Anime if anything seems to be doing worse at this. Nearly every fantasy or fantasy adjacent anime goes for a knock-off D&D MMO style and it feels so tired. They don't want their audience to need to make the smallest effort to understand the world and the role of the characters in it.
No they aren't. First of all, because Sony is not monopolizing the market. Microsoft is there and so is Nintendo. There is a difference between being a market leader and being a monopoly. Sony doesn't actually control SquareEnix, they can release games for different platforms, which they do. Octopath Traveler II is multiplatform, Dragon Quest Treasures is a Switch and PC release.
The horror scenario of Microsoft leaving and Sony dominating everything isn't going to happen. Xbox is just half as popular as Sony, which is still a sizable chunk of the market.
But lets say it goes as you wish, Microsoft bravely acquires most of the market to match Sony... and then they just keep buying. What do you get then? Microsoft will be able to just tell Bethesda and ActiBlizz not to release for any other console, and refuse any deals.
If you are a Linux user you should know that MS doesn't stop at what's reasonable.
Still, that's not saying that Sony is acting fine. Which is why I believe they should be prevented from making exclusivity agreements for games that aren't entirely funded by them.
It will just be closer, and close enough that they decide to stay in the console business.
Again, when this has been in question at all? Does anyone really think the 4th largest gaming company is going to drop the market? Despite all that they already invested even before ActiBlizz?
At the scale that Microsoft is operating at, they may as well buy them outright;
Exclusivity and studio acquisitions are both out of Sony's handbook. Microsoft just has a bigger pocketbook.
We've just been talking of if it matters that Microsoft is a larger company in general, and here you are spelling it out like it's a gotcha at Sony, which, seeing as it will lead to more exclusivity, it's not even in your interest as a customer.
I'm just wholly baffled with the way people take Microsoft's side simultaneously like it's a desperate underdog and as if it would be a fool not to crush it all and take it all over with piles of money. As if whatever is more profitable and advantageous to them would be good for the customers losing options too. And that would be fair???
But seeems like you are set in seeing it this way and there's nothing I could say that would make any difference, so I guess I should just drop the matter.
Once again you talk about it like the are owed the #1 place rather than having to, you know, compete for it. Are you going to tell me that they didn't get any market benefits from, say, experience with OS and the hardware architecture as well as the networking and cloud technologies that they use? It would make more sense to assume that if not for this they could be even further down, but you are not even counting it because they are not exactly on par with Sony. You gotta do better than to just dismiss this.
By the way, a paradigm shift is already happening. For a lot of people their phones are their primary computing and gaming platform, and while I'm not a fan of the practices in it, a significant change in the market is anything but unpredictable. The second largest gaming company is Tencent, a mobile-focused one. Mobile revenue has surpassed consoles.
But that says nothing of the consoles that we could have tomorrow. It used to be that SEGA was one of the biggest console manufacturers and Sony wasn't even in the market.
It's worse for the consumer if Sony doesn't have a Microsoft to keep them in check.
Sure, but what is the point here? The question here is whether Microsoft should acquire ActiBlizz. If it has enough capital for that, it's not going bankrupt. It would be a false dichotomy to treat acquisition and leaving the gaming market as the only two options. After all, aren't all the other companies they already acquired appealing enough? Or weren't they worth it? And if they weren't, why would this fix anything?
Even if Microsoft is not so interesting a platform right now, Sony cannot relax or they could catch up, like they did in the 360 era. The only thing lacking here are Microsoft's own efforts.
What I would hate more though is if Sony ran away with an entire sector of the market when they're doing a lot of nasty anti-consumer stuff too, including trying to acquire exclusivity of a lot of the stuff Microsoft just bought.
Well if you are concerned that the top player resorts to anti-consumer tactics, you shouldn't be defending that the playing field is "levelled" (only between two large players) through more anti-competitive and anti-consumer tactics. If you think it's shady that Sony paid to have FF16 as an exclusive, why are you defending that Microsoft does that to Starfield? At least when it comes to Sony, Microsoft could have outbid Square for exclusivity
Which I want to make clear, it can do. Because it has a lot of money, enough to buy Activision Blizzard, the 6th largest game publisher. It could be funding new studios, it could be playing from Sony's handbook, but they decided to one-up them instead by consolidating the market and taking away options from everyone else in a far more concrete way.
The ideal solution here, is that Microsoft's acquisition should be blocked but Sony should also be punished for anti-consumer tactics.
Not only Microsoft as a whole is already a much larger company to Sony
With regards to this industry, it really doesn't matter.
Yes it does matter. It still gives them advantages, from the wealth and influence their other endeavors amass as well as technology being directly related to gaming. These matters don't exist in isolation.
This makes it harder for upcoming innovators to compete, when that is what they have to face (or be bought out by).
On top of that, it seems like a remnant of Console War mindset to consider the ideal of the market to be a 50/50 or a 33/33/33 split.
That is the ideal. It means each one has to try their damnedest to earn the dollar of their consumer.
It's shortsighted to assume Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo is what this industry will ever be and it's the most competitive we can expect it to be. In fact, letting them gobble up any other significant publisher is an obstacle towards more competition. Nevermind that even among those three, third-party developers create an incentive to make their platforms appealing beyond simply being the only place that has that game. Features and services.
Yeah, they've got this game Starfield coming out, plus Hellblade II, Fable, Clockwork Revolution, South of Midnight, etc. But games just take so long to make that it takes forever to make up for a deficit they created last generation.
That is the business that they are in. Lets see how they are doing and how much they need more when these come out. Why should they acquire more if it isn't even proven that they are handling the others well? If anything, those layoffs are not a good indication.
It doesn't make the market better for the customer, but it's far worse if Sony's lead is so immense that a console manufacturer doesn't profit from making consoles.
Worse for who? Nintendo's consoles are profitable and Microsoft can definitely afford to sell units at a loss so that they can sell games, which is the same that Sony does. And is it better for Sony and Nintendo customers if they lose access to third-party games because Microsoft gobbled them up? Sure it would be better for the customer if Microsoft made good games that made their consoles a more appealing option, but gating existing franchises isn't helping them in any way.
I see a lot of these arguments are ultimately taking pity on Microsoft, for being behind, because it should do what is more profitable to it, but they don't actually help the customer any. It's funny to see this "poor little Microsoft, they have it so hard" when Nintendo is a smaller company with a weaker console under the same difficulties and they are doing better than them. Of course you don't hear of big acquisions from Nintendo because they don't have as much spare money as Microsoft does, which it can take from profits of other segments.
I believe this framing is misleading to begin with. Not only Microsoft as a whole is already a much larger company to Sony, so the whole idea that it deserves a boost to catch up is missing the forest for the trees. On top of that, it seems like a remnant of Console War mindset to consider the ideal of the market to be a 50/50 or a 33/33/33 split.
It is better for the industry to have more publishers and studios which are beholden to no platform owner. The idea that whoever is below the top 3 is entitled to swallow up everything under them so that they get a chance to reach #1 is a convoluted way to justify consolidation. It's not fine just because Microsoft is #4 rather than #2. Being #4 is not such an insignificant position in first place, and it's weird that it's assumed that Microsoft is owed an even position.
And I'm sorry, if freaking Microsoft can't use the many studios it already has to make their platform they have appealing, the issue is not lack of studios and IPs. I don't think the "competitiveness" of taking games that already could be available to everyone and locking them to a platform is actually making the market any better (no, not even when Sony does it). It's a net negative for everyone except the acquiring company itself. If they want to make their platform more appealing, they should make better games for it.
I'm skeptical, because they had Halo, Banjo & Kazooie, Conker, Perfect Dark, and they don't seem to know what to do with those. Killer Instinct 2013 was nice but it's been a decade we don't get anything else from that. We are only now getting to see some of the projects from the newer studios they have been acquiring, but Redfall definitely didn't get my hopes up.
Are they gonna keep buying publishers whenever their output dries up under them? Is the problem really a lack of studios or is it that they can't manage them well.
A lesson to use the right studios for the right projects. Daedalic Entertainment could have made a really fun 2D point-and-click adventure game set in The Lord of the Rings world, maybe even about Gollum. But a game like this was definitely not the right format and too large a scope for them.
It's ironic and somewhat revolting to see the behemoth that is Microsoft crying that it can't compete and it needs to acquire other publishers, when it already has a collection of studios and franchises, means to fund brand new studios and make even better hardware. If they aren't competitive now, it's because of their own bad decisions.
Although it seems that despite their hardware not being as popular, they seem to sell GamePass for PC at least decently.
That is a circular problem. People don't buy Xbox because it doesn't have exclusives appealing enough to make them pick it over the alternatives. As much as I'd wish game exclusivity wasn't a thing, it does effectively attract customers. They had many IPs which could attract players, even before the ActiBlizz acquisition.
The Xbox Series S sounds appealing in theory but they could have gotten all the benefits of that simply by supporting the Xbox One for an extended period of time. As for cloud, I doubt it is that which is holding back their sales. If they say the demand is still small they are likely not keeping too many units for that.