Of course isn’t. Both companies do what they have too to stay on top. Sony does it better.
Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
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Of course isn’t. Both companies do what they have too to stay on top. Sony does it better.
Microsoft passed on GTA III exclusivity too.And again, you'll find plenty of posts complaining about how Sony had a six months release window on PS2. Just WTaF.
Sony swooping in, picking up games that Microsoft consciously passed on, those tricksy Sony bastards.
Sony tried for Starfield exclusivity too
And then were rumored to buy Zenimax
Damn MS swooping in and picking up games that Sony consciously passed on, those tricky Hobbits... wait Sony bastards !
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According the reports in your links, Sony didn't pass on Starfield or Zenimax. These were negotiations that were unsuccessful. That's different from having some great IP being offered to Microsoft on a plate, and Microsoft turning it down. But I'd suggest heeding Shifty's post and moving past it.
You will always see the trillion-dollar Microsoft as some scrappy underdog. You do you.
Listen you can posit something but that doesn't make it true. You want the discussion to end but look back. I am not the one who brought it up again. There are multiple people speaking about spiderman and MS passing on it and ms fans being hurt by it.
You say that Sony has created exclusives. Yes they have with companies they have bought . Ms has done the same with companies they have bought. I have enjoyed many of them the last couple of years. Again we are at the heart of the issue. People wax poetically on what Sony has done and dismiss what Ms has done. We can all have bias and that is fine but its a bit to much when stuff lkie that shows up
You want to let the Spiderman stuff go through but Sony didn't acquire a studio and then create exclusives. The studio created a title that sony had an ip for and then they bought the company when the game was successful. Sony could have used any one of their internal studios to make spiderman instead of testing out the waters with the ip on a third party company and buying the company when it was successful. Notice how a simple change of how its stated which is more factual makes what they did different ? Also isn't that more in line with what people are saying about MS ? Oh ms should create their own studios to compete with sony? But here we have one of sony's most popular ips and one of their newest and they used a third party to do it and then bought that third party.
So again you can disagree with me which by the way I find the way you are trying paint it a bit insulting ( If you don't get it, you don't get it (agree to the perspective)). But again you take zero issues at least here with the same spiderman argument rehashed by others
And there you go, the answer. For most of the last 20 years, the story has been that "Sony does it better".
You want Xbox to do better? Then stop handing the division to MS bean counters and hire an industry veteran from outside the company to run it. Remember the success of the Xbox360? Do you remember who was in charge of Xbox at the time? Peter Moore. They recently had the chance to do a similar thing when they hired Sony Veteran Phil Harrison, he was part of the team that made the PS2 huge and if he had been leading Xbox things could have been different. But instead they hired an MS man, Phil Spencer, and Harrison eventually left to go to Google and lead their failed Stadia project.
I mean Phil Spencer had done a good job of turning things around at Xbox recently though. But I think they hired the wrong "Phil" lol
Honestly I find no reasoning in your arguments. You are constantly trying to cut and saw the events until you give the narrative you want to convey, no matter how absurd and different they are in reality.
From Sony "passing on great opportunities offered by third parties" like Starfield, to Sony purchasing "big third party studios" that supposedly had "such a huge presence on multiplatform support equal" to Zenimax and ABK to EU regulators trying to "sabotage big US tech companies like MS" to promote their own.
Just let it go man.
So you believe this is the first time, Sony try to buy Insomniac. Sony work with Insomniac since 1998 and 23 games on the 38 games they made, they were founded in 1994 and released games exclusively on Playstation consoles until 2012. Insomniac game executives wanted to be independent but it was more and more difficult. They tried to work with EA for Fuse, with Microsoft with Sunset Overdrive, some AA game and on multiple AR/VR games with Occulus and Magic Leap.
They choose Sony when they understood it was the best partner they worked with. And they tried everything big AAA publisher with EA, other platform holder with Microsoft, VR with Occulus, AR with Magic Leap and some AA game on PC and smartphone. They tried to create their own IP with Sunset overdrive and it was a failure. They proposed Sunset Overdrive to Sony but they wanted to own the IP. Sony doesn't want to work on original IP without been the owner since the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro fiasco.
Sony did not buy any publisher and only studios. Sony didn't buy any third party IP to make them exclusive. And out of Bungie every studio worked on Sony IP.
There is nothing comparable to what Microsoft has done with Bethesda and try to do with Activision-Blizzard. Activison-Blizzard is under regulator scrutiny because this is the biggest third party publisher.
EDIT: And most of Insomniac games out of Sony were not big commercial success. Sony needed Insomniac to share the same vision because they bought talent. If after buying the studio 70% of the employee decided to quit, it would have been a huge problem for Sony. Insomiac Games didn't have valuable IP like Elder Scroll, Fallout, Doom, Diablo or Call of Duty when Sony bought the company.
All Insomniac Games AAA games made with Sony were commercial success not huge like Spiderman but they were profitable. Fuse and Sunset Overdrive were commercial failure.
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Yeah apparently he forgot about this. I'm sure at some point Sony will be trying to buy Epic Games again... 1% at a time. lol
This is what I am talking about with people waxing poetically for Sony. Sony worked with Insomniac for many years you are correct and they were exclusive. But then they weren't. Between 2012 and even up through the purchase (since games were at different points of development) they also worked with other companies. They didn't try to work with other companies they did work with other. They made some great games with those other companies. They became a third party developer. Then sony bought them. Now those games they produced with the other companies are dead or will be exclusive to Sony. It sounds very similar to another company just on a shorter time frame . Activision was the first 3rd party developer. They were former atari workers who left atari and made atari games for many years. Similar to the long working history that Insomniac and Sony had correct ? Then they started to make games for more platforms. Again similar to Insomniac and now they are being bought by a platform holder. Similar to insomniac.
sorry broke the quote up on accident. my response is above
A publisher isn't any different than other studios. Both sony and MS are already publishers themselves so third party companies can still go to other publishers or to ms/ sony as they currently are. Sony bought plenty of studios with third party IP and they can make new games with those ip whenever they please.
If you want to compare companies we can do that all day long. For instance how many Sony owned IP do they release on xbox ? The only thing I can think of is mlb the show but that is MLB's decision not Sonys. Ms offer up multiple IPs on the platform . With any of the last developers Sony bought have they offered MS contracts to keep new titles from the ip coming for a decade ?
MS has bought game companies just like Sony. MS is going to continue buying Game companies. You are going to have to get used too it. Don't worry Sony is going to do it also. AAA gaming is only goign to get more expensive and as it gets more expensive its going to be easier for 1 or 2 bad selling games to break these bigger companies. Just look at what UBi is going through. However just like in other industries new companies will break through to replace them.
Destiny release on Xbox and I think bungie games will continue to release on Xbox.
Insomniac made with games other company without huge commercial success. No one lost anything on this side. Microsoft and EA were probably not interested by Insomniac at all. This isn't like Microsoft and EA wanted to work again with Insomniac. At best it was modest success with Occulus and when they tried AAA games with EA and Microsoft it was horrible commercial failure. The only IP Insomniac possess is Sunset Overdrive but MS has the first right to publish and this is so much a commercial failure, Sony isn't interested by the IP.
And it doesn't mean Insomniac games will never do a VR games in the future. This isn't like PSVR 2 will release in a few days.
And Sony did not buy any third party IP since Psygnosis and they never used any prior IP out of Bungie but they are fully multiplatofrm.
MS will continue to buy company but if they want to buy big third party publisher they will continue to have problem with regulators. Did they have problem before Activision-Blizzard? No. If they want to do megadeal they will be blocked again and again.
It seems EU has the same concern than CMA.
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I disagree with you. I'm not going to discuss it further because discussing it won't achieve anything. I'm not saying you should see things my way, or that everyone else should see things your way. Once the ideas have been expressed, re-expressing them over and over is just noise. People need to learn to agree to disagree and move on, instead of once again saying, "why can't you understand me?" (regardless which side of the argument thyey are on). That's my moderator point - everyone's saying the same thing and over which won't achieve anything,
EDIT : To assert more clearly, Chris1515 is saying exactly the same arguments he's already said a thousand times. Nesh is saying the same arguments. DSoup is. They aren't going to get you to change your position, so they should just stop trying. Similarly you aren't going to get them to agree that Sony's behaviour is the same as MS's, so should abandon efforts and stop questioning why people are seeing the situation they way they are. If you, any you, not you I'm replying to, can't see the other person's point after several exchanges, you can't see it. That's the time to walk away.
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Activision was originally setup by disgruntled Atari VCS developers who wanted more rights, pay and credit for their creations which was something Atari wouldn't offer. Whilst some people at Insomniac may have worked for Sony previously, Insomniac was not founded due to poor practices by Sony.
Insomniac worked with Sony on a bunch of IP that wasn't owned by Insomniac, e.g. I don't believe Spyro was ever owned by Sony although Ratchet & Clank was. The desire to develop and own their own IP is what resulted in Insomniac reaching out to publishers other than Sony, and Microsoft enabled Insomniac to develop and own the Sunset Overdrive IP. Insomniac continued to work with Sony on Ratchet & Clank and other Sony-owned IP like Resistance, then Spider-Man which Sony had a license for thanks to Microsoft not being interested. Most of Insomniac's commercial success has been working with Sony.
This a bit like Naughty Dog. Sony seem really slow to consider acquiring studios.
Obviously established franchises have a built in desirability by their fanbase, but I would like to point out that the most wishlisted game on steam right now is a Zombie game that isn't part of an established franchise, may not actually exist, and might not have legal rights to it's own name. The idea that you couldn't sell a game that's not part of an established franchise isn't rooted in historical fact. Even if you look at the Game Award's GOTY for the last 5 years, 3 of them (It Takes 2, Sekiro, Elden Ring) weren't part of established franchises.
New franchises start every day. I get the feeling reading a lot of these documents from regulators that they feel as though nothing new is ever going to be made. And it wasn't that long ago that Sony was publishing games like Infamous. A knock-off super hero game sold well enough to get 2 sequels. Lots of games are essentially IP knock offs of more established IPs. Hell, Call of Duty, along with it's progenitor Medal of Honor Allied Assault were Saving Private Ryan knock offs.
Because Insomniac were mostly work for hire developers that didn't own the art they created. Had they owned Spyro they would have been scooped up by Vivendi years ago. Sony would have likey purchased them earlier if Insomniac owned Ratchet. Ironically, not owning their own work meant that they would never earn residual income from those franchises, affecting them financially, but also made them less attractive for acquisition.
At least they were attractive to Sony and they tried their own IP and failed. And I am sure Sony is very happy of the Insomniac Games efficiency.
Here and there we will get a new franchise that succeeds. But a massive success and an establishment of a new franchise isnt something that can be planned. Devs do the best they can and hope for the best/
There is a big difference between bringing out a juggernaut that sells by the droves, establishes a huge fanbase and puts out a powerful goodwill to carry on, and a game that just does well enough to profit and has a few sequels. Infamous never became Spiderman and never received that acclaim. Killzone and Resistence never became CoD or Halo, despite having some sequels. So yes you can make a successful game that belongs in the same genre. But to be a replacement or perfect substitute of a franchise that already captured the millions of faithful players that are coming back to the same franchise, is a rare super achievement that sounds almost impossible.
Deeply many of us want a game that will satisfy our unmet wishlists or makes us feel like what we experienced from our favorite franchise decades ago. Which is why often there is anticipation of a new announcement that appears to tick those checklists. But new released games rarely succeed fully. Often it is a challenge for the sequels themselves to meet those expectations. Let alone a new game. The zombie game you mention is not even out yet and we dont even know if it is real. If it is real, we dont know if it is as good or if it can replace Resident Evil or TLOU. So far it is an unmet fantasy
No i want my hair back. But what I want is irrelevant. I hope for balanced market where competition between Sony and Msft is more even so they have to fight hard for customers. This is what i wish for. So we all can benefit.
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But instead they hired an MS man, Phil Spencer, and Harrison eventually left to go to Google and lead their failed Stadia project.
I mean Phil Spencer had done a good job of turning things around at Xbox recently though. But I think they hired the wrong "Phil" lol
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Right... so they should hire Phil Harrison who ruined Stadia instead of Phil Spencer
Xbox Series X was Microsoft's 'most successful launch' in its history | TechRadar
Im out. I dont think there is anything interesting more to read in this thread, it become weird show.
On this matter, the traditional pre-digital model for games development meant losing money on 70% of titles, the rest either breaking even or, occasionally, being a runaway success - those rare, unpredictable successes funded the publisher. There was no guaranteed way to create a top seller. In modern times it's a bit easier through data tracking and perseverance, but there are still no formulas that lead to massive commercial success and there's still a lot of luck on whether your game is huge or not.
And yet it will be sold less than the Xbox360. It is obviously easier to have the "the most successful launch in its history" today, than it was 18 years ago.
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I remember reading an article years ago where a publisher, maybe even Sony, said this but have not been able to track it down.
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