I get that it feels like there's a symmetry to make debate-club arguments easier here, but you're breaking it down from the perspective of fans.
You're right, I am. I even iterate on that several times in the post. Truthfully I have no issues with these acquisitions and understand why they are being done, for what likely purposes etc. The meat of that post was to look at the folks who used certain flawed talking points to villainize certain other gaming acquisitions within the past year, and see if they would keep a similar perspective if viewing other acquisitions that might fall into grounds of their talking points, or if they'd conveniently ignore that since it deals with a different platform.
It's a challenge to a certain slice of the fanbase and gaming community who are relatively well-knowing of these events as they follow them on enthusiast platforms, not a challenge or call-out to the companies making the acquisitions from a place of personal distaste or offence because, again, these acquisitions aren't doing anything truly unethical or illegal, and don't fill my pockets with cash, so it's kind of whatever to me.
Fans don't know all the facts. Nixxes has relationships with all kinds of companies, but unless they get credited in public on the package or in the co-developer field, fans don't get the info. It'd be like if Factor 5 had announced way back on Wii that it was working with Nintendo, and everybody went, "Holy shit, Rogue is coming!", and then we found out it was them porting Netflix Instant Streaming services. There are things the fans get to know, and then there are things the fans can't handle being told because it makes it harder to get an understanding when they check the wiki.
True, but the people I'm specifically talking about here do know enough of the facts, and have the means to research what they don't know. These are people on enthusiast websites and forums, or who spend lots of time on Twitter or certain Youtube channels talking about console news relatively in-depth. Some even work at gaming companies or have connections to the gaming industry.
In more than a few of those cases it's a matter of them choosing to be willingly ignorant either in knowing certain information, or publicly presenting their POV out of ignorance when privately they know that publicly displayed opinion doesn't hold much water.
You're also overstating Sony's messaging to fans on acquisitions. Maybe you can get from interviews that the purpose of their acquisitions is as a reward for fruitful relationships, and that is the nice part of it in public and is heartening for the companies involved, but the purpose of any acquisition is to grow business. Acquiring a technology studio helps grow business. The fact that this is a known technology studio by fans in the PC sector complicates the messaging (there are a lot of companies Sony could have acquired that could never have filled, like when
MS acquired Beam and most fans didn't notice until it became Mixer and pushed against Twitch,) but the purpose of Sony acquiring Nixxes is being made really clear in all the messaging of it joining the Technology Services Group. It's not supposed to make fans happy, it's supposed to make Sony's TCS Group stronger for the PlayStation business.
Sony's direct messaging definitely does not play into the talking points I was bringing up, you are right about that. But they are also not shy to softly/subtly ride a certain type of messaging that's generated from certain parts of the fanbase or media if they perceive it as a benefit. We saw them do exactly this last year with the whole cross-gen chaos; they saw how gamers and the media were dragging Microsoft through the mud for openly stating their cross-gen plans, how it was a detriment to "true next-gen game design", etc.
Sony saw these things and played into them (as subtly as possible, mind) to their brand's benefit, refusing to acknowledge leaks of possible cross-gen 1P titles even as early as April/May of last year (the GT7 retail leak from a Spanish retailer that listed PS5 and PS4, yet at the PlayStation Experience event in June and later marketing trailers PS4 was not mentioned and one even said "PS5 Exclusive", despite us now knowing it's indeed coming to PS4 as well), and letting several of their games' initial reveals give the impression they would be PS5 exclusives, including Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok.
You can't simply ignore that and then shift the entire onus on the fanbase and gamers as a whole. These companies can get a read on general/macro discourse in the gaming community and make adjustments. We obviously see it when they make genuinely stupid decisions and quickly have to course-correct (i.e Microsoft trying a 100% price increase on XBL Gold), but it can also manifest in more subtle ways, as mentioned above.
In general, that's your point, that business is business, and you're right about that.
However, acquiring a major publisher was a business-upheaving move on Microsoft's part, changing the dynamics of outlook at every other game IP holder, because now they're not just producing with the goal of growing their own business, they're shooting for visibility on the exchange market as their competition gets acquired to align with one of the major corporations' service businesses. Not everybody can get bought, of course, but look at the film/tv entertainment market, where if you're not inside the fold of a major streaming service, you are at a disadvantage right now. Much like Disney absorbing Fox, Microsoft's Zenimax deal is an event that shakes the trajectory of the business.
How is this fundamentally different from what Sony did back in the mid-1990s' when they purchased major 3P developers and locked in exclusivity contracts with them in ways Sega and Nintendo both never did and never even conceived to do, other than the size of the companies involved? Back then some of Sony's moves on that front could've been framed in the business-upheaval context to Sega, Nintendo, NEC, SNK, Atari etc. gamers as some Sony gamers are seeing the Zenimax/Bethesda one today...but it's all essentially the same thing.
They only
SEEM like such drastic shakeups because in both cases the platforms holders are leveraging their resources to compete in a way that is otherwise 100% legal and ethical in terms of respecting the rights of peoples involved or affected. So if Sega/Nintendo etc. gamers who complained on Usenet threads in the mid '90s were wrong about Sony then, then Sony gamers complaining on places like here, ERA etc. today are wrong about Microsoft now. You don't get to selectively choose which practice is right or wrong simply on arbitrary things like the size of the acquisitions, or their histories or whatever, when the grounds of what constitute as monopolistic practices (which actual rampant consolidation lead to) don't even
BEGIN to be approached with the type of deals Sony made then (and have made since) and Microsoft have made now with Zenimax (or could potentially make in the future with a similarly-sized acquisition).
It's a capitalist market, if you have the money and resources you'd be stupid to not leverage them to compete. It's not Microsoft's job to ensure companies like Sony can adjust to changing market circumstances, just like how it wasn't Sony's responsibility to ensure companies like Nintendo or Sega adopted to the market once Sony started to flex their financial and resource capital. Laws aren't being broken, people aren't having their rights infringed, aren't being violated/killed etc. as part of these deals or consequences of them. Companies aren't being ravaged by a hostile takeover, either.
So there's really nothing else to say on that front except for the people miffed about it (particularly those who are stubborn for fanboyish reasons of selfishness to placate online console warring), to suck it up and deal with it
...It's also a mind-fuck for fans, as now they have to choose the right box if they want to get their Elder Scrolls and Dooms and maybe Sonices and Guilty Gearses. But that's only the tip of the iceberg, or the chiseled chunk of the uncut gem if you prefer. (I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing ultimately if an arms war really does break out, I have personal feelings but that's just me, I do know that the gaming biz will be different after it, and gaming fans will be affected in some way.)
Well, I understand that aspect of it and how it can be mentally frustrating for some gamers, particularly the ones who just want to play these games somewhere where they've been playing them, and don't get into misguided conversations online about the nature of acquisitions in ways that seem like console warring.
But again, it's not like platforms haven't lost access to games before. Should we go back in time and champion the Nintendo gamers who lost out on Final Fantasy, Suikoden, Dragon Quest etc. when those games went PlayStation-exclusive? Should we champion Xbox gamers who lost out on SFV when that went PlayStation-exclusive (console wise)? As long as multiple consoles exist gamers will ALWAYS have to pick and choose on what games they may or may not lose out on, based on what console(s) they get.
It's been that way since the days of the 2600 and it won't end until Trip Hawkins gets his wish and we have a one-console industry...if that ever happens, mind you.
(*Also, agree with you in honoring to the PC fans who raised the profile of Nixxes by recognizing quality work, it's a shame for them that the company is taken off the table as a porting studio for 3rd Parties if you care for their potential work beyond the Sony products your platform might be getting.)
Yeah, it sucks for them for sure, but again just like other gamers they will just have to adjust to things as they are now. IMO if someone's a genuine fan of a developer's content or a certain franchise, they won't suddenly stop playing those games just because they aren't on the platform they used to be on. They tend to follow where the games go, especially when enough of them transition from one platform to another.
In Nixxes' case it's not quite the same because they haven't actually made their own games, and I don't think PC gamers are suddenly going to stop buying their ports just because they won't likely be doing ports to PC for companies outside of Sony; they're
still getting ports of games and those ports are
still being done by Nixxes, so if the games themselves are appealing, PC gamers will buy them.
Not mention games on PC are cheaper and the contradicting statement from Sony that 1st party games are best on playstation.....
