Yeah, that convo ended and then was brought back up lol. I am not going to continue this convo because I can tell it will likely become toxic but I am just going off what was said in hoegs video so take it up with him as he mentioned the consumer welfare presiption which is an act which deems anti competitive “only when it harms both allocative efficiency and raises the prices of goods above competitive levels or diminishes their quality” and if what I am saying is morally wrong does that mean the millions of people who bought CoD vangard or Black Ops: Cold War are mortally wrong for supporting activision, cos that is something that makes you look incredibly bad. Like watching the video back, they straight up drop their proposed act, I will be blunt, this tell me I care more about the employees than they do since all they are doing is using this merger to try prop up their ideals/proposment.
Sports games are far from niche but the issue is the licensing, you would need to keep them multiplat and Square is much more than Final Fantasy, thats like me saying EA is just sports games or Take Two is just rockstar or SEGA is just sonic
To your second point, I agree but in more specific conditions. If Microsoft were to acquire a Japanese publisher I’d personally like to see Microsoft give them platform freedom in Japan. There’s a lot of historic franchises that have been releasing on Nintendo and Sony platforms for decades now - it’d be a shame to disrupt a fan base who might simply be unwilling to buy an Xbox to keep playing them.
I’d say keep publishing ports in Japanese so long as there is an audience for them, avoid the image of being the big foreign tech firm throwing their weight around, and let people come to Xbox in time by building the idea that game pass is the best place to play these games.
I think sony and especially ms have enough under them to not acquire any more, but that’s not how they’ll see it. Say ms stops acquiring completely after activision, does that mean the others will as well?
Whether we like it or not the industry has started to consolidate around 4 or 5 companies, how will the industry look in 5 years if ms stops today? Will cdpr, capcom, konami, fromsoft, ubi etc etc, still be independent? I personally highly doubt it. At least ms keeps their games as accessible as physically possible.
yeah with 5-10 years in the industry is going to look completely different lol. Konami will probably still be independent but I wouldn’t be shocked if someone tried to buy their IPs, fromsoftware is already owned by KADOKAWA
I always thought the demand for buying Konami’s IPs would be a waste of money to be honest. I think internet bubbles are making those IPs sound more popular than they actually are, especially today when they’ve been dormant for so long now. You also don’t even get the work force that was involved with them so at that point Sony handing it over to Bluepoint or whoever would basically just be a new IP… So just make a new IP and save yourself the money.
Konami still uses those IPs in some ways anyway. I think they’ll actually keep them close.
I think the difficulty in saying whether they have enough is that Microsoft is trying to support “the netflix of gaming” and Sony is trying not to lose out to Microsoft. A subscription service needs content in BULK - it needs to add enough content that people are satisfied to keep subscribing month after month. This is why Sony cannot currently follow Microsoft in this - they put out a few major games a year there’d be nothing to stop someone paying for a month to play a new game then unsubscribing right after.
I wasn’t refering to Sony, I was refering to someone in the possibility that becomes basically an arms race but I do think Sony would be smart to get an exclusive licensing agreement for 10 years or something with Konami so they can make stuff like metal gear games without having to buy the IPs.
If I could though I would give metal gear to Ubisoft (specifically the splinter cell team), give bomberman to Nintendo and the rest to Capcom
If the activision deal closes I 100% believe they have more than enough to just not acquire any more, they will have like 40 studios, plus deals they already make with third party studios and dozens of indies on top of that, nobody can run out of stuff to play on gamepass even today, with microsoft not yet even achieving that one game per quarter goal.
I agree with this 100 percent, EA really doesn’t make any sense to acquire they already have a fantastic working relationship via gampass. Also having more IP via other publisher’s and gamepass accessibility for upcoming titles and previous backlog is far more important in my opinion than making another massive acquisition that will draw more and more attention
I think Metal Gear should stay dead. A very solid chunk of the fanbase was playing it for the story and the story has been told, it’s done and I doubt Kojima wants to work on it again even if given the chance. Metal Gear by Ubisoft? I guess it would just be a whole new universe and not be connected to the past ones in any way. So it’d just be Metal Gear in name only. It’d lose all it’s identity too because it wouldn’t have that Kojima silliness factor that is a huge part of the brand. That’s really the issue I’m saying about buying these Konami IPs and then just giving them to… whoever. They’d just be the IP in name only. It all sounds like a waste of money to me. It’s not a guaranteed success just because Castlevania or Metal Gear is on the title, fans gotta be pleased by it too.
Xbox has to have a strong foothold in Japan, I don’t see any other way rather than acquiring a publisher. Literally any game may skip Xbox platform even if Xbox is successful in the west. Microsoft can’t have that.
50 studios by 2025, I’m confident in this. The easiest targets for Xbox will be expanding in Europe and Asia. However they have indicated desire to expand in developing gaming regions as well, Phil even said he’d be shocked if they don’t own studios in South Africa and India in the future.
Don’t think they’re even close to being done.
If I was carving out expansion for them, I’d look at expanding in Europe by acquiring independent developers, Asia by acquiring a publisher in Japan (ideally with a partial focus on Europe) and one in South Korea. Then fund a bunch of indie studios in India, Brazil, South Africa and pick up the most successful.
Microsoft utilises third party deals to fill the gaps in the service, but these aren’t where the real profit lies for such a service. The more studios they have the less they need to rely on these things. Just look at the sheer mass of content Netflix makes worldwide to support their service and help them grow in foreign markets, and they only started making their own content because they realised there was no future for them streaming other peoples content. I mean, let’s look at Microsoft’s current output. Even including Activision we’re in the midst of an (at least) 6 month drought of major first party releases. Activision and Bethesda only actually put out one title each last year. I don’t at all think this is going to be a regular occurrence, studios are expanding and growing and deals like with Certain Affinity and Avalanche are going to pay off in time but I really don’t think there’s going to be a point of “Geat, we are big enough!”, I think there’s just going to be a point of “Right, we probably can’t legally buy more”.
They should grab one of big japanese publishers and probably Nexon / Pearl Abyss in Korea. After than, they will be fine with just studio acquisitions.
Hoeg’s video mentions it as a single point. You keep suggesting I’m saying that consumers don’t matter, or aren’t important, when I’ve literally never even implied such; whilst you are suggesting consumers are the only ones that matter in these deliberations. Have you seen his other videos or looked at any of the previous large-scale reviews? This is a forum not a discord, so don’t expect people not to respond. The only one being “toxic” here is the person who’s unwilling to admit they have a gap in knowledge… the same person I get complaints about. I’ve already warned you several times about the time you take to other users, even before me.
Oh no doubt if the current situation continues into 2023 someone needs to start asking questions, but I doubt it will, I’m hoping this is the last dry patch we will ever see xbox going through.
It depends on who they buy, if they prey on Ubisoft their studios will jump from 32 (if I am not mistaken) to something like 72. But unless they buy Ubisoft I agree they will be in this rough area
I will say Ubisoft would give them lots of studios in Europe and a few in Asia. They would also give them a studio in North Africa, 2 studio’s in India and a studio in Brazil. Like they would give Xbox a massive presence world wide and due to their stock tanking and being open to acquisition discussions they must be looking tasty
I understand the game won’t come out for years, but getting GenDesign would be huge. You’d get a former Sony, PlayStation developer and would get a lot of big respect from gamers too.