Yeah but the parent company literally just bought another studio a week ago. They’re expanding their investment into games, not looking to sell right now.
From my experience younger generation is heavily skewed towards online gaming. Probably because they grew up with online services. Gens like millennials kinda hate or something online gaming, because they grew up with standalone games and believe that online games - not MMORPGs - are ruining the gaming.
3rd Person action games are very popular - basically they Oscar games like the games that you should create if you are aiming at Oscars. Sony is dominating with 3rd person games. Xbox basically doesn’t have any. But as mentioned before newer generation prefers online gaming and MS has better offerings there.
MS needs more investments in other markets because it seems like it abandoned almost everything with the exception of USA. And Sony won all other markets (I don’t count China for now) and now / last gen it invaded USA market, making it is a defensive battle.
I wonder if MS will try to win the market share in Europe, Japan. (At least looking at signs it will try to gain market share in Japan using XCloud). I think the next Virtua Fighter will be either Xbox Series and PS4 exclusive (comes to PC, Xbox Series but not PS5, similarly how PSO2 New Genesis). Maybe eventually coming to PS5, but it will be at least console launch exclusive - it is sad but MS cannot make deals like SFV to skip the whole console altogether because it doesn’t have that big market share for any company, aside first party, to ignore Playstation.
It feels like MS abandoned Europe once and for all. Nintendo is winning via handhelds, while Sony is dominating with regular bricks. MS has no place there. Unless they will win a lot of subscribers in GamePass, no third party will ignore PS - while they can easily ignore Xbox if Sony pays (though it seems these days it is close to impossible ignore PC so Sony only deprives Xbox community of games).
On a side note, I think MS will purchase Valve sooner or later.
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Yep. If Starfield and Halo meet 75% their expectations, people are really under-estimating how big they’ll be with the PC audience due to modding community. The OG Skyrim sold 20 million. Thats not including sales of remakes. Fallout 3 and 4 combined were near 25 million. Starfield will be a mainstream IP. It will move Game Pass subs maybe as much as Halo. Microsoft is leading with their mainstream IPs which is why it’ll be exciting to see what these higher quality niche games do riding the wave. It’s why I wanted to see a dev like IOI get acquired. I could see Arkane’s Prey team, likely releasing in 2022, finally getting some attention and becoming more mainstream as a result of riding behind these big hitters.
It’s the Netflix formula. The Superstsr IPs push niche stuff into the mainstream which then eventually makes those IPs platform drivers, a new wave gets behind them, rinse and repeat.
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Based on the move that Microsoft has made, it looks like they’d sooner abandon Japan than Europe though I doubt they abandon either. My guess is the push for Japan will come later than Wed like to see, probably 3+ years from now. The reason I think they can do that and it doesn’t really matter is they don’t really have any market share over there so they don’t really have anything to lose and a Sony doesn’t have a ton to gain by Xbox not being aggressive there either. Xbox will likely build up the infrastructure to support Asia well but not push too hard right away.
On the other hand, they’re already making s push hard for Europe, I think EA Play was a big step there, but Bethesda has a big following three as well. They added several studios in Europe in recent years and I believe will be adding more European studios. They have definitely been making in roads with a lot of indie devs in Europe. The next push there could be adding UPlay to Gamepass and Acworth a few European studios like Asobo and Dontnod.
I think Uplay will need to come to consoles first before they are adding it to Game Pass Ultimate, unless they are introducing it on consoles and at the same time, putting it on Game Pass.
I disagree. They are making inroads to Japanese market using XCloud. They are not competing using regular consoles (though they would probably sell a lot of Series S if they colored it like japanese flag). It will be more interesting in a couple years because for now PS4 has a huge presence in Japan, but the old generation will retire for real and they games won’t come out there anymore.
I don’t think they’d abandon Asia, just saying they would before Europe imo. They’re making a harder push in Europe right now.
To be clear though, they won’t abandon anywhere, they want to go after a 3 billion gamer market and that’s global so they’re attempt will be global.
They are doing bigger push in Asia (Japan, South Korea etc.) and South America though. Asia is heavily skewed towards mobile these days, so them pushing XCloud there make sense as Europe kinda stuck with old fashioned mentality of consoles.
Buy Sega, revive all their development teams and IPs and conquer Japan/Asia with Gamepass and Xcloud.
Buy Embracer and combine it with Sega Europe. Invest a lot in marketing and again conquer Europe with Gamepass and Xcloud.
So easy Ms should just do it 
Square Enix West too 
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I agree with the push they are making in Asia. However, I don’t think it’s quite at either the same level or success rate as Europe. In Europe they’ve secured marketing rights for two of the biggest European franchises from the largest developer (Ubisoft), partnered with countless indie devs in Europe, brought the most popular game to Gamepass with EA Play (Fifa), bought studios to establish a presence there and worked to grow those studios. The effort just seems bigger there to me and it makes sense because they used to have the biggest slice of the pie and it looks like they are trying to go back to their roots when building up this time.
SEGA really is the perfect fit for Xbox. I don’t think it’ll ever happen, but it is a very good fit for Xbox. With SEGA, they get a lot more European studios with Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive, Amplitude Studios, and Two Point Studios, with all being talented studios and their games being well known in Europe and the PC market. They also can finally get more popularity in Japan with SEGA’s Japanese studios, such as RGG and Atlus. And then, I’d love for some of Xbox’s studios to work on revivals of old SEGA IPs. That’d be great, but I’m not so sure whether this will actually happen. I personally don’t see it happening.
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Switch dominates the Japanese console market. Playstation has been declining for some time already. If there is one market which will translate big in the future it’s the cloud gaming market.
Imagine the next gen Monster Hunter via cloud. All this requires a lot preparation. What we have now is the beginning.
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To play devil’s advocate, some 3-4 months ago, not many people thought a Bethesda acquisition possible. Back in 2018 with the rumours of MS buying EA, Spencer himself even came out and said they would never buy a publisher. not saying SEGA will be bought, but I’m not taking any bets anymore, and I’m just waiting for whom is going to be next.
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Agree 100% Sega is the best fit on the market to flush out their portfolio and build a presence in markets. It makes them the market leader in strategy games and makes it no dispute they would be the RPG leader in general having acquired the JRPGs from Atlus. It gives them a great open world sandbox franchise that has worldwide popularity with Yakuza, gives them family friendly studios and a massive back catalog of games to add to Gamepass and Xbox in general. They’d have to buy 6-10 studios to get the same impact.
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And while we are at it. From software.
Total global domination 
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I personally tend to separate Playstation from Nintendo Switch and prefer to think about it as just and handheld. Traditional consoles died in Japan - it is all about handhelds (dominated by Switch) and mobile (dominated by Iphone). Also there is a growing caste of PC gamers, but that’s a separate matter altogether.
Agree. But it just make so much damn sense
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True, xbox has no intention to gain footing in the console market rather in the pc market and especially in the cloud market.
Most importantly it is to gain brand recognition by gamepass and PC
Let’s not forget sony themselve has stopped to focus on the Japanese market.
The home console market is dying there and it shows.
Funnily enough Pachter said two years ago that Bethesda will be bought. Regarding Sega - well Xbox has always been something akin spiritual successor of Sega Dreamcast. Sadly they lost japanese games. Despite having the signs of restructuring in Sega (like selling some businesses) I don’t think Sega will be sold. But they also have interesting portfolio aside games - they also have anime.
I personally would prefer to have branding like Microsoft Sega in Japan.