Microsoft acquires ZeniMax Media (Bethesda, id Software, Arkane + 5 more) [2020-09-21, 2021-03-09]

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Johnny Awesome said:
I still favor the Sony denial strategy for MS if it were my decision. Denying Ubisoft games to Sony doesn't really hurt Sony that much. Buying Square Enix would though. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tomb Raider day one on GamePass is the right strategy. Sony fan tears would drown the world if that happened.

Other than Sony 1st party, there's nothing of more worldwide importance than SE games on PS IMO. Sony would bid the price up though. They could never let this happen for only 8B.
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Your post reminds me of a twitter post I saw yesterday where someone's post that MS buying Bethesda has PlayStation fans crying that their favorite developer is now in the MS camp.

I replied that Sony's favorite developer is already owned by Sony.

Actually Sony's favorite developers are all Sony owned. Santa Monica Studio, Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games etc. Yes if MS buy SE and Ubisoft, I could see a slight dent in games going to the PlayStation. Bethesda/Zenimax/iD games all fall behind the aforementioned studios for most of the PlayStation community. IMO.

That said if MS does buy SE and Ubisoft and denies the games to PS, I think Sony and PlayStation will move on and develop their own exclusive games as they have been doing.
 
You make it sound so easy to build a gaming brand, but Sony has been at it for 25 years and they only have about 7 system selling franchises: God of War, GT, Uncharted, The Last of Us, HZD, Spider-Man, and R&C.

Losing SE games would be a HUGE blow IMO. Franchises like FF & DQ (TR to a lesser degree) are decades in the making. It also might help MS in Japan, but I'll admit that this might be hopeless.

Buying SE would also send a signal to the marketplace that all genres will be represented on Xbox. No more hoping for JRPGs....

The reason I'm not advocating Ubi or R* is because they would be so expensive. They would obviously be great acquisitions, but likely 15B and 30B respectively.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
You make it sound so easy to build a gaming brand, but Sony has been at it for 25 years and they only have about 7 system selling franchises: God of War, GT, Uncharted, The Last of Us, HZD, Spider-Man, and R&C.

Losing SE games would be a HUGE blow IMO. Franchises like FF & DQ (TR to a lesser degree) are decades in the making. It also might help MS in Japan, but I'll admit that this might be hopeless.

Buying SE would also send a signal to the marketplace that all genres will be represented on Xbox. No more hoping for JRPGs....

The reason I'm not advocating Ubi or R* is because they would be so expensive. They would obviously be great acquisitions, but likely 15B and 30B respectively.
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SONY started to focus on 1st party games about only 10 years. In PS2 era they didn’t spend that much on 1st party development.

And SE would be only sold to a JP company if it really needs.
 
DSoup said:
I expect the retailer cut will change only when there is pressure applied and we'd definitely be hearing about like as we have with Epic, Apple and Google. Microsoft and Sony would be foolish to voluntarily surrender profit. No no-profit company would do this. If it changes, we'll hear about it because it'll be massive. If it drops, the store front will use at a marketing point like Epic did with EGS.


You're obviously not somebody on a budget because $25-35 a month is a lot of money to a lot of people. GamePass is great if you know that you will never have to cancel that subscription due to financial woes, because then you basically have no games.


I'm certain some future Zenimax will appear on Switch but many won't. Todd Howard stated BGS's next game Starfield is being built for next gen and I'm sure future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will be too. I think Doom has done pretty well on Switch.
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1) I'm talking about the split in console base with sony outselling ms 2:1 . That may not be the case. It could be more or it could reverse. We don't know. We also don't know time frames they could both be neck and neck in sales if say starfield drops next year. So does MS put it on a sony console or keep it exclusive to try and drive sales past a tie ?

2) I am on a budget. I know many people who would perfer $25 a month for 2 years vs spending $300+ in one go. People do it all the time in the us with cell phones

3) I think by the time MS is ready to port the games off its platform the switch will have been replaced . The switch is over 3 years old. I don't expect starfield till 2022 and elder scrolls till 2024. by then the console will be 5 years old and 7 years old. I would expect MS to keep a console exclusive for a minimum of 2 years. So your looking at 7 years into the switch's life span at a minimum in my opinion. There will certainly be a new Nintendo console by then .
 
eastmen said:
They don't need an EA or Ubisoft. EA is 38.15B market cap I doubt that will ever happen. Ubi is 10.23B Euro around 12B USD. That could happen. I could see the Division as a big Gamepass title in the future a GAS FPS for them. I'm not really into Ubisoft games myself. I loved Ghost recon when the xbox 360 launched but haven't played it since since my old gaming group fell apart during the end of the 360 years. But the price sounds right for one of the purchases i heard about. I also heard about another cheaper one and then a few that don't even break 1B.
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If they bought Ubi, I would think it would be more to kneecap Luna and Stadia. Ubi is the most friendly of the big players to streaming services and the most all in on their own subscription service for PC.
 
Timed exclusive would be a good midpoint. It has been shown on pc market that people will still buy good old games at full price when it comes late to their platform.
 
eastmen said:
1) I'm talking about the split in console base with sony outselling ms 2:1 . That may not be the case. It could be more or it could reverse. We don't know. We also don't know time frames they could both be neck and neck in sales if say starfield drops next year. So does MS put it on a sony console or keep it exclusive to try and drive sales past a tie ?

2) I am on a budget. I know many people who would perfer $25 a month for 2 years vs spending $300+ in one go. People do it all the time in the us with cell phones

3) I think by the time MS is ready to port the games off its platform the switch will have been replaced . The switch is over 3 years old. I don't expect starfield till 2022 and elder scrolls till 2024. by then the console will be 5 years old and 7 years old. I would expect MS to keep a console exclusive for a minimum of 2 years. So your looking at 7 years into the switch's life span at a minimum in my opinion. There will certainly be a new Nintendo console by then .
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Buying a console on tic is not a MS exclusive- tying yourself into a 2 year deal where you’re paying for game pass at full price is.
 
AlphaWolf said:
Someone else is bundling a console with game pass for a 25% discount? I must have missed that.
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The point was you have to buy Game Pass and pay (near as dammit) full price.

In the UK you're paying over £8 (X) or £10 (S) per month for Game Pass for 2 whole years on top of the actual full price of the console. It would be better to just get it interest free and chose how to spend the extra ~£195 (X) or £254 (S)...I can buy Game Pass online for less...or earn it for free by playing games.

But yeah, you all lap up the "bargain".
 
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AlphaWolf said:
It's an option. And a good value. You're not required to use it. Lots of people will be buying game pass because it's also a good value.
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I've just clearly stated how it's not good value within the option (with evidence to back it up). That's what the whole disagreement was about, tying yourself into a subscription model at a premium price for 2 years is not 'good value'.

The original point was that '$25 per month' was exclusive to Xbox. Again, it's not, you can get PS5 on a monthly payment scheme...you can get loads of 0% deals (except you're not tying yourself into a 2 year subscription).

I get why people think GP is good value, but there's cheaper ways to get it.
 
You can use the points you earn to buy the console... omg people are so stupid paying real money for a console when they can buy one for free, the ps5 is a complete rip off when you can get the series x for free.

Am I doing it right?
 
AlphaWolf said:
You can use the points you earn to buy the console... omg people are so stupid paying real money for a console when they can buy one for free, the ps5 ishappy to pay a complete rip off when you can get the series x for free.

Am I doing it right?
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Way to take things out of context - if you're happy to pay over £10pm and lock yourself into that rate for 2 years for a service that is official cheaper to just buy monthly as and when you please then good for you.

I'm simply saying buy the console on 0% and get GP separately for the best deal.
 
Here's the thing: Human behavior. The reason MS is doing All-Access with GP is that it will likely work. It's worked for years in dozens of other industries and every time it's introduced in a market (Netflix, iPhone etc...) people that are "in the know" say it's a terrible deal because if you jump through 5 hoops you can get it cheaper and you could go to your bank and take out a loan or use air miles to blah blah blah .... Nobody does that shit. They look at it and say: I have no money and want a new console. $35/month for Xbox Live Gold, 200+ games including Halo, Forza, Gears, Fable etc... and the new most powerful console thrown in?!?! Sign me up!

The deal only gets better when you add Elder Scrolls, Starfield, Doom, Fallout, EA Play, Sea of Thieves ... 35 dev teams etc.... you get the idea. GP is going to steamroll when it gets going IMO. It's literally the best deal in gaming and only getting better.
 
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All access probably won't be that huge (in terms of numbers) because the number of vendors is very limited. That doesn't mean it isn't a good option for lots of people.

Paying for game pass with rewards points is great but for a lot of people they would just rather have it on auto pay. They can use the rewards points to buy the next skyrim or a surface instead.
 
Still no Doom Eternal on GP (pc)

*bob spongue waiting.gif
 
Johnny Awesome said:
You make it sound so easy to build a gaming brand, but Sony has been at it for 25 years and they only have about 7 system selling franchises: God of War, GT, Uncharted, The Last of Us, HZD, Spider-Man, and R&C.

Losing SE games would be a HUGE blow IMO. Franchises like FF & DQ (TR to a lesser degree) are decades in the making. It also might help MS in Japan, but I'll admit that this might be hopeless.

Buying SE would also send a signal to the marketplace that all genres will be represented on Xbox. No more hoping for JRPGs....

The reason I'm not advocating Ubi or R* is because they would be so expensive. They would obviously be great acquisitions, but likely 15B and 30B respectively.
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First JP governement have a law making difficult to buy a japanese company for foreign company and it was modified to make it even more difficult. It was modified because of chinese company. Like Chinese company this is difficult to buy japanese company. Sony could not buy Leyou technologies(Warframe) because they were not a chinese company. It was bought by a subsidiary of Tencent and it was not a problem of money.

You forget Ghost of Tsushima which is the biggest success of Sucker Punch and the biggest new franchise debut on Sony side before it was HZD. And the next studio to have a huge success will probably be Sony Bend. Sony let the teams grow and learn or buy studios when they have a successful collaboration. This is the mormal way Sony is working.

Sony want to buy a big Studio or publisher knowing how to create and make successful GAAS games.

On Microsoft side they will probably annouced the 30th october a new studio australian or new Zealand.
 
Sony and MS aren't that different in their acquisitions. Lionhead, Rare, Bungie, Mojang etc... all the way down to Bethesda had a history of making successful games before MS bought them and most of them are still making great games (Sea of Thieves, for example). People seem to forget that.

Sorry, I meant to include GoT in my list. So they have 8 key franchises over 25 years. ie. It's very tough to do.

MS has Gears, Halo, Forza, Sea of Thieves (15 million players), so they have some catching up to do, which is why they bought Minecraft, Doom, Wolfenstein, and Elder Scrolls in recent years.

I'm sure there are ways around them buying SE, and as much as I think they would be smart to do so, I doubt it's going to happen.
 
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