industry, as the moment MS stops sudsidising gamepass and they drop it, all of these franchises will disappear, as they will have a lower userbase due to their exclusivity.
 
That's oversimplifying and changing historical facts to suit your narrative. I was a Nintendo fanboy as a kid, I remember when Sony burst into the scene in 1994. Sony's claim to fame was the simple to develop for console paired with very attractive costs of publishing on Playstation, including the very low cost of CDs while Nintendo was hoping to continue with their grip on the industry alongside their lucrative cartridge business, didn't help that Nintendo's machine was very difficult to develop for, while Nintendo restricted access to certain parts of the machine to first party companies only.

Sony didn't have to give out any super extravagant money hats, their exclusivity deals were nothing compared to what MS is doing now, publishers really wanted to have all their games on Playstation and the library showed this.

Sony earned its place in gaming, while MS is buying and destabilising the industry for the sake of gamepass.
I said loosely speaking. I'm aware of Nintendo making mistakes, turning down CD storage and going with cartridges, their aggressive stances towards third parties when they were dominant, etc. Sony made more aggressive moves with PS2 onward in terms of their media player. Half the reason PS2 did so well is because it was most people's first DVD player, then blu-ray player.

There's always layers to every transition with good and bad elements. Part of the reason Nintendo got pushed out of the current race is that they didn't have the money to push console systems that high end while losing that much money up front, and also investing in HD gaming. So it was Sony's status as a larger multi-media company that allowed them to take this strategy to push out Nintendo. Sega also got pushed out largely by Sony. Sony pretty much toppled the two main consoles. How's that for destabilization?

Xbox has done a lot of good things as well, such as BC, gamepass, Live, and more. They've earned their spot as well. Just watch that Xbox documentary sometime to be reminded of some of the things they've contributed.
 
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Kiraly

Member
It's hardly just a couple of moneyhats though. Sony have been signing exclusivity deals relentlessly all last generation, and they've done them largely unanswered as a result of both Xbox having a weaker market position making it cheaper for them to do, but also because the practice of signing them is widely accepted for them, but not for MS.

There's a reason why something like Final Fantasy sells so disproportionately on PlayStation... it's because these exclusivity deals reinforce (or in some cases disrupt) audiences on a given platform, and as time goes on that becomes more difficult to undo. Sony's had Final Fantasy in their corner for a long time now, going back to Final Fantasy 7, but the series DID eventually come to Xbox day and date beginning with Final Fantasy XIII, and was starting to cultivate an audience within that ecosystem that had a desire to play JRPGs. That Final Fantasy 7 Remake got moneyhatted (for what is still an uncertain length of time in regards to Xbox) isn't a random coincidence. This type of moneyhat is a precisely targeted one to cause an entire genre of game not be viable on the platform.

There are some IP that within their sphere carry so much weight that they cause ripple effects across the genre. Sony's Street Fighter V moneyhat effectively buried the entire fighter genre on Xbox, because nobody invested in that genre was going to opt for a console that lacked Street Fighter.. and as a result other titles that weren't (or at least I'm not aware of being) moneyhats would start to skip the console also, because if nobody that's invested in that genre is opting for that console, why should the smaller, more niche IP target that console either, right?

So yes... timed exclusives very much can be used to push a competing platform out of the market, and Sony was routinely targeting games that would be the most crippling across the spectrum. Whether that be Final Fantasy (and possibly Persona?) in the JRPG space, Street Fighter in the fighting game space, the year (or two) long exclusive content deals for Destiny, and the exclusive map content for COD in the FPS space, etc... the goal was to make it so Xbox as a platform wasn't a viable choice for the majority of the market. And quite frankly, it was working and working well... hence the situation in 2016 where MS bowing out of the market entirely was a very real possibility.

When that didn't occur, Sony looked to land killer blows right away at the start of this generation. Hence the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI's timed exclusivity ahead of the consoles being released, and the murmurs of a whole slew of others to be revealed in time. And the general response here was just that it was a foregone conclusion that PS5 would just continue to build on PS4's momentum largely unimpeded. And considering the shit MS took back in 2015 when they dared to land a single comparable exclusivity deal with Rise of the Tomb Raider, that avenue of retaliation was clearly not available to them. Look how quick the clarification of the duration of exclusivity of RoTR was forced out of MS and SquareEnix, and then contrast that with Crash N'Sane Trilogy, Nier Automata, Final Fantasy 7R, KOTOR remake... or any of countless other deals where their eventual Xbox release was happily left vague as hell. That's how we're here today, because MS were either gonna commit fully and land some true heavy blows that made a real difference to the current landscape, or they were inevitably going to see their platform marginalised to the point where they had to drop out.

If people didn't want to see the level of escalation we're seeing now today... well, they shouldn't have been so comfortable commending the ever increasing frequency and severity of deals Sony was making to cripple their primary competition. "Final Fantasy sells 80%+ on PlayStation anyways, so they may as well" and by extension "of course it makes sense for game X to skip Xbox, because the audience is all on PlayStation". Well, congrats... now they won't all be. The rampant desire for the glory days of PS2-era domination has led us here, and so cries about how unfair it is ring hollow.
 

darrylgorn

Member
Removing big publishers from the industry and making them exclusive, restricting growth in the industry with the sole intention to only have those games on gamepass, which is a huge money hole as has been discussed in length before. This model is not good for me personally, as I don't play GaaS or spend hours in mmos, nor is it good for the industry, as the moment MS stops sudsidising gamepass and they drop it, all of these franchises will disappear, as they will have a lower userbase due to their exclusivity.

You're making assumptions here about exclusivity and how it affects the market.

There have always been exclusive games and they haven't destabilized the market. Hell, there is still physical media being sold.

None of what is happening is unusual or having any adverse affect on the industry.
 
In the ongoing content wars, everyone has started turning their focus to gaming.

In a world where Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix are all looking to make content acquisitions...Microsoft is by far and away the best option to acquire an existing gaming publisher if you as a gamer care at all about that particular publishers IP.

These publishers and developers are going to get bought...would you rather it be Microsoft that at least has a history in gaming? Or someone like google that is as likely to shut down any developer they buy as it is to truly invest in them? Or someone like Facebook that is only going to use gaming as a way to incorporate you into their universe? Or Apple whose only real history in non-mobile gaming is outright hostility?

For example, ownership and game development of the Elder Scrolls franchise for the next 10 years...you have to pick Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google or Netflix ...is anyone really not picking Microsoft?
 
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JackMcGunns

Member
Seriously. I thought most posters on here were on the older side. I remember PS1 coming out and finding out Nintendo isn't getting Final Fantasy after 6 games. People even older than me would also be able to note Nintendo bursting on the scene to supplant Atari, and Nintendo having a period of iron-fist dominance, but that was a tad before my time. I started with NES. But yes, I remember 3D0 and Jaguar trying, and then the first Xbox. Loosely speaking, Sony did to Nintendo what MS is doing to Sony at the moment. They were a bigger, richer, multi-media company with income from areas outside of gaming.


That is so true, Final Fantasy 7 to this day is something Sony has been waving around and keeping from other platforms.
 

Tumle

Member
In the ongoing content wars, everyone has started turning their focus to gaming.

In a world where Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix are all looking to make content acquisitions...Microsoft is by far and away the best option to acquire an existing gaming publisher if you as a gamer care at all about that particular publishers IP.

These publishers and developers are going to get bought...would you rather it be Microsoft that at least has a history in gaming? Or someone like google that is as likely to shut down any developer they buy as it is to truly invest in them? Or someone like Facebook that is only going to use gaming as a way to incorporate you into their universe? Or Apple whose only real history in non-mobile gaming is outright hostility?

For example, ownership and game development of the Elder Scrolls franchise for the next 10 years...you have to pick Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google or Netflix ...is anyone really not picking Microsoft?
Why would any of the other companies buy publishers, and close them down? what do Google want with the COD IP if they don't want to sell it? are they going to fire every team they just bought with the company and hire new developers to work on these franchises?
you think google would make all activision games exclusive for Stadia ?
or facebook, would make all the development teams only work on VR games for there small 10 mil + install base?
what about Amazon? exclusive to kindle?
 
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Tumle

Member
Seriously. I thought most posters on here were on the older side. I remember PS1 coming out and finding out Nintendo isn't getting Final Fantasy after 6 games. People even older than me would also be able to note Nintendo bursting on the scene to supplant Atari, and Nintendo having a period of iron-fist dominance, but that was a tad before my time. I started with NES. But yes, I remember 3D0 and Jaguar trying, and then the first Xbox. Loosely speaking, Sony did to Nintendo what MS is doing to Sony at the moment. They were a bigger, richer, multi-media company with income from areas outside of gaming.
uhm wasn't the reason final fantasy 7 didn't come to Nintendo, there storage solution?
 

Azurro

Banned
You're making assumptions here about exclusivity and how it affects the market.

There have always been exclusive games and they haven't destabilized the market. Hell, there is still physical media being sold.

None of what is happening is unusual or having any adverse affect on the industry.

This isn't one or two exclusive titles, this type of acquisition of massive publishers is without precedent. Just as context, this doesn't personally affect me, as the last Acti Blizzard game I played was a CoD many years ago, and before that Starcraft 2, so it's not like this is coming from a fanboy tears place or anything like that, I genuinely worry what MS is doing with the gaming space.

Sure, that is what we've been told the main reason is. What about FFX, and XII?

A lot of third parties back then were not publishing to every console, the cost of development was cheaper back then, the PS2 was massively dominant and their fanbase was on PS.
 
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Why would any of the other companies buy publishers, and close them down? what do Google want with COD Ip if they don't want to sell it? are they going to fire every team they just bought with the company and hire new developers to work on these franchises?

https://www.wired.com/story/google-stadia-games-entertainment-collapse/



Regardless, vis-a-vis the quote this topic is about "Spencer said he's concerned about tech companies unfamiliar with the gaming industry barging in to the space, as opposed to the current, experienced competition against Nintendo and Sony." He's 100% right.
 
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Lognor

Banned
He spent 77 billion dollars to take games away and has had a $1 promotion active for 3 years to basically give games away. Its the only game he can play because he’s backed by one of 3-5 companies in the world that can. Business is business so it’s all fair. But it’s a last resort and one that Sony or Nintendo can’t compete in because only a handful can. But the game they play he was no match for.
You're hoping it's a last resort, aren't you? It might not be a last resort. MS could acquire another massive studio. Then maybe that would be the last resort? But maybe it wouldn't!

"He can't keep getting away with this!"
 

Lognor

Banned
And where did that take Xbox?

Back to last place in console revenue

CBT0pKL.gif
Do you understand the difference between revenue and profit? The latter is much more important to a company.

And why do you care about revenues anyway? LOL. You should care about games....which Microsoft now has in droves!!!
 

tmlDan

Member
Do you understand the difference between revenue and profit? The latter is much more important to a company.

And why do you care about revenues anyway? LOL. You should care about games....which Microsoft now has in droves!!!
that's not true, it depends on the strategy.

Revenue could lead to long term growth if your spend is only temporary.

That's what Netflix did, they spent more or on par with their revenue as they grew then cut back to get into the greens since they grew to a point where increases in price and cuts in productions were accepted.
 

FrankWza

Member
.
You're hoping it's a last resort, aren't you? It might not be a last resort. MS could acquire another massive studio. Then maybe that would be the last resort? But maybe it wouldn't!

"He can't keep getting away with this!"
No. Again you’re not understanding. the act of over paying to buy and buying publishers IS the last resort. It’s the only strategy he has because he failed to do anything else successfully enough to beat Sony or Nintendo, Ever, at anything. In 20 years and 4 generations. Riding the pc user base coattails and having a never closing loophole of $1 gamepass subs and promising new release games didn’t work.
That’s why he’s afraid of Apple, Amazon and Google. They negate his only advantage.
 

Lognor

Banned
.

No. Again you’re not understanding. the act of over paying to buy and buying publishers IS the last resort. It’s the only strategy he has because he failed to do anything else successfully enough to beat Sony or Nintendo, Ever, at anything. In 20 years and 4 generations. Riding the pc user base coattails and having a never closing loophole of $1 gamepass subs and promising new release games didn’t work.
That’s why he’s afraid of Apple, Amazon and Google. They negate his only advantage.
Now they're overpaying? Where is your analysis? Show your work. Or are you talking out of your ass? I'm guessing the latter. The folks on the M&A team at Microsoft are much smarter than you and they've done the work; you haven't.

"Riding the pc user base coattails" LOL Isn't that what Sony is doing now with releasing games on PC? Is that their last resort? They can't make those same type of massive acquisitions so they buy indie devs and port studios. That seems like the desperate actions of a fading company that can't keep up.
 

kuncol02

Banned
that's not true, it depends on the strategy.

Revenue could lead to long term growth if your spend is only temporary.

That's what Netflix did, they spent more or on par with their revenue as they grew then cut back to get into the greens since they grew to a point where increases in price and cuts in productions were accepted.
Netflix lost ~25% of its value today.
 

FrankWza

Member
The folks on the M&A team at Microsoft are much smarter than you and they've done the work; you haven't.
Who cares? They needed to be smarter than Sony and Nintendo not me. Thats why haven’t they won a single console generation. Why they haven’t sold 100 million consoles. Why they need to supplement their first party studios by buying publishers. Because they weren’t able to outsmart Sony or Nintendo. That’s the point genius.
Riding the pc user base coattails" LOL Isn't that what Sony is doing now with releasing games on PC?
Every new release day and date? Nope.
They can't make those same type of massive acquisitions so they buy indie devs and port studios. That seems like the desperate actions of a fading company that can't keep up.
no. It’s the actions of a company that outplayed 1/2 of their competition for 20 years and does way more with way less. Sony can’t play at Microsoft’s buyout game because only a handful of companies can.
 
Xbox Live brought online gaming to consoles as we know it. Before that, the options on the PS2 were laughable at best. It also brought other forward thinking options like including a HDD that other consoles would copy later.

Come on now, I'm a die-hard PS2 fanboy but you're just being extremely unreasonable and biased against Xbox in your post about not bringing anything new or relevant to the table.
It's clear many here have no idea what contributions MS has brought to gaming. Their online infrastructure is second to none. Standard wireless controllers, and achievements never get mentioned despite others 'copying' those innovations happily. They had lots of foresight with console features (Ethernet only, unified memory pools, backwards compatibility).

With the state Activision was in its clear MS was really the only entity that knows gaming, could change the internal culture of the company and provide the resources to see new and old IP rejuvenated. There is an excellent chance games like Call of Duty could thrive now that it won't be forced to be annual. Maybe High Moon and Toys for Bob can make new games over being support. MS is doing things others simply can't. I highly doubt Meta, Alphabet, or Apple would have made the same moves.
 

NickFire

Member
If people didn't want to see the level of escalation we're seeing now today... well, they shouldn't have been so comfortable commending the ever increasing frequency and severity of deals Sony was making to cripple their primary competition. "Final Fantasy sells 80%+ on PlayStation anyways, so they may as well" and by extension "of course it makes sense for game X to skip Xbox, because the audience is all on PlayStation". Well, congrats... now they won't all be. The rampant desire for the glory days of PS2-era domination has led us here, and so cries about how unfair it is ring hollow.
I’m seeing these kinds of comments other places too. This notion that playstation players are responsible for consolidation is something else. I wonder though? If this is actually a hostile takeover of sorts, as in MS way of forcing other platforms to open doors to MS Gaming Division content so that the community is more inclusive, do those PS fans become hero’s overnight? Or is MS now the bad guy for Being inclusive?
 

Three

Member
He's saying it's fine for the existing big gaming brands (sony, nintendo, ms, etc) to purchase big publishers because they have a history of not destroying the hobby. There is no guarantee with an outsider.
MS was an outsider, so was Sony, so was Nintendo even, when they were making playing cards. Nobody is buying big publishers except him and he's trying to sell you that idea as a good thing with a story about the bogeyman. He is the big tech corp trying to buy the market.

If some other big tech corp entered the market it's no different and nothing suggests they will destroy it. There isn't some artificial cut off that's lapsed to when others can try and enter the market and do things differently.
 
Who cares? They needed to be smarter than Sony and Nintendo not me. Thats why haven’t they won a single console generation. Why they haven’t sold 100 million consoles. Why they need to supplement their first party studios by buying publishers. Because they weren’t able to outsmart Sony or Nintendo. That’s the point genius.

Every new release day and date? Nope.

no. It’s the actions of a company that outplayed 1/2 of their competition for 20 years and does way more with way less. Sony can’t play at Microsoft’s buyout game because only a handful of companies can.
I don't really know what you guys are arguing about. Everyone knows MS is 3rd place out of the current offerings.

Both Sony and MS are buying studios. The main reason that they're both buying studios is that it's become abundantly clear to everyone how valuable it is to have a finished and functioning team. Everyone seemed to underestimate how valuable that is (except Nintendo), and both MS and Sony have closed studios over the last gen that I think they probably wouldn't close if they knew the landscape today. MS was definitely worse in this area though.

What you can't replace is experience and corporate culture. Nintendo has the advantage because they don't fire employees often or close studios. They have people working there in the top management that were developers in the 70s. Every layer of rank has further experience with games. MS realized quite late that you can't replace that accumulation of experience over time overnight. It literally took 20 years before Playstation studios were as good as they are now. MS doesn't have time to wait 20 years to correct the mistakes of the Xbox One Mattrick era.

Also, it will take even longer than 20 years now since HD games take 5-6 years. In the past you could have a studio that got experience shipping a finished product 6x over 10 years. Now that is 1-2 games. Everyone now sees this, and so any finished and functioning studio is going to be a valuable asset and saves any competitor 20 years. Just look at Amazon struggling as well.
 
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quest

Not Banned from OT
MS was an outsider, so was Sony, so was Nintendo even, when they were making playing cards. Nobody is buying big publishers except him and he's trying to sell you that idea as a good thing with a story about the bogeyman. He is the big tech corp trying to buy the market.

If some other big tech corp entered the market it's no different and nothing suggests they will destroy it. There isn't some artificial cut off that's lapsed to when others can try and enter the market and do things differently.
What tech Corp is jumping in with local gaming with good spec hardware? None I can tell you that. It would be cloud gaming only. Microsoft for now is going to be the best option. There will be pc releases including steam. Local console releases. Google lol, Amazon lol, Facebook vr only. Apple hahaha you think they are releasing big spec devices with no margins. It be a Apple tv specs yippy.
 
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this is what microsoft had to do to level the playing field with sony. they were never gonna really compete otherwise. sony had those casuals on lock who would buy a PlayStation without even thinking about it. taking them away gives microsoft a real chance to genuinely go toe to toe with sony for marketshare. there is a good chance for them to be no 1 in the US. sony will forever own europe as long as FIFA is around.
 
They’re not. Microsoft is buying publishers and existing franchises to supplement their first party. Like I said earlier, it’s totally fair. They’re not breaking any laws. But they have to do it because they couldn’t do anything else to win.
Publishing is irrelevant to MS. They're already a publisher. Anyone at any of these companies strictly involved with publishing will likely be laid off eventually since its redundant.

All they're buying is studios, as fast as they can.
 
It's hardly just a couple of moneyhats though. Sony have been signing exclusivity deals relentlessly all last generation, and they've done them largely unanswered as a result of both Xbox having a weaker market position making it cheaper for them to do, but also because the practice of signing them is widely accepted for them, but not for MS.

There's a reason why something like Final Fantasy sells so disproportionately on PlayStation... it's because these exclusivity deals reinforce (or in some cases disrupt) audiences on a given platform, and as time goes on that becomes more difficult to undo. Sony's had Final Fantasy in their corner for a long time now, going back to Final Fantasy 7, but the series DID eventually come to Xbox day and date beginning with Final Fantasy XIII, and was starting to cultivate an audience within that ecosystem that had a desire to play JRPGs. That Final Fantasy 7 Remake got moneyhatted (for what is still an uncertain length of time in regards to Xbox) isn't a random coincidence. This type of moneyhat is a precisely targeted one to cause an entire genre of game not be viable on the platform.

There are some IP that within their sphere carry so much weight that they cause ripple effects across the genre. Sony's Street Fighter V moneyhat effectively buried the entire fighter genre on Xbox, because nobody invested in that genre was going to opt for a console that lacked Street Fighter.. and as a result other titles that weren't (or at least I'm not aware of being) moneyhats would start to skip the console also, because if nobody that's invested in that genre is opting for that console, why should the smaller, more niche IP target that console either, right?

So yes... timed exclusives very much can be used to push a competing platform out of the market, and Sony was routinely targeting games that would be the most crippling across the spectrum. Whether that be Final Fantasy (and possibly Persona?) in the JRPG space, Street Fighter in the fighting game space, the year (or two) long exclusive content deals for Destiny, and the exclusive map content for COD in the FPS space, etc... the goal was to make it so Xbox as a platform wasn't a viable choice for the majority of the market. And quite frankly, it was working and working well... hence the situation in 2016 where MS bowing out of the market entirely was a very real possibility.

When that didn't occur, Sony looked to land killer blows right away at the start of this generation. Hence the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI's timed exclusivity ahead of the consoles being released, and the murmurs of a whole slew of others to be revealed in time. And the general response here was just that it was a foregone conclusion that PS5 would just continue to build on PS4's momentum largely unimpeded. And considering the shit MS took back in 2015 when they dared to land a single comparable exclusivity deal with Rise of the Tomb Raider, that avenue of retaliation was clearly not available to them. Look how quick the clarification of the duration of exclusivity of RoTR was forced out of MS and SquareEnix, and then contrast that with Crash N'Sane Trilogy, Nier Automata, Final Fantasy 7R, KOTOR remake... or any of countless other deals where their eventual Xbox release was happily left vague as hell. That's how we're here today, because MS were either gonna commit fully and land some true heavy blows that made a real difference to the current landscape, or they were inevitably going to see their platform marginalised to the point where they had to drop out.

If people didn't want to see the level of escalation we're seeing now today... well, they shouldn't have been so comfortable commending the ever increasing frequency and severity of deals Sony was making to cripple their primary competition. "Final Fantasy sells 80%+ on PlayStation anyways, so they may as well" and by extension "of course it makes sense for game X to skip Xbox, because the audience is all on PlayStation". Well, congrats... now they won't all be. The rampant desire for the glory days of PS2-era domination has led us here, and so cries about how unfair it is ring hollow.

Microsoft has been signing timed exclusivity deals since the 360. Or does that not count? This shit has been going on for over a decade now.
So why are you surprised that Sony started doing the same shit last generation?

And nobody with half a brain, except true fanboys like timed exclusivity deals, because they're shit.
Xbox fanboys cry every time Sony signs one, and Sony fanboys cry when Xbox does it.
This is normal. The only difference is that PlayStation is a bigger brand and so will have more fanboys running around.

So please, dial it back with the sanctimonious line about how this is karmic justice for encouraging Sony to do it, as if only Sony fanboys have been cheering tribalistic bullshit for the last 20 years.

Phil Spencer and Microsoft are friends to nobody beyond their superiors and shareholders. They're playing the nice guy for now, but as soon as they have the ascendancy they'll do as any other private corporation does.
 

Three

Member
What tech Corp is jumping in with local gaming with good spec hardware? None I can tell you that. It would be cloud gaming only. Microsoft for now is going to be the best option. There will be pc releases including steam. Local console releases. Google lol, Amazon lol, Facebook vr only. Apple hahaha you thunk they are releasing big spec devices with no margins. It be a Apple tv specs yippy.

Why must they release a console even? Not having a walled garden locked off console doesn't mean not having local gaming on good spec hardware. They are developing games on an open platform. PC games. You can run Amazon games like this with specs higher than a measly Series S.



He's trying to paint a picture of a bogeyman when there wasn't any so that him buying up all the publishers seems like a good thing and him a saviour. Anybody that actually falls for it is fooling themselves.

Facebook and Amazon didn't even want to buy them up. MS approached Activision in 2020 to buy them. Activision wasn't interested. Activision in 2021 approached Facebook to sell, Facebook didn't buy them, Activision approached MS. MS bought them. Really he is trying to make it seem like he is fighting dragons that don't exist when he's the dragon.
 
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FrankWza

Member
Publishing is irrelevant to MS. They're already a publisher. Anyone at any of these companies strictly involved with publishing will likely be laid off eventually since its redundant.

All they're buying is studios, as fast as they can.
I never meant that had anything to do with why they bought them. They bought publishers because they’re the studio owners and rights holders. A pub can have dozens of studios. Buying a studio will be just that. They just gained 20 from 2 pub buyouts.
 
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