Genshin is just an example, the Myth is another. We now have power house Asian developers producing AAA's. Thinking they have nothing to fear from competition is the kind of thinking that got Atari and Sega where they are today.I've been playing Genshin Impact for the last couple of days and, to be honest, I've pretty much been blown away by the sheer quality and depth they've managed to put into it. I can only guess they have huge teams working on these games to ensure the level of detail and quantity of stuff realised in the world. And we got that first look at the stunning Myth game earlier this year. That got me to thinking about the viability of western studios like Bethesda when they are put into competition with Asian studios.
If more, and the trend is hapoening, AAA Asian games start to be produced and take on a western flavour I think that the ZeniMax swarm are going to to start to struggle to compete financially to build worlds as well realised and complex as their competitors can. I can imagine that the thought of this must have swam through the boardrooms of Bethesda et al before now. Maybe the sale is more of a case of survival for them than it is to stand in support of MS. It's a short time win for MS as it stands, they need to recoup the 7.5B and if the market starts to fill with viable alternatives then I can't see happening.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if Bethesda et al disappears from the Sony market I really don't think anyone will care. There are always going to be alternatives and maybe these won't take the modding community to fix them.
Not this specific game, this business model. I am also a little bit worried about the terrifying popularity of games in the free-to-play to freemium to play-to-win spectrum, and how it may influence publishers to direct devs to implement more of these types of mechanics.
Maybe?
I don't think I'd characterise it as defensive. Just that the 'pay Gamepass releases from Bethesda' you suggested isn't a secure strategy.
This is what I originally assumed Microsoft would inevitably do once I'd had time to think about the acquisition, because it seemingly drives demand to be in the PC or Xbox platforms while allowing Microsoft to tap into revenue from what could be another massive Sony console use rbase. But most non-partisan industry insiders are of the view that Rise of the Tomb Raider taught publishers a valuable lesson about spacing releases too far apart. Firstly, marketing is one of the most expensive aspects of launching a game and you don't want to have to do it twice plus for anything story-driven it's very difficult to the late arrivers to avoid spoilers which can also diminish interest in the game not to mention people burning out on the buzz without experiencing the game, or worse, having been satisfied just watching somebody else stream it.
On PS6 in 2030
That approach incurs costs. A double hit for marketing unless your marketing is very generic plus it's staggering your engineering effort on any one platform. While it may be necessary for some small teams to stagger development and release across platforms, it's generally not advantageous to to do this for arbitrary reasons. So what would Bethesda do in this theoretical situation? Develop and maintain Xbox, PC and PS5 versions at the same time not not release on PS5 making that maintaining a waste of time? Or not begin porting to PS5 until later when Microsoft are ready to release it on that platform which could be after the team have moved on to their next game?. Neither sound good.
I wasn't sure if they were the same across PS4 and XO, but I guess there's no difference.