I don’t believe we will see an equal response. If Sony really cared about their first party they would never have let Ready At Dawn, Quantic Dream and Kojima Productions go. What happenned to Naughty Dogs second team? Or Sony Santa Monicas second team? Never materialised or shut down.
They’ve been cutting corners for years now and its finally catching up to them.
I’m sorry but I’ll defend Sony on this one. Quantic dream and Kojima were just bleeding money and making overrated movies.
Sony gave Kojima a huge check to make what is imo one of the most boring nonsensical AAA games ever and they got fuck all in return.
Sony have some amazing 1st party studios. Focus more on making those bigger. Having Kojima take you for a fool is bad for business. Sony could have spent that money on rebuilding Team Ico. But team ico just doesn’t exist anymore. Shame.
I have zero knowledge of business dealings and suchlike but from my perspective:
If you’re one of the people in charge of a company that’s been approached by Sony for acquisition, wouldn’t you leverage the knowledge that MS has deep pockets and is looking to acquire to drive up the price? The point is to cash for the highest amount you can, right? Please, explain it to me if I’m wrong (which I’m sure I am)
I believe he started his career on the MSX 
Edit: But apparently the MSX was primarily manufactured by Sony! Revolver Kojima has been playing both sides from the start!
Relationships don’t matter in the public stock market. It’s whoever has the highest price.
I disagree that Sony didn’t get anything. Sure, if all you are focused on is direct sales of Death Stranding, then sure, it doesn’t seem it was near the level of some of Sony’s blockbusters.
However, what they did get was years of hype and mindshare from media and fans alike talking about Death Stranding and putting it on a pedestal with the Sony blockbusters before we even knew much about it. That type of marketing is invaluable and helped shore up Sony’s reputation of big unmissable experiences. So, it may not be repeatable, and may not be needed by Sony right now, but I think it served its purpose for Sony and overall was beneficial to their brand.
Given that many third parties don’t want to deal with the XSS, I’m pretty sure Sony will have no issue lining up exclusives. They already have Square in their pockets, and they are working on other Japanese publishers. I don’t think they are particularly worried. Will be interesting to see what MS does in response.
why are you anonymous?
Also where is evidence developers don’t want to deal with the XSS? The problem right now is the development for these systems is still in early stages. Devs are having issues making games on Xbox Series X even. PC gaming has several tiers and performance variations across many GPU’s. I don’t understand the hate for the Series S. IF its working at a lower resolution it doens’t need as much RAM and the CPU power alone is enough to carry it very far. This isn’t a PRo or one X where the CPU’s are just dated as hell.
Also Square are using Sony for these timed exclusives to line up their pockets. When that exclusivity runs out they’ll put them on Gamepass and take MS’s money. Sqaure are just in it for money and if people realize this i think they’ll rather wait to play games on Gamepass than shell out 70 bucks on PS5.
I don’t know what people expect Sony to do? After nearly 20 years in the console market Microsoft is finally flexing their financial muscles and Sony doesn’t have the capital to complete.
The only quick thing they can do is to money hat timed exclusives.
I believe the XSX is going to perform alot better than the Xbox One did, and I expect them to sell around 80 million this generation, especially if MS does the right thing with making Zenimax games exclusive. When Microsoft has this many consoles in the wild, companies that were happy to be exclusive to PS might not be so willing to do it this gen.
On top of that Sony would have to pay more for those exclusive deals if Xbox sells well.
Outside of that, doubling the number of teams in Sony’s studios is a must. But really, Sony only has maybe four or five studios that would do this. Naughty Dog, GG, Insomniac and SSM, maybe Sucker Punch. Poly is only ever going to do GT, and the other studios arnt that impressive to where a second team would be of any value.
If they buy Bluepoint, I would deff get a second team running with them, as there is a ton of good IPs they could run with or remake.
Xbox games studios including Bethesda has around 29 teams working on different projects. If on average they release a new game every 4 years that gives you around 7 first party exclusive games a year. Sony on average has three first party games a year.
That really throws the “xbox has no games” straight back into Sony’s face.
MS is in perfect position. They get it. Over the next few years people are going to be researching what the best gaming subscription service is. They will probably be at 25 million subscriptions before Halo Infinite and Starfield release this year. When a customer walks into a Best Buy or Gamestop and ask what is better PSNow or Gamepass those employees are going to say Gamepass 99.99% of the time. And if Sony isn’t advertising PSNow or a Gamepass equivalent by this fall then that would be an even bigger problem for Sony.
If this was entirely about money, Insomniac wouldn’t have been a literal steal for Sony back in 2018. Microsoft had already started the acquisition spree by then, what would another studio be for such a low price too.
The very long history and relationship with Sony mattered just as much especially after coming off the underwhelming sales of Sunset Overdrive and then suddenly having huge success with spiderman. Spiderman was something Insomniac had a personal vested interest in and only Sony could have them keep working on more games in that universe.
All of that trumped money.
Let’s be very real here. Pre-Bethesda you cannot compare PS to Xbox Studios. The 3 PS games a year are so incredibly polished in comparison to Xbox. It would always seem like 3 big games a year compared to 9 Indies, and one big game.
Even-though 29 is a big number, quantity does not equal quality. Now we have Bethesda in the mix - some of the games will be as big as PS and things should be a lot more equal.
I feel we would be fools to say Xbox is massively better than PS now. If Xbox buy a few more studios, then we can start seeing ourselves as the better platform for exclusives. Just feels a tad too early to make the call now. PS is a Ferrari F40 and Xbox is an AMG Hatchback.
Ah thank you for the example and historical context, that helps a lot! I thought of the acquisition stance as being very new and didn’t know it had started that far back. I also didn’t consider the less tangible benefits that being market leader afford Sony.
What an awful post. Games like a new assassin’s Creed-lite (ghost of Tsushima) or the most boring walking simulator ever (death stranding) that are 80 metacritic games and , somehow, find themselves with GOTY nominations are not better than what MS is putting out , even without Bethesda. What MS exclusives are not polished, forza horizon 4, gears of war 5, gears tactics , flight simulator , ori and the will of wisps ?
Nah, it has nothing to do with being polished. They all are third person action games. Simple as that. MS produces great games in all genres, except that one. (not to mention, a lot of recognition Ghost of Tsushima gets is due to setting - it is set in Japan).
no worries. I just checked that Sony acquired them in august of 2019, but microsoft was doing its purchasing spree as early as 2018 when they announced Playground, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory and Compulsion into the xbox family and then added InXile and Double Fine in 2019, so I figure Insomniac could have easily been there if MS wanted or could get them. Bethesda also couldn’t have gone to Sony in that respect because for one they cannot afford it, two, Bethesda is very PC centric and among xbox and ps, Xbox is the one all in on pc, then there’s mods, which again xbox is better at even though not as great as pc but still faaar ahead of Playstation.
You just listed 3 of my top 10 games, which is why I’m on am Xbox forum, it would be kinda ignorant not to tip a hat to PS though. They are market leaders for a reason and I guess that reason is just Action Games and third party exclusivity deals. 
MS’ games are just as polished as PS’ ones. It is just that MS does not produce third person action games.
They’ll keep doing what they’ve been doing for a long time, which is buying exclusivity. They feel that by being market leader it’s most likely the cheapest short time way of doing things imo. And MS will just keep buying more studios. MS playing the long term game and I like the way Phil is doing things and the confidence Satya has in the Xbox division. This will pay dividends long term!