SLB1904
Banned
Eh? They aren't similar in any way
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Sony Is Not in an 'Arms Race’ With Microsoft, Says PlayStation Boss
- Thread starter Rolla
- Start date
Guilty_AI
Member
it was a big deal because it had a big name advertising it and it was made by the same company that made UT, also same engine. Thats really all there is to it.
Zeroing
Banned
The same people are still there, Phill is there, 20 years... why you think they changed?
Roberts
Member
Sorry, but you clearly don’t remember the impact it had on the gaming world. It is not like there weren’t 3rd person games back then, but none of them played like Gears.
Dr Bass
Member
This just sounds like revisionist history to me.
If that’s all there is to it, what was better in its genre at the time? What was close?
Leyasu
Banned
They just bought 18 studios and have a subscription service that needs content.
There is no comparison between then and now. Not even close
SoloKingRobert
Banned
Sea of Thieves will receive Free updates constantly. It has billions of times more replaybility.I'd rather pay 69,99$ dollars for high quality games than get fodder garbage like grounded and Crap of thieves for the low.
We don't need 100+ hour bloated pieces of crap like most M$ shovelware games these days.
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I mean. They can't even if the wanted to. Yes, they can buy small developers like Housmarque because of good relationship, but if there will be a chance to buy big publisher or developer (Sega, Square etc.) they just can't overpay Microsoft. Not today, not tomorrow. Microsoft just made 14 billion in profit last quarter. They are second most valued company in the world. And Microsoft is finally behind Xbox division with all that money.
Robb
Gold Member
Sure, I haven't really gotten the sense that they would be in an arms race either. They just have different strategies.
Sony seems to continue doing what works great for them. MS, on the other hand, is obviously focused on creating a worthwhile service with GamePass, and to do that you need content, and preferably content that you can produce and control yourself.
Sony seems to continue doing what works great for them. MS, on the other hand, is obviously focused on creating a worthwhile service with GamePass, and to do that you need content, and preferably content that you can produce and control yourself.
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John Wick
Member
Literally can't afford to what?I mean... they literally can't afford to
Sony have now 15 successful studios with internal expansion happening every year. If they needed to buy someone for say 4-5 billion they could easily greenlight that. Sony don't need to add another 13 studios like MS desperately needed to.
Sony can keep on expanding it's studios like Guerilla Games into 2-3 teams so multiple projects are being developed. Insomniac have been amazing and that studio will surely grow. Sony need to curate carefully who they buy.
If someone like SE comes along it might be worth spending a few billion to buy them
John Wick
Member
Sony would have a better chance of being SE because they are a Japanese company. If it's just about money how come MS don't own Nintendo???
Shame Windows Phone died even with MS's huge and limitless warchest?
Only reason why would Sony have a chance of buying Square is that both are Japanese and government would interfere.
But Square is publicly traded company. All of "relationships" and "common history" is going out of window when you are have two companies trying to outbid each other. And guess which offer would shareholders of Square accept. It would that which has higher sum of money of course. Codemaster's case should tell you that much.
And about Windows Phone. Nadella clearly didn't saw a future for Windows Phone so he cut it. But he also promoted Spencer to CVP position so Spencer answers directly to Nadella. Which is different how Xbox operated before it (it was a part of Windows group under Terry Myerson and Myerson was notoriously not fan of Xbox and which showed in Xbox One generation). So...you are comparing apples and oranges.
Until something insane happens and leadership of Microsoft would radically change there is no need to worry about Xbox division and it's place in current Microsoft.
Guilty_AI
Member
Revisionism is what you're doing to our conversation.
I said game was fun, just not revolutionary. Whatever was better or worse is up to personal opinion. Fact is, there were plenty of TPS to go for, Gears wasn't even the first game to have that exact mechanical scheme.
Guilty_AI
Member
Oh i remember its impacts alright. Suddenly every game needed to have a cover system because algorithms. Thank god the trend died out.
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Roberts
Member
Hehe, but Outriders and Division games are still pretty popular, no?
Guilty_AI
Member
Just some games. At that time, every TPS seemed to need a gears-style cover system, some of which were really poorly implemented like the ones in GTAs. And gears didn't even invent it, it just made it mainstream.
Haggard
Banned
You just described every mobile game, ever.
Just because something gets more and more and more repeatable content doesn`t mean that it`s good.
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Guilty_AI
Member
Because apparently having to fight the same troll boss over and over isn't bloated fodder contentI'd rather pay 69,99$ dollars for high quality games than get fodder garbage like grounded and Crap of thieves for the low.
We don't need 100+ hour bloated pieces of crap like most M$ shovelware games these days.
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Dolomite
Member
I've answered this a few times earlier in here but it's as simple as this:
Sony can't afford to go studio for studio publisher for publisher with MS. This thread title is referencing a race for acquisitions right? Sony doesn't have the resources to keep up or match the kinds of purchases MS, at least not for as long as MS can keep it up.
Sony is a solid company but MS is a 2Trillion dollar corporation, with enough liquidity to purchase the industry leader (Sony) outright if it were legal. The CEO of this company has as recently as last yr very publicly Bolstered his faith focus and resources towards the Xbox gaming division. Finally, Uncle Phil also says the acquisitions won't stop soon.
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Elbow Identity Shallow
Member
Whenever I read Arms Race here I have visions of something like this.
John Wick
Member
But that's the thing, Sony don't need to buy someone like Bethesda like MS desperately needed to. They have enough internal studios to keep on producing great content. So why waste 5-6 billion when they can buy studios like Insomniac for a fraction of that? They can then expand and grow those studios. Fanboys are deluding themselves thinking MS are gonna keep on sinking 7 billion into studio acquisitions every 6 months or so......
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
You just described this forum, and internet at large.
It took years to close the Bethesda deal, as Phil said in his recent interview. Nobody sound minded believes that there will be 2 Bethesda sized acquisitions every year. Heck, there may not be another deal of that significance in the industry for a decade. How often does such an important publisher become available for purchase?
Regarding the arms race, Sony is definitely in it but cannot admit to it because of the financial balance of power. It's for the same reason that a small militia using guerilla tactics wouldn't admit to being in an open war against a military power. They'd know better. That statement is not necessary to make in order for Sony to compete effectively though. They still have the studios with the most beloved franchises, at least for now so it should be an interesting generation.
"Enough internal studios" is pretty subjective aspect. Weren't there many PS fans who claimed that Sony needs to fight back and aquire Sega, Square or Capcom?
Microsoft didn't needed to buy Bethesda either. Before Bethesda they had 15 studios which is (shock) more then Sony has currently. And of course they are rapidly expanding their studios (Playground, NT, inXile etc.)
Also, you can't compare Bethesda purchase to Insomniac. Insomniac didn't have any IP's worth of value which is driving cost down. Microsoft didn't just bought Bethesda. They bought rights to IP's like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, Quake and many others
Guilty_AI
Member
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Dolomite
Member
Never said they did chief. I said they can't afford those kinds of purchases as frivolously as MS can. Why does this always upset fans here? It's true, I'm not shitting on Sony it's facts.
calling one of the 3 most successful corporations in the world "desperate" simply for doing Big boy business is strange. MS didn't out a gun to Howard's head, they were up for grabs lol.
Then you praise Sony for buying studios like insomniac like MS wasn't growing a war chest of studios before bethesda was in the picture. Giving indie and what you guys call "post prime" teams damn near blank checks and unlimited freedom
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FranXico
Member
I keep seeing people talking about multi-billion (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporations in these "my dad is bigger than your dad" terms.
Imagine comparing big powerful financial entities like these, which such pride and admiration, as if they were on one's side and consistituted no threat whatsoever...
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Threat of what? MS is in the game business like Sony and Nintendo. Unless they are planning on attacking your family there is nothing wrong with wanting your platform of choice to be successful.
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Dolomite
Member
This is Gaf bro, the only points being made around here to validate any opinions (be it titles or consoles) are sales. When I bring up the very obvious point that MS makes more $$ and can afford more acquisitions than Sony suddenly numbers don't matter because companies don't care about us...I mean which is also true.
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DarkMage619
$MSFT
They certainly care about our business and providing a compelling product. If they didn't MS would still be pushing TV TV TV and Kinect. It does go a long way to at least make an appearance that a company is listening and is interested in what the fans want. I really appreciate MS efforts in that regard.
SaucyJack
Member
Is Microsoft Corp wealthier than Sony Corporation? Yes, clearly. Does this mean that Sony is poor? No, don’t be absurd.
Is the entirety of Microsoft's cash reserves available to Xbox? Clearly not. In fact a great deal of that cash is held offshore and can’t be repatriated without getting a big tax hit. But, more importantly, Xbox is probably the least important division of Microsoft Corp and whilst big strategic acquisitions can occur, they are not at the top of the food chain, so expecting further Zenimax-sized purchases is only going to lead to disappointment. Further small to medium acquisitions may happen but I expect Phil will need to show returns before he gets another biggie.
The truth is Sony can afford to buy pretty much whoever they want in the gaming space, only a handful of companies would be too big like Activision Blizzard or EA with market capitalisation of $75 bn and $45 bn respectively, those sorts of deals would start to look like mergers. But putting those sorts of companies to one side, if Sony wanted to buy a Zenimax-sized publisher ($5-10 bn range) e.g. Square Enix, Capcom, Ubisoft then they quite clearly could. They probably won't as it’s not been their style, but they could and certainly if one of the Japanese publishers was in trouble or owners wanted an exit then iI could see it happening.
PlayStation Studios have a strategy, and they are executing it regardless of what Microsoft are doing. Nixxes was clearly a team that they valued and brings a small, but important, piece of the puzzle in-house. It’s not an attempt to ”respond to Microsoft“ it’s just Sony keeping on keeping on.
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Dolomite
Member
There's no clear point being made bro. You're all over the place, so I'll be candid for us both : Playstation makes more than Xbox in physical sales (global Console/ game sales)
Xbox makes more than Sony on the digital front (23 million Gamepass subs@ $10 a sub not including additional GPU dollars= 2.7B/yr)
Sony Needs PS (%30 of total revenue)
The only thing MS "needs" is for Xbox(brand not console) to eventually become the market leader.
The wealthier of these two companies can afford larger purchases more often. That is my point. It was my point a week ago when my original post triggered this whole thread and it stands
I didn't ask about insomniac or Naughty dog or how Sony very obviously nurtures studios into amazing reputable teams. I said that Sony can't afford to play the game of acquisitions as well as MS, because they literally Cannot. studios vs publishers Facts are facts
Hawking Radiation
Member
I picked up Xbox GamePass for a $1. I'm sure there are others who jumped at that same offer so trying to equate every GamePass sub to $10 entry fee is misleading. Unless you have access to the data from Xbox that proves different.There's no clear point being made bro. You're all over the place, so I'll be candid for us both : Playstation makes more than Xbox in physical sales (global Console/ game sales)
Xbox makes more than Sony on the digital front (23 million Gamepass subs@ $10 a sub not including additional GPU dollars= 2.7B/yr)
Sony Needs PS (%30 of total revenue)
The only thing MS "needs" is for Xbox(brand not console) to eventually become the market leader.
The wealthier of these two companies can afford larger purchases more often. That is my point. It was my point a week ago when my original post triggered this whole thread and it stands
I didn't ask about insomniac or Naughty dog or how Sony very obviously nurtures studios into amazing reputable teams. I said that Sony can't afford to play the game of acquisitions as well as MS, because they literally Cannot. studios vs publishers Facts are facts
Sony needing PS is nothing new. It has been that way for years.
MS has been needing Xbox to be market leader since its inception and so far it hasn't come close to achieving that and the gap is only widening with PS5. They had a good shot when Sony bungled the launched of PS3 but that lead they had not only in terms of sales but marketshare has all but evaporated. Ask Aaron Greenberg, he used to sing the sounds of console sales from the rooftops when the 360 had a gorilla grip on the PS3's balls in the early years of that gen.
Funny how those songs died down as PS began to gain traction.
All businesses want to see a return on investment which is the thing that makes me laugh when people keep throwing around this 'warchest' that Xbox has at its disposal. Xbox is a business, just like PS and no business's going to start throwing around big $$$ if there is no solid business case for the investment. I'm no expert but I'm sure there has to be a balance on expense/profit.
Its not just all about who has most $$$. Simple example would be a star studded football team like PSG. At one point they had the most desirable players in the football world if you look at the overall quality of the team but they struggled to win major honors and only dominated in their home league.
Sure Xbox can afford to buy out studios but that doesn't guarantee success. It's just like how America is perceived vs Japan. One nation is hell bent on brute forcing concepts while the other focuses high efficiency and productivity.
Xbox wants to buy success but it remains to be seen if that will even work for them this time. They are making good moves but by no means does it guarantee anything.
There's one good thing coming out of all this though. A hungry Xbox makes for a ruthless PS and we've seen that during PS3/Xbox 360's tenure. Competition is not good, its great. That gen taught me one thing though. Underestimate PS at your peril.
BTW I don't view your original post as triggering people. Have no idea how this is a thing since we're on a forum where we discuss things be it agreeing or disagreeing with each other. It's all just good banter in the end.
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Bryank75
Banned
There's no clear point being made bro. You're all over the place, so I'll be candid for us both : Playstation makes more than Xbox in physical sales (global Console/ game sales)
Xbox makes more than Sony on the digital front (23 million Gamepass subs@ $10 a sub not including additional GPU dollars= 2.7B/yr)
Sony Needs PS (%30 of total revenue)
The only thing MS "needs" is for Xbox(brand not console) to eventually become the market leader.
The wealthier of these two companies can afford larger purchases more often. That is my point. It was my point a week ago when my original post triggered this whole thread and it stands
I didn't ask about insomniac or Naughty dog or how Sony very obviously nurtures studios into amazing reputable teams. I said that Sony can't afford to play the game of acquisitions as well as MS, because they literally Cannot. studios vs publishers Facts are facts
Forgetting PlayStations nearly 50 million Plus subscribers and that most of PlayStations income actually comes from MTX.
Then looking at the split in sales due to gamepass cannibalizing 3rd party.....
Sony literally has a 34% stake in M3 inc right now worth 2.5 times what Zenimax is........ 17 Billion.
They invested 1.5 Billion into music acquisitions over the past 6 months and 1.2 billion for Crunchyroll.
You can tell yourself that Sony can't afford anything or anybody if it makes you feel better, but that is not reality.
That's without even using debt, they only have 7 billion debt, they could literally raise tens of billions if they needed for anything.
12Dannu123
Member
I don't think people are saying that Sony cannot afford acquiring publishers, they can, but if MS and Sony were to acquire the same publisher, Microsoft will always come on top.
Since most publishers are publicly traded, shareholders will always pick the one who pays the most, not the company with the tightest relationship.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Assuming $10 p/m from all 23 million Gamepass users, while the majority would be upgrading from Xbox Live for $1, is pretty bold.There's no clear point being made bro. You're all over the place, so I'll be candid for us both : Playstation makes more than Xbox in physical sales (global Console/ game sales)
Xbox makes more than Sony on the digital front (23 million Gamepass subs@ $10 a sub not including additional GPU dollars= 2.7B/yr)
Sony Needs PS (%30 of total revenue)
The only thing MS "needs" is for Xbox(brand not console) to eventually become the market leader.
The wealthier of these two companies can afford larger purchases more often. That is my point. It was my point a week ago when my original post triggered this whole thread and it stands
I didn't ask about insomniac or Naughty dog or how Sony very obviously nurtures studios into amazing reputable teams. I said that Sony can't afford to play the game of acquisitions as well as MS, because they literally Cannot. studios vs publishers Facts are facts
At the same time, you are ignoring the largest video gaming subscription service, PS+, which has 48 million MAU. Monthly is $10 and yearly is $60 ($5 p/m). As most would prefer a yearly subscription, $6 per month would be a good number to use. That'd be $2.9 billion per year.
Having said that, all this subscription money pales in comparison to MTX, in-game purchases, and platform revenue -- all of which is directly dependent on the number of third-party software sales a platform gets. We all know who racks in more revenue there.
Anyway, that's a very useless debate because we already know that PlayStation earned > $3 billion in one year with a revenue of $25 billion. Xbox's revenue was $13 billion. Considering Xbox is now at least twice the size of PlayStation, in terms of studios, staff, and game development cost and it's earning 50% less revenue, you can figure out the profits (loss) very easily.
Assuming Xbox made a $1 billion profit (very optimistic because I don't think they could have made any profit, based on the above figures), it means that the cost of acquiring Bethesda was 7.5 times their yearly profit. If Sony purchases, say, Square Enix for the same amount, it would be the equivalent of 2 years of their profits.
So it's not an arms race for Sony, not because they can't afford it, but because that's literally not their strategy. They are more methodical in their purchases.
Shmunter
Member
Is that why Sony gets all the 3rd party exclusives?
Bryank75
Banned
Not necessarily.
You also assume that Microsoft is willing to pay the most in all situations.
There's a lot of assumptions....
kuncol02
Banned
That's why they are using it to buy companies outside of US. Not only in gaming but in general.
SaucyJack
Member
There's no clear point being made bro. You're all over the place, so I'll be candid for us both : Playstation makes more than Xbox in physical sales (global Console/ game sales)
Xbox makes more than Sony on the digital front (23 million Gamepass subs@ $10 a sub not including additional GPU dollars= 2.7B/yr)
Sony Needs PS (%30 of total revenue)
The only thing MS "needs" is for Xbox(brand not console) to eventually become the market leader.
The wealthier of these two companies can afford larger purchases more often. That is my point. It was my point a week ago when my original post triggered this whole thread and it stands
I didn't ask about insomniac or Naughty dog or how Sony very obviously nurtures studios into amazing reputable teams. I said that Sony can't afford to play the game of acquisitions as well as MS, because they literally Cannot. studios vs publishers Facts are facts
Facts are facts, but you don’t seem able to distinguish between facts and opinions and/or assumptions. You seem to be awful keen on cherry picking your “facts” too.
My point is really straightforward, Microsoft may be very wealthy but that does not make Sony poor. Sony is going to spend circa $20 billion on strategic investments over next 3 years and we’ve already seen several billion spent on music publishing and anime. The “Sony has no money” line that is repeated ad nauseum on this forum is just pure ignorance.
Sony can afford whatever acquisitions they want. In a hypothetical bidding war Microsoft probably win (only probably because biggest wallet doesn’t always win) but when has this ever actually happened in reality? These companies have different needs, objectives, strategies and relationships; it’s pretty likely they have different targets.
SaucyJack
Member
Exactly right.
Stare-Bear
Banned
They're super-wealthy, but in the past generation (and current) it hasn't translated into a great and consistent release of first-party software.
12Dannu123
Member
That's under the assumption that MS didn't want to pay for time exclusivity.
Dolomite
Member
Yeah that's dope and I'm really proud of them (keep up the work) But like I said last week, gang...
Wake me when Sony can afford a publisher worth 20% of their holdings
