Support NeoGAF

[deriks]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax (Bethesda) a while ago, and people kinda freaked out about their games only on Xbox. Microsoft sent a note that those multiplat games won't be exclusives, basically assuring that only the money would go to Microsoft. Not much later, Microsoft bought Actvision Blizzard, having the same strategy and people still freaked out - even the justice department asked dumb stuff, and was the same answer "we get more money being multi than exclusive".

Sony bought Insominiac and Bungie, and since are studios, it's mostly to have gaming direction and diversity portfolio. They also bought Gaikai, more because it was easier getting a existing cloud company to adapt to it's own then building one from scratch - still kinda sucks, but was the best move. Recently they bought some stakes from Kadokawa (FromSoftware parent company), and guess what? To get money. Not to have major direction or anything. Just for the sake of the money

Valve is a company that act by their own rules since is a full private company. They don't sell shares, so there's not much people like "we need more money". They do really great financially and it's fine for them having what they have. A different beast from others

Nintendo on other hand also sell shares, but their philosophy was always getting the profit from what they invent and not really by others. There's a lot of people that work since the 80s, and the third party companies too. Very conservative, but you know what? They sell like bananas. Mario, Pokémon and Zelda are major forces of profit from the company. Their worst time (Wii U), which lead to loosing money to just three years (it's fucking nothing to a company), still was not that bad in comparison with other gaming publishers since Nintendo has a lot of money in the bank - one could bet that Nintendo could launch two horrible consoles in sequence and still has money saved

The thing is: there's some administrative decisions that leads to controversy, like BioWare and Ubisoft getting diversity people over competent people. That looses money and we see the results. Other decisions can look bad because some sort of reputation, but if leads to money... yeah, it's not bad. So chill out

 

[Guilty_AI]

no u

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax (Bethesda) a while ago, and people kinda freaked out about their games only on Xbox. Microsoft sent a note that those multiplat games won't be exclusives, basically assuring that only the money would go to Microsoft. Not much later, Microsoft bought Actvision Blizzard, having the same strategy and people still freaked out - even the justice department asked dumb stuff, and was the same answer "we get more money being multi than exclusive".

Sony bought Insominiac and Bungie, and since are studios, it's mostly to have gaming direction and diversity portfolio. They also bought Gaikai, more because it was easier getting a existing cloud company to adapt to it's own then building one from scratch - still kinda sucks, but was the best move. Recently they bought some stakes from Kadokawa (FromSoftware parent company), and guess what? To get money. Not to have major direction or anything. Just for the sake of the money

I don't think these questions are as dumb as you indicate. If this was 20 years ago or if conditions were different now, there would certainly be a justifiable fear of these games being locked away to the ecosystems. The way you say it as if it's always been this way because "gaming market" is historically incorrect.

 

[Sebastian1295]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax (Bethesda) a while ago, and people kinda freaked out about their games only on Xbox. Microsoft sent a note that those multiplat games won't be exclusives, basically assuring that only the money would go to Microsoft. Not much later, Microsoft bought Actvision Blizzard, having the same strategy and people still freaked out - even the justice department asked dumb stuff, and was the same answer "we get more money being multi than exclusive".

The leaked emails from the activision/blizzard case show that microsoft planned on making games exclusive to their platform and wanted to buy sony out of business in terms of gaming.

 

[StereoVsn]

The leaked emails from the activision/blizzard case show that microsoft planned on making games exclusive to their platform and wanted to buy sony out of business in terms of gaming.

Yep, the only reason games are now going multiplat is that Xbox hardware sales crashes and burned due to MS missteps over the years including iffy software exclusives which includes Starfield.

 

[baphomet]

Lol, making a thread on here isn't going to change what actually happened to Xbox. They bought Bethesda and Activision with the sole purpose of making those games exclusive.

 

[Fafalada]

The thing is: there's some administrative decisions that leads to controversy, like BioWare and Ubisoft getting diversity people over competent people. That looses money and we see the results.

For someone that claims to 'know how industry works' you're certainly reaching for the stars here with claims that have zero receipts to back them.

Other decisions can look bad because some sort of reputation, but if leads to money... yeah, it's not bad. So chill out

Yes business make decisions that are money motivated. But the magic of games industry has always been the collective belief/delusion that somehow - just doing 'what's right' (the thing being defined by the currently most vocal customer) is path to most money. But also worth noting that there's been an ongoing power balance shift away from consoles as the primary money maker in last 2 decades, and that naturally upsets people who are looking at 'AAA' as their primary source of entertainment since - well that only exists as long as money follows it.

 

[Bernardougf]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax (Bethesda) a while ago, and people kinda freaked out about their games only on Xbox. Microsoft sent a note that those multiplat games won't be exclusives, basically assuring that only the money would go to Microsoft. Not much later, Microsoft bought Actvision Blizzard, having the same strategy and people still freaked out - even the justice department asked dumb stuff, and was the same answer "we get more money being multi than exclusive".

Sony bought Insominiac and Bungie, and since are studios, it's mostly to have gaming direction and diversity portfolio. They also bought Gaikai, more because it was easier getting a existing cloud company to adapt to it's own then building one from scratch - still kinda sucks, but was the best move. Recently they bought some stakes from Kadokawa (FromSoftware parent company), and guess what? To get money. Not to have major direction or anything. Just for the sake of the money

Valve is a company that act by their own rules since is a full private company. They don't sell shares, so there's not much people like "we need more money". They do really great financially and it's fine for them having what they have. A different beast from others

Nintendo on other hand also sell shares, but their philosophy was always getting the profit from what they invent and not really by others. There's a lot of people that work since the 80s, and the third party companies too. Very conservative, but you know what? They sell like bananas. Mario, Pokémon and Zelda are major forces of profit from the company. Their worst time (Wii U), which lead to loosing money to just three years (it's fucking nothing to a company), still was not that bad in comparison with other gaming publishers since Nintendo has a lot of money in the bank - one could bet that Nintendo could launch two horrible consoles in sequence and still has money saved

The thing is: there's some administrative decisions that leads to controversy, like BioWare and Ubisoft getting diversity people over competent people. That looses money and we see the results. Other decisions can look bad because some sort of reputation, but if leads to money... yeah, it's not bad. So chill out

LoL MS made all those acquisitions for exclusivity.. .. they literally canceled Starfield PS while in development ... COD would have been exclusive after the original activision ps deal finished ina couple of years... BUT .. they didnt expected that much push back in regulation and all the court process and whatnot .... and the games simply didnt move the gamepass needle... so now we have third part MS

 

[vaibhavpisal]

MS has been upfront about what they were going to do.

People were is disbelief back then.

There has been a lot of knee jerk reaction to games jumping consoles and mostly have written Xbox consoles off at this point.

Again, they have said they will compete on capabilities. What if they allow steam side loading and one can play all playstation games by default on it?

I wouldn’t draw any conclusions right now. This isn’t over yet.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

MS has been upfront about what they were going to do.

People were is disbelief back then.

There has been a lot of knee jerk reaction to games jumping consoles and mostly have written Xbox consoles off at this point.

Again, they have said they will compete on capabilities. What if they allow steam side loading and one can play all playstation games by default on it?

I wouldn’t draw any conclusions right now. This isn’t over yet.

The games are coming to Playstation and Switch.. it is literally over for traditional XBox walled garden.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

The games are coming to Playstation and Switch.. it is literally over for traditional XBox walled garden.

Thats a good sacrifice I would say.

 

[hemo memo]

Isn't this common knowledge?

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Again, they have said they will compete on capabilities.

Compete on capabilities?

The company that made the Xbone perform worse than PS4 and charged more?

The company that makes the Xbox Series X perform worse than PS5 and charges more?

You’ll lap up any old shit Microsoft serves up won’t you? You think they’re going to design a more efficient home after shutting down the Xbox hardware division?

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Thats a good sacrifice I would say.

Yeah, they just had to sacrifice Xbox entirely.

Ubisoft may as well release a next gen console if Microsoft are going to.

 

[Unknown?]

People still in disbelief here, trying to rewrite history.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Compete on capabilities?

The company that made the Xbone perform worse than PS4 and charged more?

The company that makes the Xbox Series X perform worse than PS5 and charges more?

XbOne was weaker.

But Series X is more powerful. Devs don’t optimise for it.

There is no reason why Xbox cannot make more capable hardware.

 

[rodrigolfp]

about their games only on Xbox.

Good thing this never happened.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

XbOne was weaker.

But Series X is more powerful. Devs don’t optimise for it.

There is no reason why Xbox cannot make more capable hardware.

Because they are not a hardware company, or a company that ever liked making hardware. Can they make a great Xbox? Of course they can and already did in the past. Can they "compete" now? When they are sick of selling consoles at a loss? When they lack the killer apps that Nintendo does in the handheld market and the mindshare that Sony have in the console market? Can they compete with the PS5 and PS5 Pro with a new console in one or 2 years? Yes. Can they have that console be competitive with the PS6? This is the question for me and I have doubts. One info that I learned after the PS3 and Xbox 360 ended was that Xbox got the specifications of the Cell from IBM and even got their processor from them. Now this could not really happen again so Xbox would leave a lot of options for Sony if they go early as they are rumored to plan for a console around 2026.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Because they are not a hardware company, or a company that ever liked making hardware. Can they make a great Xbox? Of course they can and already did in the past. Can they "compete" now? When they are sick of selling consoles at a loss? When they lack the killer apps that Nintendo does in the handheld market and the mindshare that Sony have in the console market? Can they compete with the PS5 and PS5 Pro with a new console in one or 2 years? Yes. Can they have that console be competitive with the PS6? This is the question for me and I have doubts. One info that I learned after the PS3 and Xbox 360 ended was that Xbox got the specifications of the Cell from IBM and even got their processor from them. Now this could not really happen again so Xbox would leave a lot of options for Sony if they go early as they are rumored to plan for a console around 2026.

A system that can side load steam will not compete directly with Playstation.

Playstation with its closed garden will likely undercut them in price.

Only way it can do well in market is if it includes desirable specs in a cost effective package.

 

[Topher]

 

[PleazureDome]

All I want to know is....Where in the Hell is my PS5 Pro Super-Enhanced-Remastered-Remix-Edition of Starfield. I want GAF to have another 100 page thread on the PS5 version of Starfield so we can all live through that nightmare again for the 2nd time.

Interspecies Romance options here I come!!

 

[Daneel Elijah]

A system that can side load steam will not compete directly with Playstation.

Playstation with its closed garden will likely undercut them in price.

Only way it can do well in market is if it includes desirable specs in a cost effective package.

True, but doing well is where we will probably disagree. I won't talk about how putting Steam will not make the market forget about Xbox and Playstation decades of competition unless Xbox is really good at PR or out of the gaming market and decided to sell the brand to investors imho. But even if I accept this idea, Xbox will still have to compare this next gen to Xbox older consoles, and beat any one of them will be pretty hard. All things equal, Xbox putting games on Playstation and Switch will reduce the need to buy their next console, and each game going third party will make it harder to have exclusives in the future. The next Xbox console will need conquer Series S and X fans first. As they want drastically different things I hope that you can see how doing well will be hard to define. Will Xbox offer a monster at 1000$ to the older fans? A handheld and or Gamepass device to attract new gamers? Both, while still trying to make Series S/X users happy for a few years? How to make this console competitive while still making their games sell well on Playstation, PC, and maybe Switch 2/ mobiles?

 

[IAmRei]

Industry always evolving, look how west fall nowadays, decades of building, fall in one year. It is not always DEI faults, but also publisher and platform is not consumer friendly and their decision is not supporting the fans. Market also shift a lot since mobile thrives a decade ago. And the trends are hard to predict, only left some of GaaS and Indies when AAA fail hard. Trend chasing is also not without negatives, as the game development cost roses, as with risk as well. One wrong move, could be fatal.

Indies as well, oversaturated and visibility almost zero, good games cannot be seen directly and not all players are actively trying to find them.

Nowadays, games are hard to predict. Especially for new IPs and experimental but with budget, that's why AAA failing as well. High risk high reward, mostly fail because the formula is tiring and even by lot of marketing budget cannot help it.

Industry is not healthy at all at this time ...

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

So corporations are people, too?

 

[Melfice7]

Microsoft going multi is because of the situation they got themselves into over the years, if they bought major publishers in the first years of the 360 gen, the games would absolutely be exclusive

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax (Bethesda) a while ago, and people kinda freaked out about their games only on Xbox. Microsoft sent a note that those multiplat games won't be exclusives, basically assuring that only the money would go to Microsoft. Not much later, Microsoft bought Actvision Blizzard, having the same strategy and people still freaked out - even the justice department asked dumb stuff, and was the same answer "we get more money being multi than exclusive".

Sony bought Insominiac and Bungie, and since are studios, it's mostly to have gaming direction and diversity portfolio. They also bought Gaikai, more because it was easier getting a existing cloud company to adapt to it's own then building one from scratch - still kinda sucks, but was the best move. Recently they bought some stakes from Kadokawa (FromSoftware parent company), and guess what? To get money. Not to have major direction or anything. Just for the sake of the money

Valve is a company that act by their own rules since is a full private company. They don't sell shares, so there's not much people like "we need more money". They do really great financially and it's fine for them having what they have. A different beast from others

Nintendo on other hand also sell shares, but their philosophy was always getting the profit from what they invent and not really by others. There's a lot of people that work since the 80s, and the third party companies too. Very conservative, but you know what? They sell like bananas. Mario, Pokémon and Zelda are major forces of profit from the company. Their worst time (Wii U), which lead to loosing money to just three years (it's fucking nothing to a company), still was not that bad in comparison with other gaming publishers since Nintendo has a lot of money in the bank - one could bet that Nintendo could launch two horrible consoles in sequence and still has money saved

The thing is: there's some administrative decisions that leads to controversy, like BioWare and Ubisoft getting diversity people over competent people. That looses money and we see the results. Other decisions can look bad because some sort of reputation, but if leads to money... yeah, it's not bad. So chill out

Put my Gravity Rush 3 and my Kat Figures and I will buy them,

 

[Killjoy-NL]

XbOne was weaker.

But Series X is more powerful. Devs don’t optimise for it.

There is no reason why Xbox cannot make more capable hardware.

Dude, PS5 and Series X are on-par, as PS5 has been designed to minimize bottlenecks.

Even Phil Spencer and DF agreed with Mark Cerny, as per the leaked Spencer emails.

You're the most delusional Xbox fan on Gaf.

Edit:

Technically they agreed with Cerny's statement that "GPU Teraflops and CU aren't a good measurement of performance".

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Dude, PS5 and Series X are on-par, as PS5 has been designed to minimize bottlenecks.

Even Phil Spencer and DF agreed with Mark Cerny, as per the leaked Spencer emails.

You're the most delusional Xbox fan on Gaf.

Edit:

Technically they agreed with Cerny's statement that "GPU Teraflops and CU aren't a good measurement of performance".

GPU TF are not good indicators in case of different architecture and generation of gpu.

It is a good measurement if both gpus are from same gen.

Otherwise say what actual secret sauce in PS5 is.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

GPU TF are not good indicators in case of different architecture and generation of gpu.

It is a good measurement if both gpus are from same gen.

Otherwise say what actual secret sauce in PS5 is.

Just give it up, dude.

Even your heroes agreed with Cerny:

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Just give it up, dude.

Even your heroes agreed with Cerny:

They say we have a clear advantage in 12 vs 10 tf.

Reading is hard I know.

And that email is more like a legal document, covering all viewpoints. You are just seeing what you wanna see.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Why are there people trying to convince everyone this was the plan all along when we all saw the leaked emails! Microsoft wanted to swallow up franchises, take them off PlayStation with the goal of increasing their own marketshare. It didnt go as planned, they failed and are now a 3rd party publisher. End of story. Move the fuck on.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

They say we have a clear advantage in 12 vs 10 tf.

Reading is hard I know.

And that email is more like a legal document, covering all viewpoints. You are just seeing what you wanna see.

It's almost like you are Phil Spencer...

 

[kikkis]

Counter point to valve, is that they have so dominant market position and rabid fan base, they don't really need to improve or make games like half life 3.

 

[Drell]

Just because things are like this right now absolutely doesn't justify to let one of the richest company in the world to buy the industry like they want, especially when this same company has been having an absolute monopoly over PC operating systems for like something like 40 years now...

And even if third party MS is the result of all of this, is it really a good thing to have a trillion dollars company owning all these big publishers under a single roof? They can change their ways whenever they want to and it's not the EU, FTC, CMA or whichever regulation authority who will have the power to stop them, as we've seen it with Activision Blizzard.