Microsoft Rumored to buy IO interactive [2018-11]
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I mean exactly what I wrote. An acquisition of MS isn't just about console exclusives, but platform exclusives, increasing the value of the PC side as well as the console side. MS acquiring a dev shouldn't just be viewed in light of what it brings to the console but what it brings to either/both console and PC.
Does the creator of this comic not realize Sauruman loses?well, reading your posts and iroboto's posts, I wonder what do you mean by that? We are talking about first party games after all. Nintendo thrives on that. Sure denying those games to others could make some of use have a hard day wanting something we can't have until we save some money or buy a platform we've never played or are used to....
But in this case, with many inactive studios under MS baton, people didn't want to buy a Xbox because of lack of 1st parties. This picture kinda explains it. (it says "my sir xboxman..., are these the preparations for the next gen?" .... "......MY FIRSTPARTY-HAI warriors!"
afaik, he doesnt lose nor he is dead, he is trapped in Isengard, and Mordor is quite the realm.
Because MS is no longer playing a traditional console playbook. The acquisition of studios is not for denial of exclusives for other platforms nor is it to necessarily make their platform compete with Sony head on. It's largely to bolster their game pass subscription service which is expanding to the PC space and with streaming to the mobile space. The value of game pass is that 1P games launch on the same day as release, so with more releases in a year, members are unlikely to unsubscribe.
Because the games can be streamed onto mobile or played on PC, the barrier to entry is significantly smaller than say, purchasing into a new ecosystem, and this broadens the appeal to all gamers.
By now I hope you recognize that MS is largely a company about massive scale and profits, and MS can obtain significantly more revenue and profit through this method, than being first place in every single generation and obtaining revenues in the traditional way. They could be 3rd in hardware sales next gen , but still generate massive revenues because things like
a) hardware shortages don't matter to streaming and PC
b) you don't need to wait for a sale on hardware to get into the ecosystem
c) everyone can sign up and play without leaving their device in a relatively short period of time at a rate not much more than $15 /mo + streaming costs.
d) there is no ramp up period for your user base, you don't need to wait for the later half of the generation for you to have 'massive' sales to a massive userbase.
The console is nothing more than a piece of hardware that now moves the baseline of power forward.
The Ents trash his hold, his army is routed at the Hornberg and he gets stabbed to death by Wormtongue after trying to take over the Shire.
Cyan clearly only watched the movie. 
The thing is they are competing with Sony though.
Sony has a streaming service (already)
PSNOW also allows the download of games to play offline on the console (gamepass type of usage)
The only thing they don't have is a pc store, which given how successful ms one has been their not loosing out on the pc market at all. In fact it's probably not uncommon for people to have a pc and a ps4.
The only reason gamepass is seen as it's own thing and revolutionary is because it has 1p games put on right away, and newer games.
PSNOW actually has more games and I also believe that if you subscribe to psnow you don't need to buy ps+, unlike game pass.
But there's nothing stopping Sony from putting their 1p games on there day and date if they deem it's time to do so.
So this idea that MS is somehow not directly competing with Sony because streaming and gamepass is just wrong.
I can actually see Sony start of next gen putting 1P games day and date onto PSNOW.
The hardware IS currently the way into the ecosystem, for both companies. The difference is MS is more upfront about future plans because this gen is done for them.
Sony hasn't said much about future plans, but i don't see them scrapping their streaming and psnow service and not improving them.
MS sounds like their competing differently, but then what has Sony said? All the reasons you gave for MS doing things differently, are just as much reasons for Sony to continue to expand in those directions also, at start of next gen most probably.
It's somewhat different. Sony can only stream to PC, whereas MS can provide genuine PC games run locally. PSNow will not appeal to PC gamers as an ideal game solution as long as they aren't run locally, whereas Game Pass can. MS also stream to mobile devices which Sony doesn't do yet, although that could change.
Fundamentally though, the console isn't the way into the ecosystem for MS. You can game on PC and benefit from Game Pass, whereas PSNow is a compromised solution for PC gaming. PSNow on PC is more about letting PS gamers access their PS console experience away from their console, whereas Game Pass is about a library of device-agnostic games that you can access locally or streamed. Sony has no solution to that, and will never be able to court the tens of millions of PC gamers.
Fundamentally though, the console isn't the way into the ecosystem for MS. You can game on PC and benefit from Game Pass, whereas PSNow is a compromised solution for PC gaming. PSNow on PC is more about letting PS gamers access their PS console experience away from their console, whereas Game Pass is about a library of device-agnostic games that you can access locally or streamed. Sony has no solution to that, and will never be able to court the tens of millions of PC gamers.
I’ve not commented on Sony mainly because I don’t know what they’ll do. I only know what MS is doing because it’s inline with everything else they do, subscriptions to azure, office, ML, etc.
Curiously, what has Sony said?
I don’t believe that Sony have the infrastructure and labour force that MS does to support such a service. I don’t think that they can effectively scale a world class streaming service to millions of users simultaneously across the world. They certainly are good at supply chain, but cloud services is not their forte.
Sony isn’t an internet company, that’s not been their core strength and honestly speaking we haven’t seen them make major moves to in both careers and labour force to be able to compete with MS squarely. They don’t have the data centres and they definitely don’t have the people. Google and MS as businesses are doing their best to land as many data centres as close to people’s homes as possible to reduce latency for real time applications (self driving etc). That just happens to lend well for real time gaming too.
There is a reason why Sony hasn’t been part of this particular discussion but Google has been.
Anyone thinking that Sony can compete with MS in this space with equivalent margins is folly. MS’ current largest source of revenue is cloud services and they continue to invest heavily into infrastructure to support it. They’ve built the entire company around cloud and I can’t see how a company like Sony will be able to build the capital and labour force to compete properly in this space.
I work for a telco, and the biggest fear right now are google, Facebook and MS barreling into the market trying to build capacity closer to the last mile to reduce latency. I’ve not heard a single word of Sony ever come up.
Ever.
If I do, I’ll let you know. Right now MS gaming is just piggy backing off their other services. I wouldn’t be so quick to carve it up as some brilliant strategy to win the gaming market.
If this happens to be the major battleground for next gen, while Sony clearly cannot build the capability to compete, they can partner with a company that has the capability and work the market that way. Google is looking well setup to take on MS in this space. There could also be others
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Running off a third party can be cheaper. Sony renting from Amazon or Google could be just as profitable. Not saying it will be, but Sony aren't completely out of the running simply for not having cloud infrastructure of their own. Everything MS can do, Sony can do, even renting Azure services. One scenario is everyone prefers PS to Live, but MS make money from Sony renting their servers for operating the streaming service - unless MS go anticompetitive in that respective.
I think the point here is you've stressed, "Anyone thinking that Sony can compete with MS in this space with equivalent margins is folly," but margins doesn't come into it. If Sony can compete profitably, they are a competitor.
I think the point here is you've stressed, "Anyone thinking that Sony can compete with MS in this space with equivalent margins is folly," but margins doesn't come into it. If Sony can compete profitably, they are a competitor.
Agreed. In this situation though they have to wait to see pricing from MS before they dump their capital in to build the service (Sony must deploy some form of hardware to get playstation games running, Google can distribute the streams). If the difference in margins between the services are massive, that gives MS a ton more room to reduce price points to price Sony out of the market, and it would make sense to see what MS does and at what price points before diving in.
Just my 2c.
I'm not saying Sony is dead. This is a natural advantage for MS and they can keep trucking on without needing to pause their plans and watch what their competitors do in this space.
MS have an important cloud service. So their infrastructure would be similar to AWS, google, and facebook. Very centralised.
From interviews about the PSNow infrastructure, Sony is more like Netflix. Small rack space close to the edge. Very distributed.
The theory was that datacenters are better for a cloud services because clients often need massive inter-node bandwidth and large local storage, with backup services, and be able to rent thousands of nodes in the same location.
Somehow netflix has proven the gaikai method is not a bad idea at all.
Its certainly good and I agree with your points it's just not good for real time applications. You're going to need a lot more hardware than a small rack space close to the edge for large scale deployment.
Sure it will be much bigger than the Netflix Open Connect hardware, but it's on a need basis, sized based on the number of clients the ISP serves. That makes it a Hybrid Edge Cloud because there are still racks filled in large datacenters in addition to the edge nodes. The edge is more expensive in hardware but the ISP unclogs it's upstream pipe.
Generic cloud datacenters cannot offer that compromise, it absolutely needs to negociate upstream bandwidth and latency guarantees from all ISPs. It's a double edge sword. (edge, haha, pun intended)
I agree about the PC stuff, but MS store hadn't been doing very well so selling games on steam, is no different than any other publisher.
It's only a small entry into the ecosystem at the moment truth be told. Could change if their implementation match their ambition in fixing the store.
My main point is it would be a mistake MS not thinking their competing head on with Sony, as I'm sure Sony believe their competing with them.
Even if it was cheaper for MS with their own data centres, if Sony gains huge mindshare and market share again, Sony would still do better by share numbers
@iroboto Sony hasn't said what their plans are at all, which is why I think it would be a mistake to assume they wouldn't try to compete, as they already also have the structures in place.
At the moment I've only really heard ms has pc game pass, which is what Sony doesn't, how big that turns out to be, who knows. They also have competition on pc from EA access, origin, and others will probably set up their own stores and with cross play it could work in sony's favour.
Which is why MS needs, compelling, good, exclusives, and yes to not be anywhere else to play it apart from their ecosystem. As game pass wasn't the first subscription service, but it won't be the last either.
Research from 2014...
https://www.researchgate.net/public...tecture_for_Reducing_On-Demand_Gaming_Latency
It's rather convincing that the best solution is a hybrid central+edge. Pure centralized is a problem reaching a large enough section of the population, and pure edge solution is a deployment location count issue. Sony has been planning in this direction learning from onlive (pure centralized) and gaikai (pure edge) limitations. MS starts with a kickass centralized part, but they will probably have to add an edge component.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...tecture_for_Reducing_On-Demand_Gaming_Latency
It's rather convincing that the best solution is a hybrid central+edge. Pure centralized is a problem reaching a large enough section of the population, and pure edge solution is a deployment location count issue. Sony has been planning in this direction learning from onlive (pure centralized) and gaikai (pure edge) limitations. MS starts with a kickass centralized part, but they will probably have to add an edge component.
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