That's exactly what i "like" about US companies.
They don't compete,they manipulate and destroy and it absolutely does not matter if it a bunch of incompetente people with huge money supply thx to monopols which have failed on all other markets and just play catching up
,no matter what(mobiles,smartphoney,search engines etc etc)and compansating incompentence with buying(skype,nokia etc)

i don't care about gears as gears is an xbox franchise and shall stay there but things like Banjo,killer instict belong to nintendo,things like Mass Effect,Bioshock peggle or titanfall onall platforms(in this case MS paid a lot money just to prevent this game from being released on specific plattform.This is no competition but destruction.

Same shit with EA-buy competitors(best of the best) like bullfrog,westwood,bioware and dumb them down,
monopolise Licenses to destroy competition(fifa,nfl)
epic fail when not able to get monopoles but has to compete in a fair fight=Nba.

But there are even worser examples :Companies destroying other companies with money though they never ever made a profit.Like Amazon.

Can you tell me the difference of a company buying up studios so no other platform can have any games from that studio or just buying up one game from a studio.

 Sometimes I really do not understand some of you people.  When Sony was buying up any good developer that made a game on the PS2, you people say how smart Sony is for locking up that developer for their platform then in the same breath, you condem MS for purchasing exclusive game for a couple months as more evil or buying an IP that has only been exclusive for their platform.

Oh please, do you guys wake up in the moring with rosed colored glasses. The games business is a business and wheather its Sony, Nintendo or MS, results count.  Sony already closed down a few studios that did not produce results.  They also just closed down a few MMOs because of no results.  There is no such thing as Sony believing in a studio unless those studios produce results.  The one thing you can give credit for is finding and buying talent so that talent remains exclusive to their console.  Its smart business but please stop with the Sony as Ghandi act.

So what? They are rich. If they want to spend their billions like that then let them. To me, I can never ever understand why they would buy Skype for $8bn. It just doesn't make sense.
Its so easy for them to purchase exclusive xbox content or IP's.

Microsoft spends money like it's nothing to them. Now if only they can spend money on creating new first party IPs.

My problem isnt that they buy third party stuff, its that they buy third party stuff at the expense of the first party budget....hence the beggining of the sentence "Rather than creating their own stuff".

Their ratio of first party to third party content is disgusting.

Its sad that most of their budget goes into keeping games off other systems rather than into creating new exclusive games for their own fanbase in addition to letting them enjoy third party games.

If they bought Epic I wouldnt mind because atleast that would mean they would be making their own games in the future. Now that they didnt buy epic its just a question of which multiplatform game they will be buying next....back to square 1.

Depends on who you ask and who the company is owning the studio apparently.

When one company snags exclusive rights to a game, that's terrible for the industry and a bad move. When another company snags the entire studio, that's somehow "nurturing their 1st party studio" and whatever else.

This is an opinion and not based on any actual fact.  When MS first entered the business they did not have a lot of internal studios which meant they had to depend on paying for 3rd party exclusives.  Was this not the case with Sony when they first came into the business.  Sony went on a buying spree which secured them top games and exclusives to support their platform.

In the last 2 years alone, MS has created 12 new Studios from my understand and staffed up 3 of their current studios like Lionhead, 343, Blacktusk and Rare to produce more than one game.  So saying they are not spending money on their first party is taking a very narrow look at the money they have spent to beef up their first party efforts.  Just because MS spend money on other projects means they have money to spend on other projects.

Can you guys at least do your homework first before going off!!

I got the 360 first for the same reasons. Hopefully Microsoft holds my attention this time.

MS creates and buys IPs. That's no different than Sony. Sony bought Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, and Media Molecule after they created popular IPs.

I think the biggest difference is MS more often invests money in IPs they don't own. Sony on the other hand has lost support from developers because they didn't want to give their IP to Sony.