Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
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cheapchips
Veteran
The coverage must never end! After whatever occurs with the CMA, it'll be 'why is Kotack still there?', 'why is it still a shitty place to work?', '1fps difference between XSD/PS5 parity lies!'
True. Timed exclusive for the lions share of Bethesda's output for a generation, which is what I meant to be saying but definitely didn't. Regardless, everyone can see the cause and effect nature of Sony trying to deny Xbox day and date Bethesda games, and Microsoft's response in purchasing Zenimax. This whole generation has been an arms race, more so than usual.
I hope they got a good deal. They worked hard for it.
iceberg187
Regular
If anyone was still a fence sitter, hedging their bets, this should let you know that this is over.
Yes Commodore would of gone on to dominate gaming for an entire generation with the CD32 and access to Psygnosis's games. I mean their controller was .. erm... revolutionary.
I would have loved to play wipEout on the CD32, would have been awesome....lol
It was over from the first day of the court case when the Judge was clearly favoring MS and when the FTC chose to focus on COD instead of other factors.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Oh no, here we go again another TEH EV1L S0NY!!! story.
That's a straw man argument. It's not that he's saying Sony is evil it's that he's rightly pointing out that they are no more virtuous than MS.
I'm fine with any coverage that treats MS and Sony both as the profit-driven corporations they actually are and not taking kid gloves to either.
Sony pressed their advantage as the 2:1 market leader to buy exclusivity on content, as was revealed in the merger-trials, to keep a hammer lock on things like Final Fantasy, COD, and new Bethesda content, to the benefit of their PS brand and shareholders.
MS responded by buying Bethesda and ABK to end Sony's dominance, to the future benefit of the Xbox brand and MS shareholders.
It's all fair game.
Hopefully these moves will get the brands to parity where gamers benefit from strong competition. I hope we never return to the arrogance of PS3 and Xbox One.
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They worked hard for it? Who is "they" in this context, and doing what work?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yet he number of AAA games from parties other than Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, has far exceeded their output.
Sure, because there are more of them. But they (AAA developers and publishers) are also, in recent years, falling over themselves to get out of the business before they become another casualty of AAA game development. Gearbox publishing, sold. Eidos, Crystal Dynamix and Square-Enix Montreal sold off so that Square-Enix Japan could stay solvent. Konami mostly exiting AAA game development. Bethesda sold. Codemasters sold. Bungie sold. Insomiac sold. Funcom sold. Perfect World Enterainment sold (even Chinese AAA publishing houses aren't immune), etc. etc.
Basically, it's almost impossible for a AAA developer to try to remain independent now and it's becoming difficult for even AAA publishers to remain in business. There's rumors that the high cost of current gen AAA development is causing a lot of high AA and remaining independent AAA developers and some of the smaller AAA publishers to start shopping around for a buyer. Selling exclusivity is helping put that off a bit, but it's only a band-aid.
It used to be that AAA publishers would fund development of independent AAA developers for a share of the proceeds. That's becoming increasingly rare nowadays due to the cost of AAA development. Some had already mostly stopped doing it (like ABK).
Regards,
SB
cheapchips
Veteran
Sony didn't confirm anything beyond the duration to Totilo, although he did ask about streaming etc.
Thats too much for me to spend time replying to, but there is a lot of contradiction between some of your posts, especially when you talk on one hand about scaling very well and on the other pointing the need to merge to be able to sustain the business To point you what I mean with scaling, the first Civic produced is a crappy car compared to a modern Civic. A modern Civic is better in every way. It is a night and day difference. It is a futuristic super car by 80s standards. But production has scaled enough to produce it an affordable price while being 100 times better and be profitable as a business. Cost of games on the other hand, do not enjoy the this, cost of game production increased astronomically and require even more sales per product just to break even.
The mobile sector is irrelevant to this thread.
Regarding businessmen I assure you that the top, barely have any contact with the actual product and production and get more credit than they deserve. The ones that actually keep the business going are the ones who have connection with the production process, the product and serve as middle men between the top and the people who put their blood and sweat. Once the top stops listening those below and act as accountants that make decisions based on the limited information of numbers, the business is going to fail. Guaranteed.
Edit: For example if it wasnt for Bill Gates actually listening to the teams below him pitching the design of the original XBOX and went directly with his idea of Windows box, since XBOX was originally about Windows, it would have sunk like a rock in quick sand.
Same BS happened with Don Mattrick who put aside what actually made the 360 great and went with Bill Gates' original vision of an entertainment Box and Ken Kutaragi stopped listening to anyone under him, calling the shots almost alone for the design and business model of the PS3 and it became a disastrous mess.
The business I was working for, was constantly ignoring game designers suggestions and the artists, and was making decisions with the board of directors, because all they saw were numbers, and our games went to shit.
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And yet that is what sony consistently does. And no one says anything about it. No outrage about death loop being exclusive or FF16 or foresaken or what have you. No out rage when Sony pays to lock up exclusive content so even if you pay the same price for the game you are getting an unfinished product on the other platforms like the new harry potter.
Psysgnosis was a publisher.
Psygnosis - Wikipedia
I'm making stuff up ?
Hideki Sato Discussing the Sega Saturn - Mega Drive Shock
Recently, an interview was conducted with Hideki Sato on his life and his time at Sega as part of an oral history research project documenting the game industry in Japan. The interview transcription is over 150 pages long. If you don’t know, Sato was in charge of Sega’s consumer R&D department...
mdshock.com
You can go see the quotes a few pages back about Sony using their music division to secure Final Fantasy and paying for third party exclusives to deal a blow to sega and nintendo they would never recover from. I posted that days ago
Sony used their profits from other divisions to enter into the market and bought a publisher to do so and never stopped buying up developers and studios. I am not sure how buying 2 publishers vs 1 publisher is buying up publishers en masse. Sony has bought 14 studios in the last 4 years. I'd say that is buying up studios en masse
Again its moving deck chairs on the titanic trying to wave away what sony has always done.
If its okay for Sony to use their influence in other markets to make headway in the video game industry then it would be the same for Microsoft. If you are okay with sony doing it and are upset when MS does it then you are a hypocrite.
Lol betrayed. Sony wanted to take over the hardware side of Nintendo and gradually turn Nintendo into a 3rd party like they wanted and succeed in doing with Sega. Unlike hatichi and nec that were willing to sell cd drives and other components Sony wanted to develop and make the whole unit.
The issue I have is that if Sony does something and MS does the same exact thing there are different reactions on this forum. For example , Sony goes out on a buying spree and no one is disagreeable but when Ms does it , its fire and brim stone.
Wonder if its the same contract as the other companies got or if it has marketing rights. Now at the end of all things Sony would be in a weaker position to negotiate because if the deal closes and they have no contract that is it for cod on playstation
Twisting and taking history out of context as always.And yet that is what sony consistently does. And no one says anything about it. No outrage about death loop being exclusive or FF16 or foresaken or what have you. No out rage when Sony pays to lock up exclusive content so even if you pay the same price for the game you are getting an unfinished product on the other platforms like the new harry potter.
Psysgnosis was a publisher.
Psygnosis - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I'm making stuff up ?
Hideki Sato Discussing the Sega Saturn - Mega Drive Shock
Recently, an interview was conducted with Hideki Sato on his life and his time at Sega as part of an oral history research project documenting the game industry in Japan. The interview transcription is over 150 pages long. If you don’t know, Sato was in charge of Sega’s consumer R&D department...
You can go see the quotes a few pages back about Sony using their music division to secure Final Fantasy and paying for third party exclusives to deal a blow to sega and nintendo they would never recover from. I posted that days ago
Sony used their profits from other divisions to enter into the market and bought a publisher to do so and never stopped buying up developers and studios. I am not sure how buying 2 publishers vs 1 publisher is buying up publishers en masse. Sony has bought 14 studios in the last 4 years. I'd say that is buying up studios en masse
Again its moving deck chairs on the titanic trying to wave away what sony has always done.
If its okay for Sony to use their influence in other markets to make headway in the video game industry then it would be the same for Microsoft. If you are okay with sony doing it and are upset when MS does it then you are a hypocrite.
Lol betrayed. Sony wanted to take over the hardware side of Nintendo and gradually turn Nintendo into a 3rd party like they wanted and succeed in doing with Sega. Unlike hatichi and nec that were willing to sell cd drives and other components Sony wanted to develop and make the whole unit.
The issue I have is that if Sony does something and MS does the same exact thing there are different reactions on this forum. For example , Sony goes out on a buying spree and no one is disagreeable but when Ms does it , its fire and brim stone.
Edit: Oh and btw there was a magnificent proposal between Sony and Sega of America, of a joint console. But lets ignore this:
Sega and Sony: New Insight into the Partnership That Never Came to Be - Mega Drive Shock
Over the past twenty years, former Sega of America president Tom Kalinske has often said that Sega and Sony were close to forming a partnership to co-develop a 32-bit console, but that Sega’s Japanese management shot down the idea. Recent evidence translated here for the first time adds new...
mdshock.com
“I remember we had a document that Olaf and Mickey took to Sony that said they’d like to develop jointly the next hardware, the next game platform, with Sega, and here’s what we think it ought to do. Sony apparently gave the green light to that. I took it to Sega of Japan and told them that this was what we thought an ideal platform would be, at least from an U.S. perspective, based on what we’ve learned from the Sega CD, and our involvement with Sony and our own people. Sega said not a chance. Why would it want to share a platform with Sony?”[ii]
It is important to note here the role that Kalinske served within Sega. He was appointed president of the daughter company Sega of America in 1990 by Sega Enterprises Ltd. president Hayao Nakayama. In this position, he was primarily responsible for the marketing and distribution of Sega’s home consoles in North America and the production of software by local developers. Matters concerning manufacturing, research and development, and the future direction of Sega were largely controlled by the parent company in Japan. As such, it was certainly a bold move to go to Sega’s executives and propose a partnership with one of Japan’s largest electronics manufacturers.
Sega would have benefited from Sony's hardware expertise. Sega has only themselves to blame.
Edit 2:
Psygnosis released games on the Sega Saturn:
Checklist Psygnosis - SEGA Saturn
But lets ignore that too
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I suspect that it will be the same contract they've been walking around with for months.
Personally I think MS should say that was then, this is now and offer revised one.
Maybe something minor like, not allowed to mention COD on PS until after 60 days after release.
I'm not sure , apparently Bobby had offered Jim the marketing rights as well to get the deal done. It was rejected then so I am not sure if Sony ended up with the same contract Nintendo did. I would imagine with the FTC loosing the block and the CMA coming back to the table Sony was at a much weaker negotiating position than prior
I never heard anything about Sony retaining marketing rights. That just sounds crazy to me, even to just get them to sign.
I obviously don't know what was in contract, but it was signed very quickly after the FTC loss which is one of the reasons I would expect it to be the same one.
I think Sony is in a much weaker position and with any deal it should change based on that. But, as I said I reckon MS didn't revise it, just sign and get it over with.
Reckon deal is 10year,
70/30 split(maybe slightly better for Sony than that) ,
everything parity including marketing.
I'm fine with any coverage that treats MS and Sony both as the profit-driven corporations they actually are and not taking kid gloves to either.
Sony pressed their advantage as the 2:1 market leader to buy exclusivity on content, as was revealed in the merger-trials, to keep a hammer lock on things like Final Fantasy, COD, and new Bethesda content, to the benefit of their PS brand and shareholders.
MS responded by buying Bethesda and ABK to end Sony's dominance, to the future benefit of the Xbox brand and MS shareholders.
It's all fair game.
Hopefully these moves will get the brands to parity where gamers benefit from strong competition. I hope we never return to the arrogance of PS3 and Xbox One.
I can mostly agree with your general sentiments in this post above.
I'll disagree with the first sentence though. Eastman has shown throughout this thread a general disdain for Sony and has never missed an opportunity to dump on them, now he has admitted to still being salty and bitter about Saturn not getting a version of Tomb Raider 2. Well the irony is that the developers have previously said that the development of the Saturn version of TR2 was struggling because they were having issues getting the game to run properly on the system and that if development had continued it would likely have compromised the PS and PC versions limited those games. So Sony signing the rights probably saved the vision of the game.
The genius in the way Sony does marketing deals is that you never know if it's for a day or permit exclusivity.
So for the xbox gamer they have to in affect consider it permanent, as if you want to play it who knows if it will ever come.
MS got burned with tomb raider, but instead of in the future just refuse to discuss it regardless of how much they was asked they buckled and never really went that route again. They could've just said only gonna answer once, and the answer is we're not discussing it.
Last gen Sony was really aggressive and when it was clear they had demolished xbox, they never got complacent they kept foot on neck and kept being aggressive to this day. Yes I'm aware of the language I'm using but hopefully people understand what I mean.
I don't see that as bad Sony, I've always been impressed by it. Only couple things I disagree with, but that's just personal views, their not wrong/bad company for doing it.
So for the xbox gamer they have to in affect consider it permanent, as if you want to play it who knows if it will ever come.
MS got burned with tomb raider, but instead of in the future just refuse to discuss it regardless of how much they was asked they buckled and never really went that route again. They could've just said only gonna answer once, and the answer is we're not discussing it.
Last gen Sony was really aggressive and when it was clear they had demolished xbox, they never got complacent they kept foot on neck and kept being aggressive to this day. Yes I'm aware of the language I'm using but hopefully people understand what I mean.
I don't see that as bad Sony, I've always been impressed by it. Only couple things I disagree with, but that's just personal views, their not wrong/bad company for doing it.
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