ConservagameR said:
What about the XB One TV trajectory? What about Kinect? Which led to XB One X. Which led to Game Pass. Which led to XB Series S and X at once. Looks like MS just keeps trying new things until hopefully something catches on.
Game Pass isn't anywhere near successful enough to clearly be the final direction MS will definitely end up going and not anytime soon. It's the general direction they look to want now, but what they wanted in 2013 didn't work out. With Game Pass now, even Zenimax and AB won't be near enough.
This is where the problem continues. Will MS really push new in house studios and IP if they have decided to just buy everything asap? The more MS consolidates within Game Pass, the more it'll make sense for Sony to acquire and make exclusive, because why else go to PS if it's all available on XB anyway? This will also make MS want to continue to acquire because they'll end up in a similar situation as they've been in, behind PS in content and exclusives.
You wouldn't see this leading to Sony buying up whatever they can and locking it down, especially IP that XB players now have access to or would enjoy? It would be XB's doing by forcing their hand. Even more so for anyone else trying to get into the gaming arena. They'll need exclusives to bring people in so they'll have to buy sooner than later and lock that IP down so they don't end up like Stadia (which had other problems as well).
Sony didn't start making really big acquisitions until MS did. Prior, Sony was making smaller, much more reasonable purchases, and building slowly from there in house. MS is tossing $10B here, $70B there, and Sony can't come close to competing with that. Maybe Sony could make 1 really large somewhat competitive purchase, but that would drain their entire PS budget for years.
There's the fact that MS will make more money next year than Sony will over the next decade, so if XB is allowed to keep buying, they can buy till it becomes a major monopoly problem, and then money hat almost everything else third party as exclusive so nobody else can have it unless they outright purchase it, if they can.
Also, even if you're correct, and XB and PS only offer their services on PC eventually, who owns Azure and Windows? Don't see that ever being a problem if not a serious concern for other competitors?
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