You are comparing apples and oranges here. Sony buying Insomniac which almost exclusively made games for Sony consoles, is not the same as MS buying Bethesda, which has been entirely multiplatform for 14 years. Then, when people call you out on false equivalence you claim they are moving the goalposts.

Inxile made a name for themselves with Wasteland 2 in 2014. They aren't all that unknown.

I fully support MS building up their own home grown stuff. Initiative, Compulsion, and Rare all have potential to become better studios. But remember that the first Killzone wasn't all that good. It takes years to take a studio from mediocre to good.

The problem I have with MS is that they engage in the Sophistry of claiming that "exclusives are evil" just because their 1st party lineup is lacking. They then go on to release lackluster 1st party games to Gamepass, while Phil Spencer runs his mouth, about how those games really are "good". They rarely release full sales data, and incur the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy instead. "This game has X amount of players on Gamepass" "This game sold X amount in the first week". Nevermind that the game sold poorly overall. They just focus in on whatever data set happens to make them look good.

I would kill for a Sony store on PC. Day 1 releases on PC would be fantastic for me. Nintendo is leaving massive amounts of money on the table by not putting their NES, SNES, N64, GC, and Wii games on PC. Same goes for not putting them on Switch.

Ok, now, forget the "cherry picking"  of Insomniac and look at all acquisitions and developers built from the ground up... Just like I asked...

Is it that different?

I don't care what Phil does with his mouth, sales numbers released or not or MS exclusivity ethos. Nothing to do with the topic at hand.

It is the same thing, it's a multi billion dollar company buying another studio(s) and becoming the owner of that studios IP's. You can argue the scale or effect of the ZeniMax move is bigger, that Insomniac had a close relationship with Sony prior, etc etc, that's where the whole goal post shifting comes into play. None of it is really relevant. At the end of the day it's one of the big three purchasing talent and IP's.

I agree, but funny that around here the acquisition was met with a shrug as no one knew who they were or expected anything from them.

I think we call support any publisher building their own studios from the ground up. Which all of them have been doing. But Sony and MS both also go out and buy talent. It's no different than professional sports. A team can draft a young linebacker and groom him for a couple years and grow him into a quality starter, or they can go out and pay a free agent to come in and immediately start. Everyone tries to do both. Sony and MS are doing both.

What does their philosophy regarding exclusives have to do with your perceived quality of their first party lineup? So when/if this acquisition becomes finalized, they'll arguably have the strongest first party stable of studios. Do you expect them to stop saying the player is at the center of their focus, not the device? That all of their games won't continue to work across Xbox, PC, and xCloud? Because if their stance regarding exclusives were as fickle as you think, it seems like they'd stop saying it and stop putting all their games on multiple devices right about... now?

Also you sound kind of goopalicious with your comment regarding lackluster GamePass games. What do you consider to be "lackluster"? MS has released plenty of good/great games on the service and some that were not met well by critics. Let's assume anything less than a 70 meta is "lackluster" to you. That makes games like State of Decay 2, Bleeding Edge, Crackdown 3, and Sea of Thieves lackluster. But what about Ori 2? Horizon 4? Gears Tactics? Wasteland 3? Gears 5? Tell Me Why? Hell, even Battletoads ended up above a 70. Minecraft Dungeons? etc etc. And how far back are we going? Because if you want to include the entire history of Gears and Halo, well, that's a lot more titles that are far from "lackluster".

Sounds a lot like what Sony was doing during the PS Vita era. I mean, you're actually criticizing a corporation for generic PR here.

Not really aimed at you, but I don't get the double standards here. If ZeniMax were to sell to either Sony or MS, we should be happy it was MS because at least we know PC users can still play the stuff. And as we were told over and over and over again on this site, that makes it not exclusive and makes it ok because, like, everyone has a gaming PC.

Well, I'm sorry but I have no sympathy whatsoever for PS gamers, they always make such a ruckus every time anyone even dares to mention that a Sony game is going to appear on PC. As if God of War being on PC is somehow going to taint their experience on their precious console. I even saw people online telling others to "just buy a PS4" if they wanted to see Spiderman in a MULTIPLATFORM game. So yeah, I want MS to buy at least three more studios.

M$ is a bully. M$ should help the industry grow by making new ips. Sony did that with Uncharted, Horizon, Zero dawn, the last of us, infamous, etc. This is what gets the industry moving. i'll no be surprised if the buy Take2.

God I love these misinformed posts. 

In terms of “fixing” they have adopted a hands off approach where they don’t interfere with development. Inexile explained how MS gave them money, new offices and allowed a delay of Wasteland 3 for voice acting and general polish. Psychonauts 2 also delayed into 2021 because they needed more time. Halo Infinite delayed for polish instead of MS forcing a holiday launch. Turn 10 stopped their 2 year cycle for Forza Motorsport so they can polish their engine and make a great next gen impression.

As for varied.....Ori, Gears Tactics, Minecraft Dungeons, Flight SIM, Tell Me Why, Battletoads, Wasteland 3.....all literally a different genre. All these games got good scores, Ori 2 and Flight SIM in the 90s. Sorry to say but MS doing both. They got the money to do both. Your post completely ignores what they have done with their other studios. 

Starfield is a new IP ;)

Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo also new IP from Xbox, but that dastardly Sony gave MS bags of money to make it timed exclusive for PS instead. Sony is the bully...stealing Xbox 1st party exclusives. 

(This is me poking fun obviously) 

But seriously if we talking new IPs, then we got Sea of Thieves, Everwild, Avowed, State of Decay, Forza Horizon, Minecraft Dungeons, and Gears Tactics (spinoffs but different genres then source IP). Bringing back old IPs like Flight SIM, Killer Instinct, Battletoads, Psychonauts. Published new Ips like Ryse, Quantum Break, Ori, Tell Me Why.

Worst case they are timed exclusive. But otherwise this is wishful thinking on your part.

Tell me, how does MS plan to grow Game Pass if they release their games on PS5? You thinking too short term. 

You're really setting yourself up for disappointment if you think MS is going to have new games release on ps5 in the future. Besides those deals Sony already made with Bethesda, and probably Fallout 76 and ESO(since they are already on Ps4), I don't see why MS would release new games on other platforms.

MS wants the Xbox/gamepass to grow. Having titles like Fallout 5, Starfield, and ES6 be exclusive to Xbox would be huge. Then throw in a new Doom, Wolfenstein, and Dishonored, this would really pull people towards the Xbox ecosystem. I don't think you understand, the acquisition isn't about making money make as quickly as possible, it's about building a library of content that nobody can ignore. MS has so much money, making their money back as soon as possible is the least of their worries. 

MS could care less about any sort of outrage. MS owns these IP's now and can do what they want with them and no amount of port begging is going to change this. If someone wants to play these games badly enough, they will buy an Xbox or play it on PC/Xcloud.