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Forums - Gaming Discussion - 11 US Congressmen ask Biden Admin to pressure Japan over allowing Sony to buy console exclusivity deals

Ryuu96 said:

Here's an actual lawyer.

No, the FTC Didn't "LIE" | But Neither Did Microsoft (VL755) - YouTube

You're using "foreclosure" wrong in this context as well.

European Commission is using it to mean to affect the rival console in a significant way, not to simply remove titles from PlayStation. When EC says Microsoft doesn't have the ability to foreclose a rival, they mean to harm them significantly, not take away games from them. So EC doesn't have to save face about anything.

Microsoft straight up said that they would make some games exclusive, the European Commission didn't care.

Currently watching it. At 9:01 he says the deal closed in March. Why is the commission's report dated in May? I thought the deal couldn't close until all regulating bodies made a decision.



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rapsuperstar31 said:

You might be right on that, but one thing I do notice whenever I come to the site, the Xbox Empire always has 50+ new posts since the last time I visited where the Playstation Nation message boards sometimes has no new posts when I come back.

Xbox Empire has trouble keeping all the cool kids cats out.

Last edited by DroidKnight - on 29 March 2023

...to avoid getting banned for inactivity, I may have to resort to comments that are of a lower overall quality and or beneath my moral standards.

rapsuperstar31 said:
theRepublic said:

The forums on this site have been pro-Sony and pro-Nintendo for probably a decade.  You have no clue what you are talking about.

You might be right on that, but one thing I do notice whenever I come to the site, the Xbox Empire always has 50+ new posts since the last time I visited where the Playstation Nation message boards sometimes has no new posts when I come back.

Well, at one time, PS Nation and Nintendomination were just as active as Xbox Empire, when I first joined the site. Then as I recall there was a mass exodus of a good many of the regular members of that iteration of PS Nation to the VizionEck forums, an indie game that was being developed by one of those Sony fans who used PS Nation. PS Nation had multiple iterations after that, but none of them were as successful as that original one. Nintendomination meanwhile closed at some point, and later was replaced by the current Club Nintendo thread, which is more active than the current iteration of PS Nation I think, but still alot less active than Xbox Empire.

Xbox Empire by comparison kept growing. There is one big reason for that, there were some pretty dark days for the Xbox fanbase here on VGC during the early-mid years of last gen, for awhile the mod team felt kind of anti-Xbox biased, Xbox fans would fairly regularly get attacked or trolled if they ventured outside of Xbox Empire into the greater forums and often the mod team didn't adequately respond to those attacks and trollings, and as a result, many of us Xbox fans reached a point where we were pretty much only posting in Xbox Empire and rarely posting outside of it, because we had 1 or 2 pro-Xbox mods on the team at the time who regularly used Xbox Empire and policed it to prevent the attacks and trollings that the Xbox fanbase saw in the greater forums. As a result, Xbox Empire became very tight knit and very active and grew over time. Though the forums at large have improved greatly for Xbox users since those dark days for Xbox fans in the early-mid Xbox One years, many of us still primarily post in Xbox Empire instead of making smaller threads for individual pieces of Xbox news or posting in other general gaming threads.

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 29 March 2023

Ryuu96 said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

A mod attacking me is indicative of how this entire site runs behind the scenes. And I consider an accusatory attack from one of teammember to be an accusatory attack from all of you. Just because I don't accept the same evidence as you and need a little more or different evidence is no reason for a mod to show up and outright attack me in a condescending tone.

No it really isn't.

The Mod team doesn't even interact with the Writing team, the Mod team runs on Slack and the Writing team run on Discord. I don't even think Trunks has ever interacted with Machia! Trunks is not a Mod and he didn't say anything, it's completely unfair to drag him into the conversation.

Dude is straight up one of the nicest members on the Staff team and I've not once seen him get involved in an argument.

I've had people insult me before in debates, I've shrugged it off, I didn't bother moderating them because I've a thick skin but it is really annoying to see people go after Trunks because he apparently makes too many Xbox articles and it isn't the first time someone has thrown that complaint towards him in a shitty way, and despite the attacks towards him, and despite him seeing them, he never reports any of you.

Then he is dragged into this conversation with a jab at him for absolutely no reason, it is shitty.

If I was a site admin I wouldn't want the type of people that go around attacking other members as co-workers. Last time that I was here on a regular basis I had these days where I committed to just stick to the facts and not attack anyone. Kept trying. Kept getting dragged into it by people poking me first. Mods did nothing.

Actually, they did worse than nothing because they couldn't even stick to clear objective rules. They would just make up whatever rules they could think of on the fly and then claim I "violated" them. I watched countless members get perma'd from here for seemingly no reason whatsoever. They were almost all PS fans.

You would think that the rules would be some simple objective things like...

Don't insult others.
Don't derail threads.
No hate speech.
Don't engage in piracy or smoke signal on how to do it.


The problem is the rules are amorphous subjective nonsense like "Don't troll. Don't flame."

Anyway, I just view this whole site as a massive unprofessional mess and after being attacked by one staff member decided to go after the guy that is the main staff member of the site. At least the most visible.



shikamaru317 said:
rapsuperstar31 said:

You might be right on that, but one thing I do notice whenever I come to the site, the Xbox Empire always has 50+ new posts since the last time I visited where the Playstation Nation message boards sometimes has no new posts when I come back.

Well, at one time, PS Nation and Nintendomination were just as active as Xbox Empire, when I first joined the site. Then as I recall there was a mass exodus of a good many of the regular members of that iteration of PS Nation to the VizionEck forums, an indie game that was being developed by one of those Sony fans who used PS Nation. PS Nation had multiple iterations after that, but none of them were as successful as that original one.

Xbox Empire by comparison kept growing. There is one big reason for that, there were some pretty dark days for the Xbox fanbase here on VGC during the early years of last gen, for awhile the mod team felt kind of anti-Xbox biased, Xbox fans would regularly get attacked or trolled if they ventured outside of Xbox Empire into the greater forums and often the mod team didn't adequately respond to those attacks and trollings, and as a result, many of us Xbox fans reached a point where we were pretty much only posting in Xbox Empire and rarely posting outside of it, because we had 1 or 2 pro-Xbox mods on the team at the time who regularly used Xbox Empire and policed it to prevent the attacks and trollings that the Xbox fanbase saw in the greater forums. As a result, Xbox Empire became very tight knit and very active and grew over time. Though the forums at large have improved greatly since those dark days for Xbox fans in the early-mid Xbox One years, many of us still primarily post there instead of making smaller threads for individual pieces of Xbox news or posting in other threads.

Oof. That sucks. I specifically closed out the Xbox portion of the site from even showing up one day after signing up in an attempt to not get into it with them.



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rapsuperstar31 said:
theRepublic said:

The forums on this site have been pro-Sony and pro-Nintendo for probably a decade.  You have no clue what you are talking about.

You might be right on that, but one thing I do notice whenever I come to the site, the Xbox Empire always has 50+ new posts since the last time I visited where the Playstation Nation message boards sometimes has no new posts when I come back.

I think a lot of Empire users will say that I'm likely 20/50 of those posts, Lol. I'm very on top of the news, I have a system and it works, I post A LOT of news in Empire both small and large which I suppose helps keep the convo flowing.

Xbox Empire has always been the most active nation thread and where most Xbox fans lurk for various reasons that we don't need to get into here but it has been a very active thread since the very beginning, back in the day it would easily pull 100+ comments per day. It has mostly remained the same users for years so there's a very community feel to it and as such we sometimes have little harmless off-topic chats as well.

the-pi-guy said:

I'd also just say the news feels tilted is moreso just there has not been very many events lately.  

Been a couple months since a showcase.

Only been a couple first party game releases.  

Hasn't been any acquisitions in quite a while.

Lots of focus on the Activision acquisition. And even there a lot of people do not agree on whether any piece of news is generally positive or negative. 

Some people feel Sony is being petty for the exact same situation that someone else is just thankful that someone is putting up a fight against the acquisition. 

These are very good points.

Fact is that there hasn't been that much major news lately and it has been Activision-Blizzard stuff for months now. I know some Xbox fans who are even sick of it but it still generates the most activity by far out of everything, Lol.

Sony hasn't had a major event in quite a while too, I hear a massive one is coming up in Summer according to rumours so that'll be a lot of news, Lol. I also think it's fair to say that Sony isn't as active as Xbox is in the new cycles, I feel like Xbox does far much stuff such as interviews and whatnot...And of course, far more acquisitions...

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 29 March 2023

Cerebralbore101 said:
Ryuu96 said:

No it really isn't.

The Mod team doesn't even interact with the Writing team, the Mod team runs on Slack and the Writing team run on Discord. I don't even think Trunks has ever interacted with Machia! Trunks is not a Mod and he didn't say anything, it's completely unfair to drag him into the conversation.

Dude is straight up one of the nicest members on the Staff team and I've not once seen him get involved in an argument.

I've had people insult me before in debates, I've shrugged it off, I didn't bother moderating them because I've a thick skin but it is really annoying to see people go after Trunks because he apparently makes too many Xbox articles and it isn't the first time someone has thrown that complaint towards him in a shitty way, and despite the attacks towards him, and despite him seeing them, he never reports any of you.

Then he is dragged into this conversation with a jab at him for absolutely no reason, it is shitty.

If I was a site admin I wouldn't want the type of people that go around attacking other members as co-workers. Last time that I was here on a regular basis I had these days where I committed to just stick to the facts and not attack anyone. Kept trying. Kept getting dragged into it by people poking me first. Mods did nothing.

Actually, they did worse than nothing because they couldn't even stick to clear objective rules. They would just make up whatever rules they could think of on the fly and then claim I "violated" them. I watched countless members get perma'd from here for seemingly no reason whatsoever. They were almost all PS fans.

You would think that the rules would be some simple objective things like...

Don't insult others.
Don't derail threads.
No hate speech.
Don't engage in piracy or smoke signal on how to do it.

The problem is the rules are amorphous subjective nonsense like "Don't troll. Don't flame."

Anyway, I just view this whole site as a massive unprofessional mess and after being attacked by one staff member decided to go after the guy that is the main staff member of the site. At least the most visible.

But none of this excuses attacking Trunks for no reason, only because he makes a lot of Xbox news in your view, the dude does the news writing and the numbers and that's all. If you have an issue with a Mod then you know to take it up with the Head Mod. The Mod team has absolutely nothing to do with the Writing team and ergo Trunks.

Trunks isn't even the main dude, Machina would technically be all of our bosses while CGI is the boss of the Moderator team.

Trunks sticks to his work and does it well, I would say, and I would also say he is a major reason why the site is still alive as well. He does all this work to keep the numbers running and what does he get? People attacking him on Twitter because they don't like the estimates whether it's Xbox fans being upset or PlayStation fans being upset and then he comes here and gets attacked for posting too much Xbox news.

Whether he is on the overall Staff or not does not excuse you randomly dragging him into a conversation he isn't apart of to attack him because a Mod said something that you didn't like that he had absolutely nothing to do with, the Mod team have always worked separate from the Writing team because why the hell would they work together? Two completely different thing and you know the correct procedure for complaining about a Mod issue.



Ryuu96 said:

Here's an actual lawyer.

No, the FTC Didn't "LIE" | But Neither Did Microsoft (VL755) - YouTube

You're using "foreclosure" wrong in this context as well.

European Commission is using it to mean to affect the rival console in a significant way, not to simply remove titles from PlayStation. When EC says Microsoft doesn't have the ability to foreclose a rival, they mean to harm them significantly, not take away games from them. So EC doesn't have to save face about anything.

Microsoft straight up said that they would make some games exclusive, the European Commission didn't care.

Just finished watching it. Knowing that some dude at the FTC got just as confused as I was puts me at ease. I'm not purposefully trying to misinterpret the evidence here. It's just at face value it was enough to fool even some guy who does this sort of stuff for a living over at the FTC.



Kyuu said:
chakkra said:

Have you ever stop to consider why does Sony even bother blocking FF and other japanese games from coming to Xbox? What exactly do they gain from it?

It almost feel like they are wasting money that they could have used into developing more 1st party games.

My two cents: Sony likely allocate an annual "moneyhatting budget" to complement their 1st/2nd party studios which are at full capacity; budget isn't the only bottleneck. Also, they're probably not paying anywhere near enough to fund a full decent game. Some of these exclusivity deals are initiated by the 3rd party publisher who may have little faith in an Xbox version selling well and think "Hey, let's see if Sony can moneyhat us and help market our game". They won't necessarily ask for much.

Finally... part of the Playstation appeal (PS1 and PS2 in particular) was "high quality 3rd party exclusives" that may no directly sell that much (especially not on Xbox to warrant PS exclusivity) but constitute the reputation and diversity of the console's game library. Their sales figures don't reflect their full benefits; they add value upon accumulation.

Zippy6 said:
chakkra said:

Have you ever stop to consider why does Sony even bother blocking FF and other japanese games from coming to Xbox? What exactly do they gain from it?

It almost feel like they are wasting money that they could have used into developing more 1st party games.

Most likely it's easier and cheaper to negotiate such a deal with a Japanese company as native sales for Xbox are almost non-existant and typically globally Japanese style games sell far more on PlayStation than Xbox even when simultaneously launched and even taking Xbox's lower installbase into account.

It's easy and cheap to persuade these companies to not release on Xbox and they do it with titles that are popular and will give them an advantage in the West.

They're not getting exclusive final fantasy to help them over Xbox in Japan, it's just not necessary. They're doing it for western markets and they'll get it cheaper than they would a third party western exclusive.

You know.. that is why I keep saying that this Activision deal is actually the best case scenario for Playstation owners. If Microsoft had decided to allocated at least 20 of those 70 billions into their moneyhat budget, they would have managed to convince quite a few developers to put their games on exclusively on Xbox, and like you said "add value upon accumulation".

And I actually agree that MS hasn't been aggresive enough on the japanese market; I mean, while it is true that it would be a lot more expensive for them to get the same exclusive deals that Sony gets, it is also true that they have the money to pull it off.



Cerebralbore101 said:
Ryuu96 said:

Dude, this is kind of a garbage comment as well.

Say what you want about me, I don't care, but dragging Trunks into it for no reason at all other than you being upset about the amount of Xbox news on the front page, going as far to compare him to f*cking Fox News is really shitty considering the damage those guys do. He just posts the news he sees, he doesn't even do opinion pieces!

Some of you need to chill with this console war stuff. You don't like seeing Xbox news on the front page then go take it up with Machina, maybe apply to be a writer if you're any good so you can post all this PlayStation news that Trunks apparently misses, stop talking shit about him when he does so much to keep the site alive and all some of you do is complain about how many Xbox articles he makes.

Mods should refrain from publicly attacking others. Normally I'd just be quiet about Trunks and leave him alone. But when a mod goes ahead and decides to call me biased just because he doesn't like what I have to say?

Also like I said anyone can take a talley of how many articles put Xbox in a nice light and how many articles rag on Playstation. Then they can compare that talley with other sites. Would you like me to start a thread containing news that he misses? I don't really plan on sticking around, but I'll post nothing but links in said thread on a daily basis. No commentary. Just links to news that he misses.

Thats some obsessive type shit right there dude.