I am hopeful with the increased power of Switch 2 that Gamepass will come to it. Nintendo would rather make a cut of subscription than no sales for those games at all. If I could do Gamepass and Nintendo games on one device... Oh the dream!

No, we like to say this is likely a reaction to you writing silly nonsense about Phil.

Market capitalization (the combined value of all outstanding stock) is a decent way to get a rough idea of the resources a company has at its disposal should it want to conduct a merger or acquisition. As of this evening, the current market caps of the big 3 are:

MS: $2.3 trillion
Sony: $154 billion
Nintendo: $54 billion

While this is useful for getting s rough idea, the fact that Sony and Nintendo are considerably smaller does not preclude major acquisitions on either of their part.

If, for example, Sony wanted to acquire a publisher level company, they could borrow money, or use their own stock to make the purchase. In an extreme scenario, they could conduct a merger instead of an acquisition.

Sony can not afford to get into a war of attrition, whatever they do next will have to be surgical. If I were Sony, my focus would be on preventing bleeding, not increasing market share or trying to capture Xbox users.

Appreciate it.

Game recognizes game.

*Fist Bump*

This acquisition is certainly a huge deal. Having said that I think Sony will continue to back their consoles with their own studios and third party partners and see where things go. I have no doubt they want to build a Nintendo-like following where gamers go entirely based on the 1st party exclusives. I guess this is Sony's test (and in fact the Playstation's biggest challenge ever) to show that they have a similar style following. I feel that regardless, Sony will continue to do well in Japan (or as well as they can given Nintendo dominate) and in EU to some extent, but I can see Xbox gaining significantly in NA.

Looking at MS, clearly GP and X series X/S will see better sales but any significant changes in consoles are a couple of years away at least and certainly tge casual market will take a while to realise the changes with this purchase. I also note that this sale does raise valid points about MS's hypocrisy where they promote free and open gaming but exclude a single console from their games.

For me personally, I am a PS gamer and  play primarily for the Sony exclusives and japanese games so my gaming habits wont change and the PS will continue to be my console of choice.

This is just the beginning, a lot of room left for consolidation still. I guess MS gets credit for beating Apple, Google and Amazon to it (not that I prefer them over the rest). Those waiting for SONY to "respond" are daydreaming, the truth is that MS is a company on a different level. SONY, while huge, is a small company compared to big tech. The companies that can "respond" to this can be counted on one hand and you'd still have fingers left unassigned, oh, and SONY isn't one of them.

Anyone else think 68 billion was a lot for this purchase?

It's actually a small price to pay. Stock has plummeted of late due to things already discussed at length on this site.

Also, Ms decided to ditch cash in exchange for an asset that will help them continue past gaming and into the metaverse.

If anyone is waiting for a response, I'd look towards Google/Amazon/Apple.

Sony and MS can spend all the money they want but I feel Nintendo still has the better first-party studios and partnerships. Sony dissolved its best studio. I hate this monopoly but as it stands. I don't like Act games or Bethesda. Aside from Doom and Wolfen but overall it's not like either publisher was brimming with new ideas or creativity. Just the same shit over and over. Bethesda makes the same broken games and their E3's always been talking about the same 3 games and updates. Sony seems content to abandon creative new IPs and just pump out what's trending. I will still get a PS5 for Japanese games, indies, LRG, and play my PS4 games. I just find MS and Sony's 1st party to be pretty bland despite all the cash they threw around. Still just going to be more of the same creatively bankrupt trends.

If Polymega ships my console this year and I can get a GDEMU mod for my Dreamcast. I think this is the last-gen I partake in. Go full retro. Maybe get a Switch 2 but be done with MS and Sony. After that, it's all retro. When the industry was better. More creative. Not risk-averse and a diverse number of devs and publishers.

Can Sony afford Take-Two? Activision-Blizzard was in a bad spot which I think gave Microsoft the opening it needed. Is T2 going through the same?