| Runa216 said:
the thing that gets me the most is that Microsoft didn't invest that 68 billion dollars on, you know....creating new games. Trying new things. They didn't make Halo, bungie did and they bought bungie at the time. they didn't make Gears of War, Gearbox did, so they bought the IP. Their most iconic content is stuff that was made outside of the company and bought. And after years and years of not being able to make and market quality games or get new IP off the ground, they just gave up on trying to be good at game making and just started throwing billions out there to buy Zenimax and Activision-Blizzard and Mojang and many, many others. Rather than invest that money to create something, they just bought it. Again. Because they're really not that good at this, they just have a virtually limitless cash reserve. |
What you think would have been the right thing to do would end up being quite the opposite to what you actually want. 70B could justify hiring 35 000 worker for 10 years with a salary of 200K/year, it would have way more and far reaching impact on the industry. MS would also have aggressively hunted every ounce of talent from the competition. Sony would have been impacted far worst than it would be once the deal goes through. Cost of making a game could nearly double and suffer from longer development time.
Also MS would not want this either, despite impacting the industry tremendously, their investment would get diminishing returns as they would also suffer from increasing cost due to salary increase both for their new studios and current ones. And it would take the better part of a decade to see some fruit coming out of their effort. When buying and established entity you also acquire it's revenue, assets and values which all helps reduce the impact of the investment.
| Runa216 said:
And before you start, no this is not the same as when Sony does it. Sony buys companies like Insomniac and Sucker Punch and Naughty Dog, companies that regularly have a good history of making games for the company already. Sony gets exclusive content from companies like Capcom or Square-Enix, companies that have a long, storied history with Sony. I'd argue Xbox had a similar relationship exclusively with Bethesda, but none of the other companies that came with them (Id software, Obsidian, etc). |
Insomniac also had/was building a great relationship with MS. MS have also build and bought studio the "Sony way" but they also do more. Also Sony isn't the arbiter of ethics, what Sony does not do isn't automatically wrong more so when you know that some of what Sony don't do is not for a lack of willingness but a lack of capacity.
| Runa216 said:
They whine like 'the only way we can compete is by buying Activision Blizzard, I don't know why the meanie Sony isn't letting us!' despite them buying that company is basically cheating to win. |
Yeah right, of course it is MS who's whining about the situation.
| Runa216 said:
And you keep trying to justify the draught like they haven't been suffering a dry spell for the better part of a decade now. "Oh, pandemic era-" No, they have only released 1-3 high quality, successful exclusives a year since at least 2017, and before that a lot of mediocre shit was coming out and absolutely failing to compete. Y'all act like this draught is relatively recent and not an operating pattern, but look at 2017. When it comes to quality games (75 on metacritic or higher with a minimum of 20 reviews to weed out the games nobody plays or have no cultural impact), Nintendo and Sony had 20+ each while Xbox had like 3 or 4. I need to look at my actual numbers since it has fluctuated a bit now that games like Cuphead and Ori and Nier Automata are multiplatform now, but the ratio between them is crazy. And it was the same in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022; the only year in the last 6 that Microsoft actually released what I'd call a stable of good games was 2021 and even then it was like 4 Xbox games with the abovementioned criteria compared to 15 from Nintendo and 10 from Sony. (Obviously it's hard to keep the exact numbers since games once exclusive do occasionally eventually go multiplatform) but the point remains. The games aren't speaking for themselves becuase they're not being released, and the ones that are released either disappoint or don't have much impact. I'm not saying shit like Pentiment and Vampire Survivors isn't GOOD (It definitely is by pretty much every metric and I'm jealous on both counts), but like....Nobody's buying an Xbox for these games. Just like nobody bought a PS5 to play Stray. (Okay, some people did, but that's besides the point.) |
this is a non argument, nobody dispute that MS have been lacking on the games department for years. Fans are enthusiast right now because MS have taken the right step to address the issue and there's nothing wrong to this. It's not so much as trying to justify but trying to explain why. Find the right explanation to something and you can take the right steps to fix the issue, exactly what MS have been doing and why fans root for the manufacturer in numbers once again. Funny how, in the past, many were telling Xbox fans that they remain as such because they were being delusional hoping MS would someday use it's massive cash supply to shake the industry, now that MS is in fact using massive investment in it's gaming business the goal post have shifted and the same are now telling fans that they absolutely should look at past years to predict the future as if MS recent action should be disregarded and have no chance of coming to fruition eventually.
| Runa216 said:
A console needs to balance its heavy hitters like your Gods of Wars and your Last of Us and Horizons and Spiders-Men with your midrange stuff like Stray and Returnal and Ratchet & Clank, as well as smaller games like indies and what-have-you. You need Your LEgend of Zelda and Mario games alongside shit like Snipperclips and Fast RMX. you need a wide variety, where you start with your heavy hitters and work your way down. you NEED those system sellers; the indies and mid-range titles come later. Microsoft just isn't hitting all three levels. They put out an indie or two from time to time and these games are fine but they need more heavy-hitting shit to compete with shit that sony and Nintendo release. They need their gargantuan successess that hit hard like Pokemon or Horizon or God of War. Halo's good, but even that was marred in controversy over its bad initial reveal and its eventual garbage online/GaaS model and inexplicable lack of split-screen coop. The only mega hit Xbox has really had lately (That is both successful and well-reviewed) has been the Forza series and y'all are bitching because they don't get nominated for GotY awards despite the fact that it just doesn't have the same artistic merit as something like Elden Ring or God of War. Great games, but not on the same level. And to be clear I'm talking exclusives. Again, we're talking about exclusives and system sellers. Psychonauts isn't exclusive and is another example of a game Xbox didn't develop but simply bought. And if they deserve their place in the games industry they should be able to actually do something with their companies. Not only are they not making games on their own, the companies they bought are not releasing games with any semblance of consistency or quality. A year or two of a dry spell happens. It's fine. The streak Microsoft is on has been going on isn't just an exception or a bad streak, it's indicative of who and what they really are. |
The Wii U had all those and still failed miserably and got crushed by the Xbox One which had none of it. Xbox found success through other avenue in the past (mostly great 3rd party support and the few mega hit they have).They also set up every things it needs to succeed using the avenue you argue as the best for the future and yet you dismissed all their recent effort because those efforts didn't produce result before they were even in place?
| Runa216 said:
Can they 'buy' their way out of the pit by just purchasing every studio that will accept their money? Maybe. But after what they did with Rare I wouldn't trust them until we see some results. Way too many of you people on this forum are way to quick to forgive and forget or simp for them. They need more than power and gamepass, and the fact that they've been in third place consistently even in their homeland of the US is proof of that. Brute Force can only get them so far. |
Rare is a great example... on how some desperately use example that don't apply anymore to justify disregarding anything MS does. Way too many of you people are stuck in a past that doesn't apply anymore when it fits the narrative they want to push. also MS was 2nd twice out of 4 attempts and 1 is ongoing. so long for always 3rd place. But well, only time will tell if it's pays off or not, 2023 looks insane right now for Xbox as for Brute Force yeah, MS definitely should bring back this IP.
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 22 November 2022
