Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard Discussion Thread (Part 1)

Gaming
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2182

Yeah, I listened to Jez on Xbox Two and he admited his take was a bit over the top. It wasn’t meant to be taken litteraly. He’s a bit of a goof.

He explained why he said that : it’s because when he was a kid, he couldn’t buy many games, if any. He was poor, so he had to rent them or borrow them, so for him GP would have been perfect.

There’s a lot of countries where consoles and games are pretty expensive, so Xcloud and GP are great services there. For example, he said that Xcloud could be really popular in Africa.

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2183

Just sub out “consolidation” for “taking games off playstation” and you’ve found the real issue for most people. If Bethesda is anything to go by, they’re not even consolidating the marketing teams. These teams are effectively going to be no different than the way they were prior to acquisition they just won’t make games for Playstation anymore.

The horror.

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2184

I really don’t understand how can anyone not see the potential of Game Pass when it comes in creativity and variety…will it reach that? I sure don’t know but what I do know is that the previous 70 euros or bust model isn’t working anymore and the previous generation is a big proof of that, whole genres have almost vanished from the AA and AAA space like arcade racers, survival horror, 3D platformers, immersive sims e.t.c…and guess what? with the full price model we ain’t gonna see shit from any of the former so maybe things will change for the better with the safety net and different metrics of success of something like Game Pass.

The industry is already playing it safe AF so how about gamers and the press give something like Game Pass a chance and see how it goes before calling the future of gaming grim and dark because we like to “own our games” and subscriptions are the work of the devil.

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2185

It’s being afraid of one mega corporation potentially owning the entire subscription model. Raising prices, making low quality games, having no one compete so Xbox can push forward anti consumer policies.

2186

How are they not concerned in the least bit about Google Play Pass or Apple Arcade then? I naturally think of mobile when anyone says low quality games and having no competition.

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2187

How do you suppose that happens when Tencent and Sony are considered giants, each with their own streaming solutions? Then we have Netflix wanting in plus Google and Apple have their own offerings.

The way I see it the only people crying foul are console only gamers who have little clue as to the bigger picture of the whole industry.

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2188

Neither Sony nor Tencent offer a service competitive with Game Pass. The more MS buys, the less chance that will be able to.

2189

Do they really not have a clue or are they just feigning ignorance in an attempt to hide their very specific biases. I think that it is the latter.

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2190

You know they’re both making streaming services. Tencent’s has been in beta for years, but I think it’s only for the East for now. Sony is supposedly launching their refresh of PSNow this year. Whether or not they intend to put day one games on them doesn’t matter. They have the ability to offer competing solutions and they have plenty of IP and capability to make them work.

Pretty sure EA and Ubisoft are working on streaming/subscription solutions as well.

2191

How shitty does your take have to be when you’d much rather continue to let the poor staff over at AB suffer a lot more under Bobbys leadership then MS buying them and liberating staff from Bobbys grasps. Not to mention that devs actually get creative freedom and time. All just because their games might skip your nostalgia filled piece of plastic.

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2192

Actually, sony was in the best position to do a gamepass service but they didn’t because they couldn’t think outside the box. Remember people laugh when xbox created gamepass “Who would want to rent MS games”? In business you constantly need to evolve. I think MS learn their lesson when they missed out on mobile. They are much bolder company now. Don’t blame MS for sony not innovating.

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2193

Not blaming them for anything. We should all want a competitive market though, which means MS not buying every publisher.

2194

Gonna be dissapointed when Microsoft doesnt announce anything on Monday.

2195

Very interesting post about how Sony may have led to this

https://www.resetera.com/threads/washington-post-phil-spencer-interview-on-the-activision-deal-and-more.542051/page-14#post-80640275

It’s hardly just a couple of moneyhats though. Sony have been signing exclusivity deals relentlessly all last generation, and they’ve done them largely unanswered as a result of both Xbox having a weaker market position making it cheaper for them to do, but also because the practice of signing them is widely accepted for them, but not for MS.

There’s a reason why something like Final Fantasy sells so disproportionately on PlayStation… it’s because these exclusivity deals reinforce (or in some cases disrupt) audiences on a given platform, and as time goes on that becomes more difficult to undo. Sony’s had Final Fantasy in their corner for a long time now, going back to Final Fantasy 7, but the series DID eventually come to Xbox day and date beginning with Final Fantasy XIII, and was starting to cultivate an audience within that ecosystem that had a desire to play JRPGs. That Final Fantasy 7 Remake got moneyhatted (for what is still an uncertain length of time in regards to Xbox) isn’t a random coincidence. This type of moneyhat is a precisely targeted one to cause an entire genre of game not be viable on the platform.

There are some IP that within their sphere carry so much weight that they cause ripple effects across the genre. Sony’s Street Fighter V moneyhat effectively buried the entire fighter genre on Xbox, because nobody invested in that genre was going to opt for a console that lacked Street Fighter… and as a result other titles that weren’t (or at least I’m not aware of being) moneyhats would start to skip the console also, because if nobody that’s invested in that genre is opting for that console, why should the smaller, more niche IP target that console either, right?

So yes… timed exclusives very much can be used to push a competing platform out of the market, and Sony was routinely targeting games that would be the most crippling across the spectrum. Whether that be Final Fantasy (and possibly Persona?) in the JRPG space, Street Fighter in the fighting game space, the year (or two) long exclusive content deals for Destiny, and the exclusive map content for COD in the FPS space, etc… the goal was to make it so Xbox as a platform wasn’t a viable choice for the majority of the market. And quite frankly, it was working and working well… hence the situation in 2016 where MS bowing out of the market entirely was a very real possibility.

When that didn’t occur, Sony looked to land killer blows right away at the start of this generation. Hence the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI’s timed exclusivity ahead of the consoles being released, and the murmurs of a whole slew of others to be revealed in time. And the general response here was just that it was a foregone conclusion that PS5 would just continue to build on PS4’s momentum largely unimpeded. And considering the shit MS took back in 2015 when they dared to land a single comparable exclusivity deal with Rise of the Tomb Raider, that avenue of retaliation was clearly not available to them. Look how quick the clarification of the duration of exclusivity of RoTR was forced out of MS and SquareEnix, and then contrast that with Crash N’Sane Trilogy, Nier Automata, Final Fantasy 7R, KOTOR remake… or any of countless other deals where their eventual Xbox release was happily left vague as hell. That’s how we’re here today, because MS were either gonna commit fully and land some true heavy blows that made a real difference to the current landscape, or they were inevitably going to see their platform marginalised to the point where they had to drop out.

If people didn’t want to see the level of escalation we’re seeing now today… well, they shouldn’t have been so comfortable commending the ever increasing frequency and severity of deals Sony was making to cripple their primary competition. “Final Fantasy sells 80%+ on PlayStation anyways, so they may as well” and by extension “of course it makes sense for game X to skip Xbox, because the audience is all on PlayStation”. Well, congrats… now they won’t all be. The rampant desire for the glory days of PS2-era domination has led us here, and so cries about how unfair it is ring hollow.

Basically Microsoft pulled the ultimate Uno Reverse Card

Now Phil is the most powerful man in gaming, Microsoft holds all the power, all the cards and it’s gotten so bad that Sony simps are begging for Biden and the US government to save Playstation when they aren’t going to do jack shit.

This is amazing, now Sony has to bend the knee and play by Microsoft’s rules and on their terms.

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2196

Synth is the best. Also,I heard the EXACT same as argument on a well known Playstation podcast. “Well, Final Fantasy has the majority of the playerbase on Playstation so the moneyhat isn’t as bad”. It’s a double standard and Sony has made it acceptable for timed exclusives to exist which cripples series on other ecosystems.

“You can eventually play the game though” is the common excuse to hand wave any attempt to compare what MS is doing to what Sony has done forever. Most people aren’t going to wait years to play a highly anticipated timed exclusive, so they’re forced to buy a PlayStation which is the entire point of the deal. Or if they don’t cave, the game has fallen out of the hype cycle, leading to less players on other systems when it eventually releases, and making it much more likely the next entry in the series accepts another deal from Sony, or they just skip the console entirely.

If Final Fantasy 7R ever makes it to Xbox, it’s not going to do well unless it somehow ends up on Game Pass. The majority of people who wanted to play it caved and bought a PlayStation, or they’ll have lost interest, giving Square Enix even more reason to continue the moneyhat cycle that Sony wants.

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2197

Jeff Grubb said it best today, moneyhats are essentially a company coming in at the 11th hour and paying strictly to keep games off another platform. Sony has no creative input into Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, etc. This doesn’t help the industry at all and isn’t helping devs make better games.

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2198

another thing is that money doesn’t go towards paying staff, or furthering development of any other game. it’s essentially a payday loan, it’s only covering projected lost sales. it’s a net neutral investment to the receiver… a net positive for the payer and a net negative for the excluded party.

it’s pretty much as anti-competitive as you can get as a concept.

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2199

Just to get an idea, what are some PC-centric game developers/publishers bigger than Activision Blizzard?

2200

That’s being over dramatic. It’s like saying sony is doom. It’s like saying apple will buy all mobile phone makers. No matter if we want or not, MS will not buy all publishers. It’s not fiscally responsible for them to do so.

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2201

Not bigger but paradox is pc centric.

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