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Louie on 22 September 2020
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The Fury said:
Louie said:

Crazy move by Microsoft. I love Elder Scrolls and I've always wanted to play the modern Doom games... and well, I'd give the majority of these franchises at least a try.

As for this being anti-consumer: Yes, I see the point and I'm worried this will turn into a huge acquisition war. But to be fair, didn't we have a thread a while ago about which studios Sony should acquire next? Same procedure every single time: If *my* manufacturer does it, it's great. If the competition does it, it's bad. (And that's not directed against Sony fans! I'm fully aware Nintendo fans defend practices they usually despise if Nintendo uses them).

Doom is out now, nothing stopping you buying and playing them now.

On the latter when people talk about what studios Sony (or MS or whoever) buy it's usually a single studio they talk about. MS has purchased a few studios over the last few years, one they've worked closely with (Playground, Forza Horizon games) and some not so closely but they obviously saw promise for future releases (Ninja Theory). No one really had any issues as they were just single independent studios being bought out, they were working for MS already or had their own projects anyway.

Buying an entire competing publisher on the other hand? That's rather more questionable. 

First point: You are absolutely right, but Gamepass makes it cheaper for me to jump in. I'm not sure I would give these franchises a try otherwise.

Second point: I agree and as I said I don't want this to turn into an acquisition war and for the gaming industry to go the way of the video-streaming services. But the double-standard argument still stands: There is a thread on the main page right now about people on Twitter asking Sony to buy Konami as a response to Microsoft's move.

Sony did the exact same thing as Microsoft does now when they entered the gaming market with the PS1 and later with the PS3 when that console didn't sell well: They literally poured billions of dollars into the project and Nintendo couldn't compete until they used disruptive technology and the blue ocean strategy with the Wii and DS. Microsoft is doing the same thing, it's just that these days you want publishers to be represented on your service exclusively and the days of losing billions of dollars on hardware are over. Is it bad for the gaming industry? It could very well be in the near future, yes. Is it "unfair" because Microsoft is buying a whole publisher instead of "just" a bunch of studios, therefore Sony is the good guy? No. In fact, I think this is just a token argument because Sony hasn't done it so far. If Sony did it first the same people who now condemn the move would shout from the rooftops how genius Sony is. And vice versa - I'm not claiming Microsoft or Nintendo fans are any better (except, of course, Nintendo fans are the greatest )