| shikamaru317 said: I can't help but find this funny. Sony really poked the bear on this one. We've heard from multiple insiders the past several months that Sony was specifically targeting developers and publishers who were associated with Xbox in the past, including Bethesda, with Sony moneyhatting timed exclusivity on 2 Bethesda games, and were in negotiations for a 3rd (Starfield). Safe to say that MS was not happy about that. What is that saying, play stupid games and win stupid prizes, Sony just learned that the hard way, don't play hardball with a company that has alot more money than you. They should be glad that MS will honor the pre-existing timed exclusivity deals Bethesda made with Sony. I think it's safe to say that the sales gap next-gen just closed considerably, especially if MS is smart and makes future Bethesda games other than Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo at least timed exclusive to Xbox/PC, if not fully exclusive. Even having day one gamepass on future Bethesda games like Starfield, TES 6, Doom, Wolfenstein, etc. will be huge for them. Will be interesting to see how Sony will respond now. Will they go after a publisher of their own (none of the big publishers would be cheaper than the $7.5b MS paid for Sony), or go after some of the remaining independent AAA developers like Remedy, Bungie, Techland, etc.? |
I mean, the same can be said about Microsoft with this acquisition, if Sony was already aggressive in consolidating content for their platform, this news could make them go for larger publishers, most likely a huge Japanese publisher like Square or Capcom if they went down that route. Just because Sony isn't worth a trillion doesn't mean they can't drop billions on studio acquisitions. They've already invested billions in their other divisions like music (2 Billion+) and cameras (9 Billion) so investing billions in their gaming divisions is not out of the question.
I think if Microsoft bought Bethesda before the start of this generation, when Sony was on the verge of bankruptcy, it would have been a lot more dire, especially since SIE IP's weren't as valuable as they are now.
