I didn’t claim it was smart, or good. Just if that’s the road they go (I don’t think they will) people won’t be able to hate them anymore.
That would be like hating puppies, and nobody can hate puppies. They just want to give you all the love they can for very little in return.
You know if Nintendo or Sony were in the same position there is no chance in hell you see them on other platforms (well except maybe Pc in Sony’s case.)
They are more like cats, and it’s Ok to hate cats.
If a puppy tried biting me in the junk, I might have to smack 'em
People who think Bethesda games are coming to PS when Phil Spencer himself said that he doesn't need PS to recoup the cost and taking into consideration that a lot of Xbox exec salary is based on the growth of Game Pass, so putting games on PS without a way to subscribe to Game Pass on PS5 is moot. There's also a lot of deluded people who think that Sony will retaliate with an acquisition of a publisher. Sony will need to spend 10B+ on a publisher that is in the stock market and there's a decent chance that any large publisher that Sony tries to acquire (Square Enix) could be outbid by MS, Tencent.
Sony may have an advantage in console sales and 1st parties, but in terms of financial power, they are at a significant disadvantage and financial power is only what matters in acquisitions, not relationships.
This should be drilled into people's heads more. I'm pretty sure Sony was one of the other companies likely in earlier bids for Zenimax, but when companies the size of Google, Amazon or Microsoft start to put more pressure on the bids, there's no real conceivable way Sony can keep up without dipping into using their own stocks, and that can bring its own complications (FWIW I believe Microsoft paid as a mix of cash & stocks, but they have a lot more of both to draw from to justify a purchase this big).
I think the effective shuttering of Japan Studio is probably part of Sony's refocusing to push harder on a smaller range of more expansive 1P content because as the years go on, it will get harder and harder to buy timed exclusivity for decent prices, so they have to rely even more on their 1P. Larger budgets and scope per game, but less output, it will be interesting to see how it goes. In time they can probably expand the quantity of 1P content to cover certain genres and gameplay styles the usual 1P games don't.
salt for what?
i'm a pc gamer and happy owner of a game pass.
but would be dishonest to deny that Ms relevance in the market has diminished drammatically thanks to their moronic decisions when marketing the xbone and badly managed first party studios.
I won't pretend that MS didn't lose mindshare and marketshare last gen, because they definitely did. However, it's not worth exaggerating that to the point as if they have no market relevance whatsoever. If that were the case, they would not have bothered with 9th-gen systems whatsoever, and probably would not have pushed forward with Gamepass/Xcloud, nor made these studio purchases.
They've been making a gradual recovery from the mistakes of 2013-2016, and now they've made a massive purchase showing their intent to compete with Sony's 1P output even more seriously, arguably the most serious they've ever been on that front. And apparently, that scares a lot of the same people who were always saying they wanted a more competitive MS (but then you realize that was not what they actually wanted, they just wanted to appear as if it was something they desired).
