What xbox however. Xbox isn't just a console anymore. So if all there is after this genertion is the xbox games app on pc doesn't xbox still exist ?
Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
- Thread starter Rangers
- Start date
this is a good point
Hopefully we get details enough on how many deals MS tried to broker and what the costs were. 1) If Ms weren't trying to secure exclusive deals since XB360, that's on them. 2) If they were and they were priced out of success, what was the pricing. Also info on deals Sony has and is making to see what the level of impact is. If it is too great, Sony should be regulated. But we need transparency on all those deals including if MS were involved or not. eg. Deathloop - were MS invited to put in an offer and didn't care to, or did Sony approach Bethesda and negotiate a deal without MS knowing it was even happening?
The Devil is in the details.
The Devil is in the details.
All financial items were sealed for 45minutes due to confidentiality. Those items won't get out.
I keep seeing people post that Sony's actions have nearly "killed Xbox" on multiple occasions by making games exclusive etc.
My question is when are the incompetence and mismanagement of the Xbox division by Microsoft going to be considered?
Businesses fail all the time, especially when they are run on autopilot like Xbox has been in the past. The only reason Xbox hasn't gone under is because MS is a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate that has monopolies and dominance in multiple industries. For most of the last 20 years, MS hasn't really seemed like they knew what to do with the Xbox division, it is only recently with the development of GamePass and the push to turn gaming into a GAAS nightmare that MS has suddenly been interested in Xbox again.
I'm tired of this "poor Xbox/MS" narrative.
My question is when are the incompetence and mismanagement of the Xbox division by Microsoft going to be considered?
Businesses fail all the time, especially when they are run on autopilot like Xbox has been in the past. The only reason Xbox hasn't gone under is because MS is a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate that has monopolies and dominance in multiple industries. For most of the last 20 years, MS hasn't really seemed like they knew what to do with the Xbox division, it is only recently with the development of GamePass and the push to turn gaming into a GAAS nightmare that MS has suddenly been interested in Xbox again.
I'm tired of this "poor Xbox/MS" narrative.
Can you point out how you know this?
typically in large organizations like MS people are given annual objectives and goals they must meet in order to maintain their jobs and often achieve their bonus structure.
In there restrictions exist on how money and budget can be spent.
What makes you think they are incompetent ? They are literally the only surviving westerb console and not for a short amount of time.
The only reason Xbox continues to exist is because day in and day out they have managed to convince executives to keep it alive in exchange of finding other methods of bringing revenue to Xbox. Have you considered what type of goals Xbox had to achieve in order to stay afloat?
MS does not fund things indefinitely.
Cynicalking
Regular
When did Spencer work at Sony? As far as I know his entire career has been at Microsoft.
It doesn't to me because if you look at the percentage of the market they would control, in terms of production, or distribution, or platform install base, is miniscule when compared to their competitors. The largest video game storefronts are Steam, Google Play, Apple's Appstore, and Playstation. Windows store and Xbox Store are drops in the bucket compared to these. And there are thousands of game developers, dozens of publishers, and plenty who outshine Microsoft in volume.
Then stop complaining when they try to win
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Inuhanyou
Veteran
So was it full exclusive or only timed? I doubt Bethesda would have been keen on a full exclusive deal. Either way, MS being in trouble from Sony doing what they always have done isn't on Sony but MS as I've always said. This narrative that Sony is uniquely unfair is silly
Well I'm not sure how else to term the catastrophic screwups MS made with the transition to Xbox One:
The stupid decision to make the console a glorified cable box or maybe telling people that they can't sell their physical property anymore? What would you describe those as?
Did Sony force them to turn Xbone in to a cable box? No.
Did Sony force them to effectively ban the resale of physical games? No but they were delighted when they did.
Those things destroyed a lot of consumer support that MS had built up with the Xbox 360. Yes they relented on the physical game sale thing and rolled back the whole stupid cable box gimmick, but it was already too late.
Microsoft is reaping the seeds of failure that they sowed themselves by making stupid mistakes, just like Sega and just like Atari. "You reap what you sow" as the saying goes.
MS shut down one of their most important Studios, Lionhead, in 2016, 6 months before they pivoted to GamePass, was that a smart business strategy?
Lionhead could of provided a ton of content for Gamepass, especially how badly the rest of Xbox studios had been misfiring (Rare, The Initiative etc) , but oh yeah they had closed them down ...d'oh.
So now they need to go buying their way out of trouble.
So they should stop with the "boo hoo poor me" act, it gets tiresome and silly.
And how many large game publishers should MS be allowed to buy up so that they can "win"? I guess until they control gaming like they control Windows, Office and the Cloud industries. Great...
Inuhanyou
Veteran
"why are you complaining when Ms tries to win? They should be allowed to do so at all cost despite the competition clearly not having the funding or resources to compete in a dollar war"
If Sony or MS are to bow out of the gaming race it should be from their own mistakes, and not their rivals buying up the rest of the industry leaving them the only game in town. We aren't talking about MS doing their own game timed exclusive in return for Sony trying to get starfield for a year or whatever. they simply bought the farm and surrounding land. No one else could do that, and that's why this is a problem even on top of general consolidation problems.
If Sony or MS are to bow out of the gaming race it should be from their own mistakes, and not their rivals buying up the rest of the industry leaving them the only game in town. We aren't talking about MS doing their own game timed exclusive in return for Sony trying to get starfield for a year or whatever. they simply bought the farm and surrounding land. No one else could do that, and that's why this is a problem even on top of general consolidation problems.
Yes, because Lionhead had already lost most of their defining talent (Molyneux, Jackson, Evans and Healy, among others) and had a string of declining titles, starting with Fable III (a fine game that failed to reach the success of II), Fable Heroes, and Fable The Journey. The magic that Lionhead once possessed was gone, and it was clear. After the cancellations of Inkquest, Fable Legends, and Fable Fortune, they had also lost all of their projects. There simply wasn't a reason to keep the team around.
The mistake Microsoft made wasn't the closure in 2016. It was the transition from making the Lionhead flavored games that made them successful to making more service oriented and kinect focused games. By the time 2016 rolled around, it was simply too late to save the studio from the mistakes that had already been made.
I guess Ben Hymers. Mark Webley and Gary Carr weren't "talented enough" for Microsoft then.
I'm sure if you ask Sega they will tell you that the duo were successful enough to bring 5 million players to Sega with Two Point Hospital and managed a million players for Two Point Campus in a week! Not bad for the guys who developed the smash hit game Theme Park. They could even been inhouse games that would be permanently on GamePass instead of being removed.
Probably could of even created a version of those games for mobile. Oh wait, is MS even interested in Mobile games?
They also had the founders of Media Molecule working there when MS bought Lionhead. Oh well.
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Sony has seen that buying up exclusive games and developers has worked for them since the original playstation so why would it stop working for them.
Sony buying 3rd party exclusives is to drive MS out of the console market because then it would be them and nintendo. last time Sony thought they had no competition they pushed out a $500/$600 turd that focused on wining the high def optical format wars for them.
Who knows that they would price a console that only had nintendo competing against them at and how much a game would be.
Also for MS its easy to say they will keep making COD for sony. If sony doesn't sign the contract or with holds dev kits then its an easy way to break out of the contract and say hey we wanted to fufill it but how do we do that when Sony doesn't want to sign the deal or sony didn't give us any hardware to develop for their new console. So now Xbox next gamers have a game optimized for the new 2028(god damn it) console while the Sony platform has a game tuned for the ps5 that can run on the ps6.
I don't understand. Do you believe Sony is not trying to win at all cost? Sony buy's up studios and the majority of their popular content is now made by studios they bought not studios they created. Sony also continues to buy up exclusivity deals. I posted a few days ago about how sony wanted to kill sega and nintendo and make sure they couldn't recover and so they used Sony Music connections to get their foot in the door with Square. What do you think they did when they subsidized the cost of a dvd player in the ps2 or when they did the same with bluray ? A lot of people try to postion MS's shit as stinking while sony's shit is roses.
No one should want this market to be a two player market with Sony and Nintendo. it isn't good for us as consumers. MS buying ABK wont drive Sony out of business. Sony is dominate in the market and even if MS owning ABK causes a dip in sony's market share it will not be until at least the ps6 and even in the ps6 gen I doubt MS will over take sony. Sony has taken 10B to purchase studios. They will be just fine.
Meanwhile if MS's continues to slip in market share globally they will continue to have to take smaller splits with developers or they will loose games completely and the less money they bring in the less they will devote to r&d and then exit the market entirely as they fall into a death spiral in the video game market
Everything that has come out in this trial so far shows that MS requires big purchases to maintain the current status quo not to mention change the status quo.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
There is currently no regulation for this anywhere in Europe, nor aware else that I'm aware. Some folks here are already decrying that one regulator - the UK CMA - can prevent this acquisition and that is only possible because outside of limited and well- defined abusive market practices, which are predicated on larger companies with more capital levering that capital against smaller companies. The only other scenario for a regulator to step in is when there is a merger or acquisition.
I can't imagine how regulators arbitrating on marketing deals would work because it would will impact every industry in which marketing deals are made, which is pretty much every industry that exists.
I'm very much with you on getting more details, because Microsoft keep peddling this narrative that marketing deals were not viable for them which is difficult to reconcile with an almost $100bn acquisition budget between 2019 (Zenimax) to 2023 (Activision-Blizzard).
The difference being is that since Sony has bought Insomniac you shouldn't expect any insomniac game on competiting consoles.
However you can be a fan of a game series and suddenly one entry is notr available or additional content is locked away on a platform the rest of the series was avalible on.
For instance if you are a street fighter fan all street fighters including the new one are on Xbox. However last generation the new street fighter wasn't.
I don't know which one you think is worse. Personally I rather know hey all Capcom games will now only be on Playstation and if I want to play those games I am going to have to purchase the system instead of puchasing a console and playing a series of games and then only one entry isn't available but then the next one is. It's also pretty annoying to spend the same $70 as the next person but because I bought a game on one platform I am locked out of special content from the other platform. The problem is warner brother games come out on all platforms and Potter was the first one I can recall that had any additional content tied to a single platform.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Have you not read any of the responses that Shifty posted?
Even if Sony had not acquired Insomniac, Sony had the Spider-Man IP deal so you were never going to see a Sony-funded Spider-Man game on Xbox, regardless of who the developer was.
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