Microsoft: Considering buying more Xbox Game Studios; More investment into Game Pass to come; Bethesda will run semi-independently

They were complaining Xbox didn’t have games and now they are begging to be spared lol make up your mind people, now it is too late

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Yes, the change is on improvement, but the studio culture is kept the same. It has been with all the previous acquisitions, it won’t be different for Zenimax/Bethesda.

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It’s a bit different, but it’s not, at the same time. Zenimax acquired studios on different times and they are on different geographical locations, as XGS are too. Maybe it will take a little longer for them to be integrated, but I don’t see them being treated differently from all the other Xbox Game Studios. And that doesn’t mean to change their culture, as it was not the case with Ninja Theory, Double Fine and so on.

Yeah I think we agree, I just want them to be seen as individual XGS. But like you point out, they are spread out and joined at different times etc. so it will probably be the case naturally.

Fuck yeah!!! Let’s go!!! More More More lol

Seriously, publisher or development studio, if it makes sense and fits, then by all means, go out and get them. We’ve all asked Spencer and Microsoft to be more aggressive, well here you go. I for one am very much looking forward to it all.

I’m not loyal to any brand or company and while I was a PS4 guy (and Xbox 360 guy before that), since March, I have been all in with Xbox Series X as my primary gaming console because they’re doing things that are far more beneficial to me personally.

I no longer have to take a $60+ chance on a first party title from now any of the 22 studios and instead can give them a shot day one for a $10 monthly rental. Freaking awesome!!!

I’m sure Sony will make a few acquisitions of their own (I believe that they’ve acquired or will acquire Bluepoint Games and Housemarque) which is also perfectly fine by me and also great for me. Plus, I don’t want to see Amazon, Google or Tencent acquire publishers or development studios that would be better suited for Xbox or PlayStation.

I say give me more, more and more. Whooooooooo!!! So freaking hyped!!!

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Is this thread not essentially the same as the one we’ve had since August? Just seems like an unnecessary one when these very things are being discussed there.

I’m just speculating, but Nadella & the MS Board think the entire gaming sector might be 5x bigger by 2030 and if they can secure at 20% piece of that pie, it might mean increasing their currently quarterly EBITA from $10 billion to $15 billion just on the strength of gaming alone. That doesn’t even account for Surface hardware becoming a big hit and other things we can’t even imagine right now.

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Also it’s proven that Game Pass leads to some amount of permanent game purchases. This is inevitable.

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True. Because you can basically try out so many games for a $10 monthly rental. Love Game Pass!!!

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Traditional Music publishers tried to ignore streaming and now they have to beg to make peanuts off Spotify.

Traditional Cable channels tried to ignore streaming and now they’re all launching their own services, but Netflix has already taken a dominant lead

Traditional movie studios tried to ignore streaming and now they’re all launching their own services. From many reports Disney+ made good money off of Mulan so maybe they got ahead of the curve.

Now it’s gaming’s turn. Microsoft is making their bet. Seems likely others will follow, eventually.

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Which is even better than Netflix, which forces you to subscribe monthly for the entire catalog. You don’t get the option of buying individual titles.

They actually said in the CNBC interview yesterday that they weren’t touching ZeniMax because it works well as is. People just missed that in their rush to breathlessly tell us all how concerned they were about ZeniMax employees…

So concerned they rushed to Twitter to tell us about the concern instead of watching a 4 minute video.

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Not really a good comparison because Spotify is fucking trash for what they do to music artists. Disney is… Well, Disney. I get this is inevitable and gaming was next, but yeah, hopefully MS doesn’t end up like those two.

Agreed.

I don’t blame Spotify. I think the general public just doesn’t care for music like it cares about games. Basically the market value for music has gone down to zero.

This is another thing I learned about recently. Netflix also used to provide option to buy dvds and shit to “own” the shows or movies they had on. But look where it is now, only streaming. Games are a different beast and ownership here matters a lot more than movies or series. I can see MS just dropping the option to buy games permanently once Game Pass is big enough that they don’t need to rely on game sales anymore, but I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.

Sorry, no. Fuck Spotify. They pay pennies to artists and then come around and say artists should not be taking so much much time for releasing music.

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Yes there seems to be a big difference between when a streaming market is being controlled by a content creator (say Netflix or even Disney who have to keep creators happy to make quality content) or a non-content creator (Spotify who are ruthless with the artists).

With regards to gaming’s future that’s likely the difference between having a company that is heavily invested in creating actual gaming content (Microsoft) vs an outsider who is just in it for the market opportunity (Stadia).

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Also if the music industry operated the same way as gaming, music labels would have their own streaming services and digital stores. Yet non-content creators like Apple, Google & Spotify control the industry. SMH

That’s great imo