The same way you dont see Halo, Forza, Hell Blade 2 and soon a lot of other ex-multiplatform companies' games on Playstation.
What should Sony's Acquisition Plans Be? *spawn*
- Thread starter RDGoodla
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Yeah, cant fault either for that, they both want you to be locked into their ecosystems. Its one of the reasons i like the pc (rightfully or not). The hardware is sold by soley hardware manufacturers, at a higher price then, and software/game studios make their titles only, not having to mind locking into hardware boxes.
Sony just bought 6 companies that can no longer put out games on pc day and date. That was 2021 alone. Are you saying without one 3rd party publisher (activision in this case) the playstation platform would be starving for games ? If so that is a sad state for the playstation platform as a wholeSo....what games did Sony take away from the PC space? Does your PC feel like its starving from games? So for you everything should be released on PC but its ok for other games to stop being released on other non MS consoles. Talk about double standards. Lets cancel consoles and make everything a PC and be done with it so you can be happy
I see halo and forza day and date on steam .
And none of those studios produced games that were multiplatform juggernauts. If you can't see the difference between these kinds of purchases then you are either being purposely ignorant or just plain don't get it. Either way Sony's acquisition of smaller studios versus Microsofts purchase of massively multi-platform studios/publishers is a completely different thing. And they won't stop there unless they are stopped by the regulators. Which would be irony in the extreme, one of the most creative industries saved by one of the most rigid set of suits around.
Microsoft clearly want control of the gaming industry and all the billions that it entails. They can't compete, in the traditional sense, so they just buy their way into dominance. Which a fine capitalist thing to do but absolutely terrible news for the gaming industry and the players who support it. The homogenising of the industry will stifle creativity and ultimately it's going to make it impossible for new teams to form new IP as they'll have no choice but to do so under the umbrella of a bigger company.
And if you cleaned the rosy tinted dirt off your glasses, you may be able to see Horizon, Days Gone, and something called God of War.
It's not a matter of 'can' but 'did'. If there is a studio that will happily produce games for any platform, the removal of that studio's output for a platform is a negative for that platform. If a company buys studios producing multiplatform content to exclude that content from other platforms, that's bad, no matter who it is. If a studio only works with one company then that company buying that studio doesn't change things from what they already were.
Sony buying BluePoint doesn't take anything away from XB and PC over Sony not buying BP because BP weren't producing content for XB or PC.
A platform holder securing second-party output is something of a negative but so long as the studio being independent, there's nothing stopping the other platform paying them for their next title.
For some studios, Sony's acquisition are a negative for other platforms, but there's nothing even remotely in the same vague vicinity of the ballpark of MS acquiring Bethesda, let alone AB. This is a potential a wholesale reduction of multiplat content from the PS library. How many games were going to come out for XB/PC until Sony bought the studio and made that content PS exclusive? That's the real comparison that needs to be made, not number of studios or how many games a platform games, but how many titles do the other platforms lose as a result of an acquisition.
Do we want struggling publishers or thriving publishers?
The Activision Blizard of today is struggling and throwing nearly everything aside to produce a singular title per year in the COD franchise. When mixed with the resources of a larger company they will be afforded the opportunity to return to producing wider variety of content like they used to.
The same applies with the earlier acquisition of Bethesda and other developers.
I have no reason to think this same positive improvements wouldn't also apply to Sony acquisitions.
Having thriving publishers and developers is better than them struggling and going away entirely.
ChuckeRearmed
Regular
By buying studio, Sony removes all the potential games that could be made for PC or Xbox with that studio.
It is not different from what MS did - Playstation cannot lose games that are not released on their platform and MS doesn't remove already released games either. There is just certain entitlement on a certain platform where all the future games from this exact publisher or studio, should be released on Playstation. Which is ironic, considering that the same exact platform is saying that "it is natural that games come to our platform, because they don't sell on yours"
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Deleted member 7537
Guest
Seriously people are comparing buying Bluepoint and a Dutch company that makes PC ports with buying Bethesda and Activision?
They still sell games to be purchased. You don't need gamepass for them. It's just the most economical way to do so if you're interested in 2 games a year.
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Deleted member 7537
Guest
Removed it because I don't think is part of their short term strategy, but going forward making gamepass the new apple store for games is their objective. And you can't reach that if COD is on Steam.
Goes to show the level of discussion or comprehension we have in the forums sometimes
But that's arguing theoretical. If those games were never going to be made, nothing is lost, and the history of these studios is largely that they were never going to be made. Conversely, MS buying Bethesda potentially stops games that were inevitably coming to PS like Starfield and the next Skyrim from releasing on PS. Same with what AB creations were going to appear on PS over the next 20 years that don't.
So for example, Sony acquiring Insomniac was a negative for PC+XB, but only a small one because their output was largely Sony exclusive and there wasn't a huge precedent to expect their content to be multiplat. Sony acquiring Housemarque is something of a negative because their content has been partially multiplat, but their biggest titles recently have been PS focussed and I doubt anyone even knows what they released on other machines. Sony acquiring Bluepoint isn't a negative at all because BP pretty much ports Sony games as their reason d'etre. If you look at all Sony's acquisitions, these studios rarely made titles for other platforms. In some cases there was a clear loss to other platforms - Zipper Interactive made Windows games before Sony bought them, but largely not.
Contrast that with MS's acquisitions . Some like 343 never published on PS or Nintendo so there was nothing lost on these platforms by MS consolidating that relationship with 343. Many of their studios have a history of being multiplatform though, with the expectation (and reality) being that if not bought by MS, they'd continue to be cross-platform. If MS chooses to keep titles off rival platforms, that's a change.
Of course, MS might not limit platforms for future games. However, they have that option, making their acquisitions qualitatively different to Sony's. Sony took largely PS-focussed devs and brought them in-house so even though XB doesn't get their titles, they weren't particularly likely to anyway, and even if they were, they were niche titles of limited appeal. MS has taken completely multiplat devs and brought them in-house with an absolutely certainty that there are games intended for Sony and Nintendo, including mainstream IPs, that now depend on MS giving permission for that to happen.
I'd argue they were struggling because they were too large, chasing monies and appeasing investors. There's still need for behemoths to fund super-expensive AAA titles, but not everything needs to be umbrellaed under a megacorp until we're left with Syndicate.
So you'd be fine with Microsoft buying 70B worth of small companies ? Just seems like sour grapes that MS has stronger purchasing power than Sony. Sony has been buying up studios since they entered the gaming space.
Also Horizon , Days Gone and God of war were not day and date. It took roughly 3 years for sony to add those games to steam.
If your upset that Acitvision will be part of Microsoft you should be mad at activision. They apparently went to multiple companies first before MS entered into the agreement to purchase.
I never complained about Sony purchasing any companies. If Acitvision went to sony and sony bought htem I wouldn't actually care. I don't really play many if any acitivison games. Last one I think I bought was COD modern warfare 2 on the 360 .
If your upset with Bethesda again you should be mad at Bethesda and Sony since apparently sony had a chance to purchase them when they were talking about exclusives but declined to do so.
If a company wants to be bought then it will be bought and if they are looking to be purchased there is obvious reasons why they would wany that
I think many here forget that Microsoft can offer stability for developers that they can't get on their own. Activision has drasticly paired down new ip in favor of doubling down on call of duty. Now under microsoft we can see classic ip come back. Phil has already brought it up and to be honest. I'd be a lot more interested in seeing Serria games come back than all the multiplatform call of duties. I think that is more important for gaming going forward.
Microsoft will always offer the games for sale also. MS still gets a cut of all games sold on their store front and if someone doesn't want a subscription then microsoft is more than happy to get X% of the sale. It's the same for add on content. Game pass often doesn't offer expansions of other dlc as part of the plan only a discount. So MS will still want to get a piece of that
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ChuckeRearmed
Regular
What do you mean by inevitably? Playstation is not entitled to getting all the games. Just like FF7R "inevitably" did not come to Xbox, MS could easily make Starfield exclusive and it would "inevitably" did not come
Or it couldn't because Sony is too big market to ignore? MS just can't win with that approach.All the third party deals prevents games from coming to another platform. And after some time people come to the conclusion that the games are not coming to a platform anyway so losing them is not a big deal. Like company makes a third party deal with a studio to produce some games - the studio is busy and is unable to make
I am pretty sure that if Sony grabs Square Enix East, people will say that it is fine as Square Enix did not release games on Xbox anyway (Sony moneyhatted long enough for that
)So Sony can buy whatever because they are not that kind of games or don't sell on Xbox
I mean I hear that argument all the time when the game is not coming to Xbox - it does not sell there, people don't buy such games and so on. It is really pleasant to finally feel that Xbox brand is not the outsider anymore or pushover.
The thing is, would or would not, they cant anyways, so using "if" as an argument to excuse such phenomenons is nonsensical. Thats why whoever is large enough, regardless who that is, to be capable and actually do it is a dangerous anomaly in an industry. When MS was buying smaller studios, it didnt raise any alarms. But the purchase of such big players does.
@ChuckeRearmed and @eastmen dont want to see the difference because they talk through emotion and through the lense of console war fanboyism whereas the rest of us talk clearly as observers of the industry and what that entails. Which makes this discussion fruitless.
Your absolutely right, but seeing that Sony also is aquiring studios, they do it in their scale of economics. MS does it in theirs... Its not fair perhaps, but thats how business works. Look at Apple for example.
MS could be killing Sony playstation devision softly, by swallowing up most of the gaming market, in the long term. Its unfair because well.... Sony cant and MS can. I still think its also unfair from Sony's side to have exclusive content in games to their platform, whilest keeping it away from Xbox consoles, aswell as delayed releases at launch so people go PS instead of Xbox, buying up studios to create console exclusives, Spiderman is exclusive to Playstation, something like that is super popular for the younger audience in special. Its also a way to lock people into their eco system or to consider PS instead of Xbox.
Both are as guilty, its just that MS can swing more money at the problem then Sony does.
In a perfect world, Sony and MS wouldnt have any exclusives on their platforms and let the people themselfs decide what box they want right? And not this delayed releases, exclusive content in CoD, tech demos exclusive to one platform for a year, etc etc. But that doesnt happen in console land.
Sony is no better than MS or vice versa, both want your money in their ecosystem only. Both want to get bigger and dominate over their competitor. its not 'for the gamers' on either side, its for MS and its for Sony.
What made the industry interesting is how the console platform makers were differentiating themselves by funding petsonal projects, new projects and creating new games. Such exclusives are healthy. They push companies to innovate and create variety. Especially when they support small talented studios to show their true potential. But its unprecedented in the industry for a platform holder to purchase established studios of such scale and take over IPs that everyone was enjoying. Its unfair competition not from the perspective of emotion but from the pure economic standpoint.
None is really doing these 'intresting things' anymore. Its not the 6th gen anymore where most AAA games where not coming from 1st party exclusive studios. And yeah again, i agree, its quite unfair that the large companies use their buying power to die out their competitors. Its happening everywhere.