| LurkerJ said: Consolidation is bad. I can lay out 100 scenarios in which MS gobbling up gaming studios will lead to bad things, non of those scenarios may happen in the immediate future for us to realise because we already know that consolidation is bad. It's like when I was being asked how allowing China to be the manufacturing mother of the world is a bad thing when "everybody benefits in the end", I lay out few hypothetical scenarios and I get accused me of being conspiratorial. Eventually, It went wrong in ways worse than imagined; a pandemic that enslaved us to the whims of a dictator, shutting down economies with crazy zero-covid19 policies, shortages, inflation, the chips fiasco, and a hypersonic missile going around the world undetected, spying balloons in broad daylight, single handedly neutralising all Russian sanctions, blatantly empowering gulf states to back stab the USA, so on and so forth! Now Biden is left the repercussions of the idiotic policies that gave China all the power. Back to gaming, no future competitor can enter the ring if big third party games seize to exist because MS bought the biggest of them. The PS3 was a shit-show and proved SONY games don't sell SONY consoles (this is changing), but it survived on the back of third party games. Similarly, Xbox one would've completely lost in all markets if it weren't for third party games keeping it alive and the brand would've been stopped in its tracks. I am not disillusioned by neither MS nor SONY. They both like to pretend they're gaming companies but the truth of the matter is that their consoles could've not survived without third parties. The barrier of entry for potential competitors is already high as it is, why should those potential future competitors be deprived of the same forces (third parties) that allowed both MS and SONY to survive? Of course, MS is much too happy to allow COD on Playstation and Nintendo, their market position at present doesn't allow them to overplay their hand currently, especially that they're under the microscope by regulators. But who's to say their attitude will change once they're inevitably in a better position to compete after the swallowed the biggest publishers in the market? In addition, forget about any support Amazon, Google, *insert any tech company* or any new start up that have any intentions to partake in the "gaming as a service" model, no one will enter the space to begin with, knowing that the vast majority of PSN and Xbox live subs come from games like COD. It's not out of the realm of possibilities that SONY takes a misstep and gets eliminated from the gaming space entirely, especially with less big third party games to rely on. We could definitely be left with MS as the only gaming alternative for Nintendo in the foreseeable future. Of the three companies, only MS can release dud after dud and continue to be a big player in the market, very few companies can afford the number of mishaps MS can. We have very recent examples of all three companies messing up in an unimaginable ways; the PS3, the Wii U and the Xbox one. Non of them are infallible, any of them can make even bigger mistakes. You speak of MS goodwill game, this is the same company that is taking the opportunity the good PR gamepass is buying them at the moment to completely botch their games with gold offerings (which negatively impacts the xbox user base, unironically). The same MS that introduced a paywall to play online with no real benefits in return, Games with Gold only happened because competitors had better offerings (and is now being botched). MS, just very recently, introduced the most anti-consumer practices with Xbox One the minute they edged out SONY with the X360. Who's to say they won't try again once their market position allow them to do so? Who's to say the current MS CEO or the "gamer friendly" Phil won't be replaced by overreaching executives? What if, for any reason, MS as a company find themselves struggling in the Office and the desktop Operating System space that drives them to lean heavily on gaming for profits? Ads In games? higher Sub fees? Offer base game on the service and ask for more money to play the rest of the game? I can go on forever with these hypothetical possibilities. Everyone is fixated on how things are being run now, but very few are looking ahead when MS inevitable claims a leading position in the gaming space. How can you confidently say MS won't be weaponising these acquisitions against gamers but only against SONY when we have very recent example of them doing just that with the Xbox One just after the X360 did relatively well? Ironically, The Xbox One was being weaponised exclusively against gamers, and not against SONY. Speaking of MS intent to bring more games to more platforms, I wouldn't be surprised if this eventually happens exclusively through third party app/game stores that they openly advocate for (and yes, that includes third party stores on PS and Switch). I fail to see why, in a realistically potential scenario, MS gets to reap 100% of the profits of games sold on a console like the Switch when they played no part in its success or survival. Finally, despite all of the possible scenarios I laid out above, I can't predict the future. Non of the above may happen any time soon, it may get better before it gets worse, we shouldn't be ok with handing MS or anyone that sort of power in the first place. With that said, I believe all of these acquisitions and more will be green lit, and gamers will end up grappling with the repercussions in the future. |
1. Consolidation is bad, sure. But in the gaming industry, the big third party publishers are already bad in the first place, so on the particular topic of Activision, you'd have to pretend that Activision's independence and freedom is something worth keeping around. This isn't a situation like Amazon destroying thousands of small businesses with its loss-leading strategy.
2. China and the political leaders' decision to give them ever more power isn't an equivalent to the topic at hand here. So while I agree that dependence on China in any shape or form should be avoided, it doesn't matter one bit here.
3. We already have the situation that there can't be any entrant in the console business anymore (or the alternative of a service instead of a console), thanks to first Sony spending the big bucks, followed by Microsoft doing the same. You can name any of the biggest tech companies (Google, Amazon, Apple etc.), but none of them have a realistic chance to get into this market. This ship has sailed long ago, hence why acquisition or no acquisition doesn't matter anymore.
4. It's already hard enough for Microsoft to get this Activision acquisition approved, so it would only get harder with each subsequent acquisition. It's unrealistic that Microsoft will ever own up to half of the big third party publishers, let alone all of them.
5. Subscription fees for online play make it much less likely, actually impossible, for Sony to get into a PS3-like situation again.
6. Games with Gold is as important as PS+ games. Sony had a prolonged streak of bad offers and it means little at the end. Any gamer who pays for Gold or PS+ should know that the "free" games are like the cat in the bag. There's no guarantee that you'll get something good.
7. Your expectation that Xbox could possibly become market leader is laughable. It only gets more ridiculous when you suggest that Microsoft as a company could eventually have to rely on gaming as their major source for profit.
8. Regarding the Xbox One, I hope you remember that it was exclusively weaponised against Xbox gamers, so there was still a choice to buy another console. Just like in the generation before when Sony wanted to take advantage of PS gamers in order to push their Blu-ray format.
9. Third party storefronts on consoles aren't going to happen.
10. The problem with your post is that it's filled with scenarios that are either not going to happen or are already reality in a slightly different shape. If that's all you managed to think of during the past several weeks (because my post you replied to is old), then that's not much.
The bottom line is that while I do hate Sony, I am not delusional enough to believe that Sony sucks so much ass that Microsoft could ever take over. If the PS3 couldn't make that happen - and if you analyze the PS3 from a business point of view it was a giant load of bullshit - then nothing can do it. Papa Phil has scored a lot of PR points, but when you look at the fruits of his work, he doesn't have much tangible to show for it. He didn't mess up the fourth Xbox like Mattrick messed up the third one, but not shitting your own pants is not something that I will give an adult man credit for.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
