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PlayStation's spending spree is radically different to Xbox's

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
Bethesda softworks publishes Arkane and Tango games and is owned by Zenimax which Microsoft purchased. I have to think you're trolling because a simple google search would have lifted that ignorance.
My statement is literally correct. I knew this. The poster I was responding to didn't. He thought the games were DEVELOPED by Bethesda which is incorrect.
 

Elog

Member
In short: Sony is spending money smartly and the game production is a testament to that. Sony goes after talent that they have vetted for years.

MS is trying to close a gap in relevant IPs and they have to pay more upfront since they have not created the value themselves due to low internal productivity in the gaming division. Hopefully MS can start to nurture talent themselves and create their own high-value content to a larger degree than today. That is ultimately what they want, i.e. they want to become what Sony already is in terms of talent and IPs. They are playing catch-up and throwing money at the problem (which is a notoriously weak strategy in an industry where people matter more than balance sheets).
 
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Hezekiah

Banned
The fact that they are hunting for studios and bought Housemarque and the other guys that nobody knew existed.

Also the fact that they are wasting money on timed exclusivity for every Bethesda game they could money hat. MS just bought them straight up because they have the cash, Sony doesn’t.

Now, I know you know already Sony doesn’t have the money so you’re asking for « proof » to keep the denial going.
This kid's gotta be about 14 😅.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Correction - Sony cant.

And we talking about whole company not just purely Xbox and PS division. MS will still remain 2trillion dollar company without Xbox but Sony will be dead without PS. That's the main difference. Sony dependent on gaming like Nintendo to survive but MS can kill Xbox even though its making billions every year and still nothing will change for them.

Fact Sony can't even afford their own data centres and server farm and need AWS or now Azure to keep their online services running proves how wealthy Sony is as a company lol

Sony's PlayStation division accounts for about a third of Sony's revenue. So saying Sony would be "dead without PS" is simply not true. Azure doesn't exist solely for the purposes of Xbox. Why would Sony build data centers across the globe just for PlayStation? Sony isn't in the cloud business. The is the same as the fact that Microsoft doesn't make everything they use in their products. The outsource to others when it makes sense.
 
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kuncol02

Banned
Starfield lol. That could be a thing. And MS losing handily is entirely relevant. Sony doesn't have to. They are winning. That may be hard for you to accept but it's empirically true. MS is throwing billions out there to try and stay in the game. Sony doesn't need to. Nintendo doesn't need to either. MS is desperate. Why haven't they bought someone like epic then? If they have all the money in the world?
What exactly value Epic would be for MS? What would it bring for XBox?
 

Greggy

Member
My statement is literally correct. I knew this. The poster I was responding to didn't. He thought the games were DEVELOPED by Bethesda which is incorrect.
The games were developed by a studio that was purchased at the same time as Bethesda when Ms bought Zenimax, so you are the one being disingenuous. It doesn't matter which Zenimax studio developed Deathloop. It now belongs to MS and the sequel will likely be exclusive.
 

kuncol02

Banned
I discussed that with another poster. Read the thread if you want to know.
And you didn't answered.
What Epic would bring for XBox that would justify buying them for 30-45bln? Fortnite is popular because it's multi platform (including phones). Similar with unreal engine. They basically don't have any strong IP outside of Fortnite, people who created their biggest hits aren't working there anymore. What would MS get from that? Why would they want to buy them?
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
The games were developed by a studio that was purchased at the same time as Bethesda when Ms bought Zenimax, so you are the one being disingenuous. It doesn't matter which Zenimax studio developed Deathloop. It now belongs to MS and the sequel will likely be exclusive.
It does matter. Bethesda games are buggy incomplete messes quite often. Arkane studios don't have that rep. It belongs to MS now that's true but I again will point out that the ignorant poster thought it was developed by Bethesda. Which was incorrect in every way. Bethesda doesn't make games like deatloop.
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
And you didn't answered.
What Epic would bring for XBox that would justify buying them for 30-45bln? Fortnite is popular because it's multi platform (including phones). Similar with unreal engine. They basically don't have any strong IP outside of Fortnite, people who created their biggest hits aren't working there anymore. What would MS get from that? Why would they want to buy them?
Minecraft was bought by itself for over a billion. It's multiplatform. Fortnite plus unreal engine is worth much more than that. That would be huge for MS. You're full of it if you think otherwise. The original point goes back to if they have all the money to spend in the xbox division why not buy epic? The answer is of course they don't have all the money. So the whole 2 trillion market cap for ms is largely irrelevant to xbox. They aren't going to piss money away.
 
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Sony's PlayStation division accounts for about a third of Sony's revenue. So saying Sony would be "dead without PS" is simply not true. Azure doesn't exist solely for the purposes of Xbox. Why would Sony build data centers across the globe just for PlayStation? Sony isn't in the cloud business. The is the same as the fact that Microsoft doesn't make everything they use in their products. The outsource to others when it makes sense.
Not dead, but a shallow shell.
It's 30% of their revenue and 35% of their profits.

Especially as their financial division is not their core technology business.
 

kuncol02

Banned
Minecraft was bought by itself for over a billion. It's multiplatform. Fortnite plus unreal engine is worth much more than that. That would be huge for MS. You're full of it if you think otherwise. The original point goes back to if they have all the money to spend in the xbox division why not buy epic? The answer is of course they don't have all the money. So the whole 2 trillion market cap for ms is largely irrelevant to xbox. They aren't going to piss money away.
Epic is not worth 40 times more than Minecraft was.
Why not buy epic? Because there are better ways for spending that money. They are more expensive than SEGA, Square, Capcom and Ubisoft together.
And obviously biggest reason for not buying Epic is fact that they don't want to be bought.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Not dead, but a shallow shell.
It's 30% of their revenue and 35% of their profits.

Especially as their financial division is not their core technology business.

Which means 65% of their profits came from other segments. You can call that a "shallow shell" if you want, but fact is financial, electronics, imaging, music and movie segments still bring in the majority of revenue/profit for Sony.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Spin it how you want but the fact is Sony simply can’t afford to spend the same as MS so they need to think smaller and be more cautious.

MS spent $7.5 billion on Zenimax. Could Sony spend that? Yes. But it’d wipe off about 6% of their total valuation and it’d take them about a month to make it back.

Don’t think that sounds too bad? let’s compare it to MS: when they spent $7.5 billion their market cap dropped about 0.36% and it’d take them about 8 days to make it back. They could spend another $7.5 billion today and make it back by next Wednesday. It’s basically nothing to them.

Another example of how much money MS has: if MS bought Sony it take 6 months to make back what they spent. Other way around?? It’d take Sony 16 years to make enough money to buy MS and another 2 to get back to where they are now.

But why does the comparision always have to be a $7.5 Billion purchase? Why can't yall bring up other potential purchases that'll cost $3 Billion. That's also a huge buy, that would signal that Sony is in an arms race. And why are you treating this as a dick measuring contest with who has more money?

Why do you care that MS has more money than Sony? They've always had more money than Sony, since the year 2000. That money has NEVER "made" MS the better gaming company (in my opinion of course).
 

Greggy

Member
It does matter. Bethesda games are buggy incomplete messes quite often. Arkane studios don't have that rep. It belongs to MS now that's true but I again will point out that the ignorant poster thought it was developed by Bethesda. Which was incorrect in every way. Bethesda doesn't make games like deatloop.
With all respect, Sony was also moneyhatting Starfield which is made by Bethesda, not just Deathloop and TGW. I will leave this pointless discussion now because we both know your argument that Bethesda had no value to Sony but Tango did is ridiculous.
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
With all respect, Sony was also moneyhatting Starfield which is made by Bethesda, not just Deathloop and TGW. I will leave this pointless discussion now because we both know your argument that Bethesda had no value to Sony but Tango did is ridiculous.
I never made the argument you're thinking but go on in peace.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
The whole "because MS can afford it and Playstation can't" is just a bunch of fanboy drivel. Blowing smoke up people's asses. It's an excuse too, because basically it's a soothing tactic for fanboys who can always covince themselves that "if MS didn't buy them it's because they don't want to".

History shows no signs of Sony going for a publisher, even when Square was in dire financial troubles they didn't buy them and instead invested in them.

Microsoft wanted to buy Nintendo for christ sakes... if that doesn't tell you anything, then you say congrats to your parents, they managed to place two eyes on a piece of wood, *knock knock* and a hollow one at that.

A bit of MS acquisitions history:

Bungie was bought in 2000, Halo Combat Evolved came out in 2001. Didn't start as a Xbox game at all, it was turned into one late in development, no prior connection to MS.
Rare was bought in 2002. No prior relationship with MS.
Lionhead was bought in 2006. Two years after their only collab. (trivia: A lot of people left to form Media Molecule).
They bought the Gears of War IP from EPIC.
Double Fine was bought in 2019. Prior collab with MS was in 2012, for Kinect.
Obsidian in 2018. No prior collabs.
Ninja Theory in 2018, 15 years after their only collab, Kung Fu Chaos in 2003, when they were owned by Argonaut games.
Playground Studios in 2018, after working extensively with MS.
Inxile Entertainment in 2018, no prior collabs?
Compulsion games in 2018, no prior collabs...

And of course... Zenimax and all that IP that MS had no business in helping create. Saying they worked closely is just more fanboy drivel, yeah MS and Sony work closely with a lot of publishers....

Basically they needed a bunch of studios to fill gamepass, and they needed shit to happen fast so they went out there and started dropping offers on studios they considered would help increase the first party pipeline and IP to feed subscriptions. Any other story is snake oil.
 
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SCB3

Member
Still waiting on Switch Pro, Playstation's summer show and its not even a Wednesday yet for MS to buy SEGA

Fuck me, 2 out of the 3 for this week, must be the Magic touch and its still not even Wednesday
 
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martino

Member
Sony's PlayStation division accounts for about a third of Sony's revenue. So saying Sony would be "dead without PS" is simply not true. Azure doesn't exist solely for the purposes of Xbox. Why would Sony build data centers across the globe just for PlayStation? Sony isn't in the cloud business. The is the same as the fact that Microsoft doesn't make everything they use in their products. The outsource to others when it makes sense.
What about Bravia core ? It will probably need some of those too.
 
PlayStation acquires talent to make AAA games. Xbox buys IPs to turn them into Game Pass GaaS games.

Xbox is making AAA games too, this notion that all the games will be GaaS is fanboy-driven nonsense. If everybody is spending all of their time playing 1-2 GaaS games, there's no reason for them to subscribe to Game Pass, it literally doesn't make any sense for Xbox's goals. People will subscribe to Game Pass for it's great variety of games and 1st party games are the major selling point of Game Pass
 

Greggy

Member
The whole "because MS can afford it and Playstation can't" is just a bunch of fanboy drivel. Blowing smoke up people's asses. It's an excuse too, because basically it's a soothing tactic for fanboys who can always covince themselves that "if MS didn't buy them it's because they don't want to".

History shows no signs of Sony going for a publisher, even when Square was in dire financial troubles they didn't buy them and instead invested in them.

Microsoft wanted to buy Nintendo for christ sakes... if that doesn't tell you anything, then you say congrats to your parents, they managed to place two eyes on a piece of wood, *knock knock* and a hollow one at that.

A bit of MS acquisitions history:

Bungie was bought in 2000, Halo Combat Evolved came out in 2001. Didn't start as a Xbox game at all, it was turned into one late in development, no prior connection to MS.
Rare was bought in 2002. No prior relationship with MS.
Lionhead was bought in 2006. Two years after their only collab. (trivia: A lot of people left to form Media Molecule).
They bought the Gears of War IP from EPIC.
Double Fine was bought in 2019. Prior collab with MS was in 2012, for Kinect.
Obsidian in 2018. No prior collabs.
Ninja Theory in 2018, 15 years after their only collab, Kung Fu Chaos in 2003, when they were owned by Argonaut games.
Playground Studios in 2018, after working extensively with MS.
Inxile Entertainment in 2018, no prior collabs?
Compulsion games in 2018, no prior collabs...

And of course... Zenimax and all that IP that MS had no business in helping create. Saying they worked closely is just more fanboy drivel, yeah MS and Sony work closely with a lot of publishers....

Basically they needed a bunch of studios to fill gamepass, and they needed shit to happen fast so they went out there and started dropping offers on studios they considered would help increase the first party pipeline and IP to feed subscriptions. Any other story is snake oil.
And the crime here is "feeding their first party pipeline"? I bet this is coming from the same people who were making thread after thread about how MS has no exclusives. Bring the goal post back. Thanks.
 
Xbox is making AAA games too, this notion that all the games will be GaaS is fanboy-driven nonsense. If everybody is spending all of their time playing 1-2 GaaS games, there's no reason for them to subscribe to Game Pass, it literally doesn't make any sense for Xbox's goals. People will subscribe to Game Pass for it's great variety of games and 1st party games are the major selling point of Game Pass
I'll wait and see what those "AAA" games turn out be. It's not like they won't stuff them full of microtrans anyways.
 

Shmunter

Member
Xbox is making AAA games too, this notion that all the games will be GaaS is fanboy-driven nonsense. If everybody is spending all of their time playing 1-2 GaaS games, there's no reason for them to subscribe to Game Pass, it literally doesn't make any sense for Xbox's goals. People will subscribe to Game Pass for it's great variety of games and 1st party games are the major selling point of Game Pass
To make money on gamepass the game needs a players attention to rack up engagement numbers. Rocking through a 10h game once will not make a dev cash as a game that people play repeatedly. This is one thing people forget in such a model, sale are no longer relevant, playtime is.
 

Derktron

Banned
Lol, mods really don't like it when someone has a difference in opinion and is calling out the people who make these useless threads. Okay.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
And the crime here is "feeding their first party pipeline"? I bet this is coming from the same people who were making thread after thread about how MS has no exclusives. Bring the goal post back. Thanks.

Crime? Who said anything about a crime? I'm just sharing factual knowledge here, directly related to the premise of the OP's article. It's a certain subset of console warriors that seem to take a big issue with said facts, and act bothered by the correct analysis that Sony and Microsoft go about their business in different ways.

You can keep the goal post so you can practice own goals in your free time.
 

Hawke502

Member
Crime? Who said anything about a crime? I'm just sharing factual knowledge here, directly related to the premise of the OP's article. It's a certain subset of console warriors that seem to take a big issue with said facts, and act bothered by the correct analysis that Sony and Microsoft go about their business in different ways.

You can keep the goal post so you can practice own goals in your free time.
Facts? Saying that "history shows no sign of Sony going for a publisher" is not a fact
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
In short: Sony is spending money smartly and the game production is a testament to that. Sony goes after talent that they have vetted for years.

MS is trying to close a gap in relevant IPs and they have to pay more upfront since they have not created the value themselves due to low internal productivity in the gaming division. Hopefully MS can start to nurture talent themselves and create their own high-value content to a larger degree than today. That is ultimately what they want, i.e. they want to become what Sony already is in terms of talent and IPs. They are playing catch-up and throwing money at the problem (which is a notoriously weak strategy in an industry where people matter more than balance sheets).
Great post. I do think that BUYING studios like Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Undead Labs and Playground Games was a much better strategy than buying exclusives like Titanfall and Rise of Tomb Raider. To me, thats considered throwing money at a problem. Buying studios is more of an investment.

I do agree that they had to make the zenimax purchase due to the lack of homegrown IPs. I think Sea of Thieves is the only next gen IP that came from MS first party last gen which is pretty crazy. Coalition had a Spy game in development that was shown off at E3 2013. Scalebound was an MS IP IIRC. But both were cancelled. I hope MS has learned from those mistakes because IPs take a long time to blossom. Not every IP launches like TLOU and Ghost of Tsushima as Sony found out with Days Gone and Death Stranding.

Looking ahead. I see Coalition still making Gears 6. Undead Labs making State of Decay 3. Playground Games making Fable. Ninja Theory is making Hellbalde 2. Initiative Perfect Dark. 343 supporting Halo for the next decade. Even Obsidian is making Outer Worlds 2 for some reason instead of focusing on getting Avowed out asap. I really hope they give these studios a bit more leeway when it comes to new IPs. Yes, they are risky but you gotta take that chance in this industry or it might end up costing you $7.5 billion.
 

graywolf323

Gold Member
Which pub have they acquired?
way back when Sony first got into gaming (before they even released the first PlayStation) they bought Psygnosis (in 1993) and for some reason people keep throwing that out lately as if it's the equivalent to Microsoft buying Bethesda ~20 years after releasing the first Xbox

edit: another key difference is Psygnosis, even after the PS1 launched, kept releasing games on other platforms until 1999 (so basically the PS1's entire gen)
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Less than 3 years ago that they spent $2 billion on EMI. This year they have $1.2 billion acquisition of Crunchyroll, presuming regulatory approval.
Oh ya forgot about Crunchyroll.

So in the past handful of years, $3.2 billion on music and anime alone. And that even excludes the starting portion of EMI they bought 10 years ago, which if you add it to the pot is probably more like $4 billion-ish.

They got the money.
 
Which means 65% of their profits came from other segments. You can call that a "shallow shell" if you want, but fact is financial, electronics, imaging, music and movie segments still bring in the majority of revenue/profit for Sony.
Imagine Microsoft without Windows or Office.
That would be comparable in terms of revenue and profit loss.
Would that be the same Microsoft or a shallow shell?
 

Topher

Gold Member
Imagine Microsoft without Windows or Office.
That would be comparable in terms of revenue and profit loss.
Would that be the same Microsoft or a shallow shell?

It would still be Microsoft. Obviously not exactly the same, but still Microsoft.
 

Hawke502

Member
way back when Sony first got into gaming (before they even released the first PlayStation) they bought Psygnosis (in 1993) and for some reason people keep throwing that out lately as if it's the equivalent to Microsoft buying Bethesda ~20 years after releasing the first Xbox

edit: another key difference is Psygnosis, even after the PS1 launched, kept releasing games on other platforms until 1999 (so basically the PS1's entire gen)
Who said that is equivalent? I didnt, i just pointed out that its false that Sony hasnt a history in buying publishers
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
It does matter. Bethesda games are buggy incomplete messes quite often. Arkane studios don't have that rep. It belongs to MS now that's true but I again will point out that the ignorant poster thought it was developed by Bethesda. Which was incorrect in every way. Bethesda doesn't make games like deatloop.
Doom is a buggy mess?
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
This is true, but it would be foolish that the Zenimax aquisitions has not influenced sony at all. After all there USP is there games.
 
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