Well...everybody on Arrow got a god damn bow & arrow. That was absurd. Every character can't be a superhero. I thought they might resurrect his mom and make her an Arrow, too.
@Viper13579: If MS tried to buy Activision Blizzard King first, Sony would have chirped up just the same.
They don't like that CoD on Playstation would directly fund a competitor. Also, they are put in a difficult position with CoD on Game Pass and then being offered CoD on PS Plus. They don't want CoD on either. Sony is stubbornly old school and wants to force unit sales through their platform.
Put on the spot in front of consumers, Sony would have to consider putting CoD PS Plus and paying one of ABK/MS's payment options. Game Pass offers different models, according to Spencer (frontloaded, upfront plus usage, usage). Now it is in reverse and paid to a competitor.
Sony wants no part of what that would cost or and won't even do it with their own games until years after launch. They pay to block 3rd parties from the competition, not improve their own streaming/pay-to-play offering. The next CoD won't launch into Game Pass even if the deal closes soon.
@Atzenkiller: "Last I heard the Series X isn't even selling out anymore, while the Series S has been selling rather poorly from the start from what I've seen. Only next gen console that has been available for sale pretty much at all times since launch."
I am not going to bother to address any of that.
Game Pass is not something I like because I need cheap access to games. I've bought hundreds of games over the decades. If it didn't exist, I would just buy them. Looking back on the "money" sitting in boxes in the basement, yes, I'd say Game Pass is the better option.
"If MS wants the Xbox to succeed then they need to create a better offering"
You are suggesting that Sony did this, and did this above board? That MS has enough funds to do this without buying publishers? Let's go with that.
Sony possesses the lion's share of the market, and you say they created great offerings. Yet, they still feel the need to buy exclusivity on 3rd party titles, time and time again. Apparently, "great 1st party offerings" are not enough.
You stated that you are not OK with MS's recent acquisitions, and I won't even bother to ask if you are OK with MS paying for 3rd party exclusives. I don't know how you expect any other competitor to approach competing with Sony. Acquisitions and/or exclusive partnerships would be required.
@Nestea01: I used to think, "Why didn't Sony commander the MP3 player, pretend they invented it, and present it to the masses?" Big missed opportunity on their part.
As the years went by (as much as I am not a fan of Apple), I thought, "Ehhhh...I guess it's better this way."
@YukoAsho: Are you inebriated? Do you honestly believe anything that you wrote? You think MS will try to buy Embracer group? MS waited 20+ years to just buy the industry?
MS is worth a couple trillion dollars, that doesn't mean you buy up everything. If you own a company, you have to manage it and you are responsible for cost to run and debt. They are laying off 10k people this year because they are running a business, not to be mean.
I don't like to use the term, "fanboy", but I mean...come on, dude. You don't even ask yourself why the only companies going head-to-head are a multi-billion dollar company and a near $2-trillion dollar company.
As far as Xbox not doing well in Japan, let's not rule out jingoism and cronyism so quickly. Nor should we exaggerate the size of the Japanese market. There's probably been more Series S|X units sold in New York state than PS5s in all of Japan.
Sorry for the interruption. Please return to your Sony circle-jerk of paranoid delusions.
@gotgames: People that use the term "do some research" are invariably goofballs. 😄 Not fah nuthin', it is what it is.
If you were alive and coherent then (or now) you would understand that the "playing field" was Windows itself. Microsoft's product. The complaint that MS packaged Internet Explorer (primarily) and other applications into Windows, and other browsers would therefore be ignored by most users (too lazy to download Netscape). The complainant was Mozilla (Netscape Navigator). Almost like you can't install two browsers...or more?
I may be mistaken (25 years hence), but I think MS initially said IE was embedding in the Windows kernel. 🤣 The EU made them extract IE and some additional measures. They proposed to break up MS.
You only object because MS is doing the buying. Admittedly, I didn't see it coming. However, it makes sense for them.
It would be one thing if you admitted to how Sony pathologically buying third party exclusives takes away options from Xbox and PC players. You do not. You simply excuse the practice. Sony has overwhelmingly market share, reportedly a number "stellar" AAA 1st party exclusives, yet they are compelled to interfere with multi-platform games.
Sony spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year doing this. This month we have GG Strive, Sifu, and Ghostwire: Tokyo arriving on Xbox after a year of PS exclusivity. The games are not on an auction block. Sony is approaching dev after dev to delay or forgo Xbox and often still PC releases. They use their market share to impress upon publishers, thus ensuring they remain dominant.
Multi-platform release is the mode of the 3rd party publisher. What you propose is that Microsoft outbid Sony on every 3rd party title? You wouldn't like that at all. When the ABK deal closes, I hope the discovery leads to a deeper probe, further back than 2019. Sony might find themselves in their own anti-competition anti-trust investigation.
@alastor529: No other company does what Bethesda does. Nobody has their worlds or systems or scope. And no one company has the resources to compete with the entire free world of modders (or hackers, or virus scripters). Hell, why don't the modders make the entire game? Why wait through delays, when they could just build it themselves? 🙄
Bethesda is not going to fix everything, as they need to start transitioning to the next game. Nor are they going to give you a ton of options that modders make over time. Maybe Starfield will be comparatively less buggy and perform better with the extra time.
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