Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position.
Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet:
> When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
It will be interesting to see in the medium-term if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. But for now it's wild to think about the fact that Microsoft owns the Call of Duty franchise.
I think there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers.
There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios. Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam. I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have some market access
I wouldn't be too sure to be honest, only companies with a big game platorm can compete with Valve being able to subsidize these and sell them at cost or less, because most game purchases one them will be through steam.
This is the sole reason why I don't play Switch games unless I can get them on sale, or they're exclusive like BotW.
I have a 14" gaming notebook (ASUS G14 2021) that's portable enough and offers decent battery life especially for lighter games with access to my Steam library offline, and plenty of key shops to find games for uber cheap when there's no demo available for me to vet the value of a title first.
Unfortunately, physical copies of games are not depreciating; BotW, despite being five years old, is still selling at full price.
Good for them though, I mean it's a great game, and it means the games don't depreciate much on the secondhand market either. Although I'm confident people don't want to sell physical Switch games, a lot of them have a lot of life in them and become prized possessions.
You assume that the Steam users are willing to pay the same price as Switch users, but that's not necessarily the case. Volume matters as well, maybe the number of Steam users is way more than the number of Switch users so they can make up for the lower price by selling more.
Stadia also has a lot of indie games but thanks to their sales, you end up with a comparable price to Steam sales. Disco Elysium, for example, went on sale for US$18 vs. ~$23 on Switch. Steam's sale price was ~$20.
Also most indie games require more brainpower than what Apple Arcade offers. Apple wouldn't know a complex game if a pile of discs with them fell on their heads.
The "lock-in" and the lack of ownership/copyright extension for media provided by their service is absolutely a problem, but it's not "servitude". There's a couple of other members of FAANG where the relationship with users is much more like servitude.
Forever seems like a stretch. When Switch is succeeded, how long before Nintendo shuts the Switch shop down? You can't legally move downloaded games between consoles.
This was a big issue with WiiWare when Nintendo shut down the Wii Shop. People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything.
Download is only one way to buy Switch games, and at least I'll still be able to use one console - compared to zero as soon as I stop paying my feudal obligations to Apple.
And almost every game available on cartridge has some kind of patch only downloadable from the store. Some don't even have all their data on the cartridge and need a download to function at all...
I will maintain servitude to Apple for the rest of my life because of iMessage: if I leave they can subtly “break” my access to messaging with people I care about (and have done so.)
> because of iMessage: if I leave they can subtly “break” my access to messaging with people I care about (and have done so.)
Even if you made sure to unregister your phone number and email addresses from iMessage first? You can do this while still using an iPhone to validate that it's worked before you give it up.
> Even if you made sure to unregister your phone number and email addresses from iMessage first? You can do this while still using an iPhone to validate that it's worked before you give it up.
You are right, of course. And you can also do it afterwards if you forgot. There is no nefarious plan to void your messages when you change phone.
The economics of game passes are like this with nearly all of them. The XBox game pass has several games (on both PC and XBox) where their price is multiples of the monthly price.
You do—so if I like a game enough, I'll pick it up elsewhere, too. But digital games as a whole get harder to play over time. I've moved my DSi games to my 3DS, and I've got a Wii with a whole bunch of titles.
Consider the total hours games like BotW offer and divide that into the price. That might alter your feelings that game prices are too high. I know it did for me.
You say that like games aren't already kind of absurdly cheap for how much work goes into them. People used to pay $60 of 1980s money for, frankly, pretty shit[0] NES games. That's ~$150 worth of money today. $30 games are downright cheap and I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices. People pay $30 for a decent meal at a restaurant FFS.
Which isn't to say that you should by a switch. If you don't think it's a good value then obviously you shouldn't. I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me.
[0] Not all of them were shit of course, but the catalogue is 90% shit and people did buy a lot of shit games.
Well, consider that you could buy any kind of game first hand for $60, then after finishing it, you could be able to sell if and get some money back.
Today you pay $30 (for some games, but a lot are still $60, $80, etc.) Plus the DLC, credits, extensions, registration to an account no ability to sell it or buy second hand.
Game industry got pretty bad, I've enjoyed it in the past, and I have the ability to just move on and ignore anything game related, what I am upset about is that today's kids are squeezed and coerced in order to play anything, and that is why I wish we had governments trying to put a stop to the current gaming companies greed
$60 was also worth quite a bit more in the heyday of GameStop et al.
What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires (physical media is pretty dead, and I say this having a paper library of around 500 books) and that games are ever-more-expensive to make.
For the preposterous number of person-hours that go into an AAA title, $100 isn't unrealistic. But there's price anchoring dating back to the nineties now, and that as much as anything is why games upsell the way they do. (The "complete edition" prices are probably more representative of what a sustainable price for a player really is.)
Or we can do microtransactions until our souls bleed and go back to single-use codes in the game case. That's a thing too.
> What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires
While it is hilarious that you imply that vendor lockin, half finished games, arbitrary difficulty curves meant to stimulate mtx and a lack of ownership is a "general consumer desire" I think it is more reasonable to say that the consumer has no choice. They (or we) clearly still desire to buy videogames, so folks end up buying what is essentially trash.
The dichotomy isn't "buy AAA games" or "don't buy games". It's never been a better time to buy indie games, many of which these days are super polished and rewarding experiences. But the thing is? If you want an AAA game with AAA affordances, the cost of production is going to have to come from somewhere. And--well--it certainly seems like a lot of the market wants those games and those affordances, so yeah, if the player is prioritizing AAA games, then yes, they're expensive, and yes, they're going to get more expensive, and you can either pay it at the front door or once you're inside.
You pay your money and you take your choice. I agree that it's silly, and that's why I don't buy those games. I buy and play a lot of games, but it's been at least five years since I bought a game (that didn't show up from Humble Choice or whatever and is languishing in my game keys spreadsheet) from Activision, EA, or Ubisoft.
I have gotten more enjoyment out of Starsector[0], a game that isn't even on Steam yet, than I've ever gotten out of any AAA game I've ever played. It cost me $15. (I have since bought it repeatedly for friends.)
For the amount of person hours having a game sold for $100 is a bit of nonsense, they sell in million worldwide and the people working on it are laid off as soon the production is over, so it's just shared holders and CEO pocketing blood, are we really still thinking that people doing the work are getting anything off the production
A lot more than just inflation changed since the '80s. Off the top of my head: massively larger market, better tooling, better hardware, better distribution networks.
Gaming companies aren't entitled to my money. They're allowed to offer games for the prices they want, and the market is allowed to buy them or not.
That may be true, but the switch exists in a market where games are extremely cheap. High quality free to play games, cheap indie games I play for weeks, steam sales, huge numbers of games given away by Epic Games, "free" games with prime gaming, and the insane value of Game Pass. It feels like every time I spend money on a game its free on the Epic Store or "free" on Game Pass within a few months. There's never been a cheaper time to be a PC gamer... assuming you already have a PC.
I still play $60 for games because it's not a big deal for me but it's weird when I already have so much entertainment available for almost nothing. Playnite says I have 1050 games available to play, about 50 are duplicates and about 350 are from Game pass. I've apparently spent less than $600 on steam and much less than that on all other stores. Seems like the market value of the average game is about $1. (Hands waving furiously)
If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though.
Besides, many of those $10 games that are $30 on the Switch are made by smaller teams or even solo creators. Just because some video game properties have grown into giant franchises with multimedia companies pouring tens and hundreds of millions dollars and armies of people into them, that doesn't mean the majority of video game titles around are like that.
Come to think of it, in the light of the countless recent stories of overwork and abuse in the games industry and the scandalous quality issues plaguing high-profile releases in recent years, I'm not even sure if we should be incentivizing games having a lot of work go into them.
How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? Expensive things don't become cheap just because they're cheaper than four decades ago nor because they happen to be created and marketed by large corporations with lots of employees.
> If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though.
That's a fair point. My first guess is lootboxes and microtransactions being used to make up the difference, as well as underpaying employees. For big studios it is common to lay off developers immediately after a big release.
Regardless, I don't think that same logic applies to smaller studios.
> How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway?
That isn't what I was saying, though I admit I didn't make it very clear. If you don't want to buy something because the cost isn't worth it to you, that's perfectly fair. What I am annoyed by and think is entitled is any kind of objective-sounding judgement that 'games are too expensive'.
there are some major differences that mean inflation isn't the best indication for price
the biggest is market size. in 1980, there were very few people buying games compared to today.
also, for non-aaa games, the difficulty of making a game has in many ways gone down significantly. NES era games were at the absolute limit of hardware capabilities, and required a ton of wizardry to fit within size constraints. now graphics expectations are higher, but modern computers are so much more powerful that you can afford a lot more sloppiness.
> I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices
> I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me.
That's because on this topic you are quick on making judgements on people and don't (want to?) realize their reasons for not buying a switch can be valid and these reasons are not attack or counter arguments to the reasons for why you would buy switch games.
I am not an entitled gamer.
edit: and FWIW I was checking the switch page for Disco Elysium and I see that the price tag is the same as Gog's (39.99) but now I don't care anymore about discussing this topic here and now. Nintendotax gone ? Just checked Life is stange:true colours, same price tags as steam.
I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
> Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet.
Not:
> Game prices on the switch is why it's not worth gave in to the temptation yet.
> I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
No, you built a straw man argument.
Do I go around asking for a refund because The Witness has been given for free and I paid for it in full upon release ? That would be entitlement. Not buying a switch because switch games are too expensive for me is not being entitled. I also think not buying a switch because I may think switch games are too expensive is not being entitled.
> [..] , which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
Yeah, way to go. First you suggest in a reply to me that people who think like you think I do are entitled and then you state your opinion is objective and then throw a blanket statement about something no one said and suggest this position is objectively ridiculous.
The group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately.
Tencent and Microsoft have both spread a lot of money around. Perhaps for varying reasons, namely MS needs to make up for the lack of titles developed for the Xbox Series, and add titles to Game Pass to make it more a more attractive offering.
> The group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately.
This is inaccurate.
I don't have the stats to back it up, but the power of Unity Engine and Unreal Engine have effectively created an indie game developer renaissance.
One of my favorite games at the moment, Hell Let Loose, is published by an indie studio that started in 2017 as a Kickstarter project. They launched their PC version last summer and successfully launched an Xbox port this past fall. It is objectively a better (but harder) game than COD WWII or Battlefield V, both of which are considered AAA titles and have had hundreds of millions put into them for development.
Combine that with the lower barrier to entry with the discoverability of games on Steam and Xbox marketplaces and you have a very hot market. Oh, and consumers play video games now more than ever.
I'm having the opposite experience. I dropped probably $400 on games over the holidays and found three games I wanted to play.
I used to make games, so I hated when people used GameStop because it avoided the developers getting any money. But now I'm thinking that GameStop would be great, because most all but three of the games I bought just suck.
These online-purchase-only systems frankly need a one-hour refund policy. So many games where the controls are just jank (like 100% janky). Like everyone looked at Celeste and thought "This game is good because it's hard" instead of "This game is good because it rewards skill". I'd rather play Celeste and Returnal than these other utter wastes of hard drive. I only made it through Unsighted because you can make yourself invulnerable: fun story, fun ideas, fun levels, jank combat.
Yes, the problem is that the reliance on these few engines is a worrying form of concentration in itself. Especially for the Unreal engine, which is used aggressively to push the Epic games store. How independent are they really when they're so dependent on a single software vendor?
And, to my eyes, Epic uses openly monopolistic practices: they drop the license fee for the engine if you use their game store.
I can think of several recent releases without even searching: Melkhior's Mansion was released this week, Slipways earlier in the year, and Midnight Fight Express coming soon. I don't know if that's representative of indie games or not.
There's so many platforms to build for, and on some (xbox/ps5) a high(er) barrier to entry, vs. low on the PC, or mobile. I'm not surprised that there's much indie action on the xbox/ps5.
As the author of Slipways, it warms my heart to see it mentioned randomly in a HN comment!
As an indie game developer (hard to get more indie than me, I think, since I'm doing this mostly solo), I can attest that it's never been easier to get your game on Steam or a console platform. On Steam it's mostly a matter of a $100 fee and filling a form. Consoles are a bit harder, but still dramatically more open to indie titles than say a decade ago, and all of them are possible to get on even for small developers.
I also wouldn't say that "the group of indie dev studios is dwindling". It's just a matter of the old indie studios "growing up" to become bigger enterprises, but there is tons of other people replacing them on the lowest rung, with teams of several people and true labor of love projects.
Unfortunately, I'm not a gamer, and run a weird version of linux which I don't think you support anyway, but I have played Slipways (a friend purchased it) on the PC, and it's a great game!
> The group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately.
Have you looked at Steam recently? Indie studios are doing just fine, and new indie studios are popping up all the time. I'd argue the indie market is stronger than ever.
What about profitable indie studios? Sure there’s a lot of games made by small companies, but how many are around for a 2nd game that isn’t just a shadow of their first game?
I don’t have any stats but would find that interesting, mainly as I’m not sure how much revenue indie studios have. Is the split like 10% get most of the money while the other 90% starve?
Dwindling as in Tencent showing up with a bag of cash and buying a board seat when a studio hits whatever financial metrics they are tracking.
FWIW, I have heard they are hands-off and offer resources, like great groups for closed alphas.
The only concern I have is that they can become more hands on and excersie control over creative decisions in the future.
Personally, I value good stories from mid sized indy studios. The dominance of 2 engines can make things feel a bit homogenized. Pair a great story with another engine, and my interest is piqued.
I assume by "truly indie" they mean "bootstrapped or invested by neutral/disinterested VCs" — as opposed to
1. invested in by one of the platform owners themselves, in exchange for a [temporary] exclusivity agreement, making them essentially a sharecropper on the platform; or
2. invested in almost exclusively by a single bigcorp publisher, making the studio essentially a secret marque of that publisher for projects they don't want associated with their regular brand image.
Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners, or by a bigcorp publisher.
Changing the definition still doesn't change how many indie studios are out there. There's been zero evidence here that there isn't a healthy indie market, but plenty that there is.
> Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners
My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements. And I have more access to such games than at any time in history.
These indie companies are no more independent (the meaning of the word "indie") than a person hawking MLM products is independent. They're effective employees of a bigcorp — with all the same danger of being "fired" by their publisher at any time for misbehavior.
> What evidence? My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements.
Ignore indie games that have been on Steam for years and years, or that only get published on Steam and no other platforms; these are the exceptions to the rule (despite this set containing some of the largest hits by sales volume.)
While there are studios that sell only on Steam and other low-barrier-to-entry channels, 99% of them don't last more than a year or two, because selling only on Steam is leaving almost all your money on the ground. There's a reason that many of these games don't get support updates any more and won't run on e.g. macOS or Linux after any major OS update, despite originally intending support for those platforms: the studio didn't survive.
And while there are indie studios that eventually take their console-exclusive game over to Steam, it's often still published by the publisher on Steam. Take a careful look at the Steam catalog page for the "publisher" field. If there is one? That's who's making the direct revenue on the game sales. Like the publisher of a book. The "author" — the studio — is only getting a commission.
There are a few indie studios who manage to "earn out" their deals with publishers, and take over their own Steam pages (though not usually their console marketing rights — the platform owners don't like dealing with the long tail of self-publishers, they much prefer well-known bigcorps as marketing partners.)
Here's just a small list of games I found in less than 5 minutes of looking.
- Five Nights at Freddy
- The Binding of Isaac
- Hollow Knight
- Carrion
- Loop Hero
- Factorio
- Phasmophobia
- Frostpunk
- Valheim
- Satisfactory
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Stardew Vallley
- RimWorld
- Terraria
- Dead Cells
- Cuphead
- Among Us
- Project Zomboid
The last three games I fell in love with; Hollow Knight, Ori, Souls Series, have me believing this. You can build amazing games with a smaller team these days which is incredibly inspiring.
You're right that a lot of indie games are metroidvanias or roguelites. However, AAA games exist on an incredibly narrow scope these days too. You have shooters, sports, open-world action games, and that's basically it. Rarely do you see big studios deviate into unknown or experimental mechanics.
Indie studios have produced a lot of games with varied mechanics that are just a huge breath of fresh air for me, personally.
You'd never see a AAA studio making Factorio or Satisfactory, for instance. Probably unlikely to see them make a game like Darkest Dungeon, or Don't Starve, or Stardew Valley or Terraria or Starbound or.. the list goes on. You just might have to look a bit deeper to dig through the roguelikes and platformers.
A little reductive I would say? I would add at least:
* Puzzle (The Witness, Baba is You, Antichamber, Manifold Garden, ...)
* Survival/open-world (Minecraft, Terraria, Don't Starve, Subnautica, The Long Dark, ...)
* Horror (Amnesia, Outlast, Layers of Fear, Five Nights at Freddy's ...)
* Management/simulation (Factorio, Stardew Valley, Kerbal Space Program, ...)
* Metroidvanias (Cave Story, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, ...)
* "Walking simulators" (The Stanley Parable, Gone Home, Firewatch, ...)
Some of these maybe you'd disagree with (Are Metroidvanias just platformers? Can Minecraft still be put on a list of indie games?), but I personally think it's a crime to omit at least puzzle games and survival games. The offerings from the AAA space for those is not very impressive compared to the indie space.
There's tycoon games and strategy too. Stardew Valley and Rimworld are at the top of their genres. And games like Dominions, Telltale games. Horror might be up there.
Do we count mods? DotA and CS would be indie if so, but are now quite commercial.
This isn't true, there are plenty of trivial examples to counter this notion.
e.g. Annapurna Interactive has been publishing AAA-quality titles from indie devs for a long time. And most of those games don't fall into the roguelike or platformer vertical.
Roguelike just means you can beat it in one sitting now, which is a very good niche for indie games if you think about it. Slay The Spire, FTL, Rogue Legacy, and For the King are all "roguelike" but fill completely different niches in terms of actual gameplay and features and all are awesome.
That's not true. Microprose is back and have a lot of indie developed titles coming out this year. They are almost singlehandedly bringing the wargaming genre back from the dead.
I wonder where do Paradox strategy games fall, Crusader Kings / Europa Universalis ones. They definitely don't look AAA, despite offering a very deep gameplay.
I love indie games but I also wish there was a middle ground between the current generation of AAA titles (not typically my cup of tea) and the indie community
There does seem to be a void in between the two. It's so rare I come across one that it's a surprise. Hell Let Loose was one of those surprises for me. It's definitely in the space of "AA but not AAA" games.
>> There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now.
Yeah, but from TFA:
>> Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities.
I don't see a need for this and agree with the notion that companies should not buy companies. There are cases where it makes sense, but I think another mechanism needs to be created because buying and selling companies is often too much like buying and selling people in addition to being anti-competitive.
Go browse itch.io for some inspiration. There's thousands of indie games there. A lot are no more than student projects and demos, but some are really polished and inventive.
While I mostly agree with you, I think Microsoft is doing this to compete directly with Sony's plethora of studios to offer more AAA titles on Xbox and Windows exclusively — so from that light, it's not entirely a bad thing.
We already know that Bethesda is keeping their autonomy to make the same great games we love from them, and Starfield is a chance to prove it. The only downside being: Playstation owners losing out on playing what may end up being among the most popular titles in the next 5-10 years if Starfield and TES6 are a success.
If the competition exists for Sony already, why is it necessary for Microsoft to own that competition?
Activision Blizzard already competed with Sony, which is why people think the market is more healthy prior to this acquisition.
In your comment you point out that Bethesda still has their autonomy. So why is it good again for MS to be acquiring these studios? They continue to make the same product in more or less the same way, but now have to appease their MS gods, all while generating more profit for MS to the benefit of not really anyone, except MS.
Points taken! Which is why I mostly agree with the GP. I can't name a single acquisition that did more for the consumer than what was already on offer, so I am generally against them.
My last comments were more in the shoes of Microsoft.
Valid. I am torn between both because I like to see console makers competing and having a reason to innovate somewhere, but as a consumer, I want the ability to play games on any system the developer is willing to support, too.
It's hard to imagine they will be much worse than the holding company they bought it from. Microsoft have been a lot better custodians of Minecraft than most people thought they would be. Same with github or a number of other acquisitions.
But I agree the concentration is still a problem in itself, even if the owners are OK.
You are not entitled to play games or buy platforms. It is a net negative for the gaming industry to be limited in their revenue streams. You cannot split the baby because some customers CHOSE to buy PS5 but the game THEY want to play is on Xbox. If they want to play it, buy an XBOX too. If that is too expensive, the gamer should increase their disposable income.
Apple is not obligated to invest into building Apple Music app on Android or Windows. Just because Apple tied Apple Music into their own ecosystem, doesn't mean you are owed anything.
I think for gaming this is pretty negative that everything is consolidated under large developers. I also don't think that the atmosphere under Microsoft will be better than under Activision.
I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest.
> I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest
In what way is PC gaming attached to Microsoft? Microsoft Game Studios doesn't have a lot of market share in PC games besides Minecraft, and the industry is very diverse. Most games happen to run on Windows, but apart from DirectX they have resisted every attempt from Microsoft to use that in any way.
If PC gaming is attached to anyone it's Valve, but even that is slowly changing.
They really should, but is Activision-Blizzard that company? Of the 7 Activision releases in 2020 to now 4 are Call of Duty, a game that's much more popular on consoles than on PC. Blizzard is the PC side of the company, but they are mostly games that are slowly dying due to mismanagement. The IP is very valuable, but current PC sales alone wouldn't make Microsoft dominant by a long shot.
> Microsoft Game Studios doesn't have a lot of market share in PC games besides Minecraft
You could see it coming that this is controversial.
1. Microsofts share in publishing video games isn't exactly what you'd call small. They acquired Zenimax Media [1] last year, which is kind of big. That said, Microsoft can't be seen as a dominator in the publishing market.
2. But the argument wasn't necessarily about who owns the most studios. Microsoft absolutely dominates in the platform market on PC. Games are developed for Windows. Period. Everything else is either niche or an extra.
I think my think my argument is mostly based on the precise wording. Make it slightly broader and it would no longer hold.
1) Microsoft holds a very respectable share of the video game market (especially if you ignore mobile). But their share of the PC game market specifically is much smaller.
2) Microsoft is the dominant platform of PC gaming without question. But that doesn't make the market attached to them. Being without alternative or having high switching costs is what makes you attached, not merely using it. Most games are inherently multi-platform, either because they are built in an engine that is or because they are also sold on other platforms (mostly consoles). Not having Linux, Mac or SteamOS builds is usually a business decision, not a technical one. You could argue that they are attached to Microsoft because that's where the consumers are, and that's true in a sense. But that limits what kind of benefit Microsoft can get out of the attachment and what kind of damage they can do - at most as much as it takes to get enough consumers to switch (dual boot, some SteamOS device, etc). In a world where games sell platforms the attachment isn't very strong
Microsoft are using their platform positions to sell games on Xbox and PC in one, which others can't compete with (because Xbox is a closed market), and their deep pockets to fund Xbox Pass mean it is a little combative rather than genuinely competitive.
I agree with your view point - however it’s hard to see any other outcome for the AAA franchises. Player expectations of a modern title are increasing - as are the time, human, and fiscal capital required to ship a modern title - years of engineering, hundreds of people, hundreds of millions of dollars. The risks are huge - missing your date, or game experience can sink a company - consider what Cyberpunk almost did to Projekt CD RED - to ship they cut to the bone very late in the day. The economics of the AAA business is optimizing towards managing and distributing that risk thru supply-chain and scale. I don’t see a better way on this current trajectory.
>Player expectations of a modern title are increasing
Unfortunately this is not true. Modern AAA franchises do not innovate. They are just shinier. You can find the same systems, and often more complex or creative ones, in games from the nineties and 2000's as you can today. Modern gamers either become jaded, seek out indie games, or, more often, simply buy what is offered.
Remember when the big question used to be "are video games art? CAN they ever be art?" I remember publications like PC Gamer spending a lot of time and energy wrestling with these questions. It wasn't lip service; it was a real goal that game creators at the time pushed towards, because gaming was trying to find acceptance and respect alongside other forms of media. I think that has mostly been lost, now. There is and will always be indie creators pushing their own creations that are inspired, but the AAA market is totally lost, imo, if you are interested in games as more than just a mindless bit of fun. That overarching sense of progressing towards something that could be considered true "art", is gone, for the time being.
edit: didn't mean to sound like I wasn't giving credit to all the fine indie games and game creators out there. There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
AAA games are about art as much as big budget films are… which is to say: not a lot. You’re never going to see as much risk taken when each game costs hundreds of millions of dollars. There are however tons of “mid tier” studio, what some might call “triple I” big indie studios that put out all kinds of innovative games.
Even Minecraft and Fortnite, two of the most popular games in the world, are systemically quite interesting compared to games 20 years ago. (yes really, Fortnite is much more interesting than you might think looking at it superficially)
Defining “art” when it comes to games is of course subjective. Some would say The Witness is much closer to art than The Last of Us 2, while others would say the opposite… but does it matter? Either way they’re both fantastic games. The medium is still being pushed forward, you just have to know where to look.
Like I said, there will always be innovative indie games. But the AAA studios used to be important in driving artistic and systemic innovation in games, because they had the most money and visibility.
Games like: Elite 2: Frontier, Star Control 2, Heroes of Might and Magic, KOTOR 1 and 2, all had strong writing, narrative, complex and difficult systems to manage, and were innovative in their time. And none were "indie" games (though at the time, some of these games could be made by 1 or 2 people). This is a real difference. Just look at the difference in Blizzard. Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo 1 & 2 made them hugely influential and successful because of their commitment to quality. Now, they're a joke. But somehow, still one of the biggest gaming companies in the world!
It's not about defining art. It's about a push to create games that can stand up to works of literature and cinema which are considered to be important artistic achievements. I'm happy to hear that there are titles out their which are striving for that, but AAA studios aren't doing that. In fact they actively push new titles as being cutting edge while they retain or dumb down systems that were created decades ago.
Disagree hard on Fortnite. It is very shallow. The building system seems interesting but is superficial. Yes it's integral to winning the match, but its not very strategic...just like Fortnite's shooting and physics are quite cartoony and not very tactical. It is a VERY poor "shooter," but a fun "battle royale game." There is a difference these days.
Minecraft was not a AAA game, it was just purchased by a AAA studio.
Again, I'm not saying that there aren't any games that are artistic or interesting. In fact that's the opposite of what I said in my original post! I'm saying that "The Industry" (which will ALWAYS have the most market share, visibility, and resources) is not creating those games. They are not interested. And that is a sad change from what used to be.
My point was that the kind of budgets of AAA games have now completely dwarf the “AAA” games from 20 years ago. There are still innovative games being made with the equivalent budgets and team sizes of those older games (2-50 people, $10 million or less).
On top of that, there are still massive budget AAA games that are willing to take risks for artistic integrity. Obvious examples of this are things like Death Stranding or The Last of Us 2.
Blizzard’s quality hasn’t actually fallen. They’ve clearly had some internal culture issues but their games have always been stellar. They just operate on glacial timescales which everyone seems to forget. Their last release was in 2016, which was Overwatch, a fantastic game.
And re: Fortnite, if you don’t think the building is strategic, you need to watch some high end competitive matches. It’s incredibly tactical. Each player acts like a real time map designer trying to give themselves the biggest positional advantage (while balancing resource usage etc). I would argue that it uses the full 3-dimensions more than any other competitive game out there.
> Modern AAA franchises do not innovate. They are just shinier.
> There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
I guess that's my point and I didn't write it very well. AAA publishing/production has become a low-risk money-machine that feeds a very large audience occasionally surprising but increasingly bland content, while making small formulaic incremental changes year-on-year e.g. next-gen textures, bigger maps, more multiplayer servers and modes. Unfortunately a large proportion of players are happy with just that model as evidenced by the revenue derived from it.
Do players really prefer the current AAA space right now though? There are many indie games out there made by a small team (or even one person) that are very popular and successful (e.g. Stardew Valley, Outer Wilds). For me personally, I haven't really enjoyed a AAA game in years. I tend to stick to indie or more niche experiences. I think AAA studios might do well if they split up their massive teams to create many, more focused games instead of one big blockbuster that primarily serve as a vehicle for microtransactions.
If you look at best-selling console games by year, [0, only goes up to 2019] you can see that the list since about 2001 is dominated by sports games and Call of Duty, with the odd exception (usually a Rockstar game).
While the gaming discourse has turned against these titles, they are consistently the most popular. If anything, I’m actually flabbergasted that Rockstar was able to turn a Wild West drama into the best selling game of 2018, as it feels so different (that is, less cartoonish) to anything else on the list.
The fact of the matter is that the people who talk about games make up a small portion of the total group of people who play games. AAA still exists because it still rakes in cash, year over year.
The success of Red Dead Redemption, and Rockstar in general, is proof that you gamers will appreciate more substantial than sports games (which barely update between editions, and sometimes actually have LESS content than previous editions), and shooters, which have rapidly turned into Skinner's Boxes themselves with all the unlockables and achievements (which hijack the whole point of a shooter from competition between individuals' skill, into a competition between the player and a list of arbitrary "achievements").
But clearly the AAA studios have the market figured out, it's just easier, less risky, and more profitable to make shallow "product" than a rewarding and interesting "game."
I guess my point, and my issue with this take, is that "you gamers" is kind of a useless identifier. Most people who play games are going to stick to the blockbusters, like most people who go to the movies stick to the blockbusters.
And the same complaints hold true in film, where people argue that studios are just taking the safer, more profitable path. But the people who make those complaints aren't the audience that the studios/publishers are targeting, and they are a minority in the larger market as a whole.
I mean, don't get me wrong, there are indie games or whatever that break out or break the mold; Stardew Valley has sold 15 million copies since it launched in early access in 2016, and though I think the CoD game from that year sold more, I guarantee you there are more people still playing SV than CoD: Infinite Warfare. But Activision made their buck and moved on, and that strategy continues to work for them.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the consumer. I'm just saying that AAA studios have "the market" figured out. They know how to, forgive the use of the phrase, "game the system," to make profit at the expense of quality. They didn't invent it and they sure as hell won't be the last to use it, but they certainly got good at it.
I'm just saying that there is definitely an appetite among the general game consumer for a more complex and cerebral type of game! And that it's sad to see such few of those titles come from the big studios (while at the same time they nickel-and-dime everyone with their dlc's and other schemes).
I don't know what the 5th highest reviewed title of all time that was made available on a popular platform selling well tells me about the state of AAA as a whole to be honest. One data point, for a game considered a masterpiece of the last generation (so the decade), doesn't say a whole lot.
The Avengers was a large AAA game from the world's most popular media franchise and it recently tanked. "That should tell you everything you need to know..."
In general people don't care whether a game is a "AAA" or "indie" when they buy it, they look at reviews and whether their friends are playing it.
There are good AAA games and bad AAA games. The good ones do very well, the bad ones don't do as well. If we move the goalposts to say that the high-grossing/well-reviewed AAA games don't count then of course we're going to end up with a skewed picture of what the market looks like.
Because the Avengers game wasn't very good. On the other hand the recent Guardians of the Galaxy game sold much better and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews.
It’s annoying that MS will probably pull the same crap they did when they purchased Bethesda a couple of years ago: we won’t see releases of most Activision/Blizzard games on Sony consoles going forward.
This exclusivity game has to stop. I understand MS’s motivations — they want people to buy their console, after all. But it’s awful that you can make an educated console decision, and then two years later have a good chunk of games stolen from you because of a merger.
I concur that I’d really like to see Linux take the PC gaming space over. Personally I feel that we should focus on indie games and low-level platform compatibilty — if enough users switch to Linux, AAA studios will have to follow. Except the MS-owned studios who have a standing order to ignore Linux, of course…
The issue is a bit more than that. To make gamers and normal users switch to linux we need to make more GUI apps for linux and increase the accessability of linux GUI / DE.
Just watch the LTT videos about gaming on Linux. Linux is a Cluster** of an OS to troubleshoot and configure.
I'm a dev myself I love my Arch and everything but this OS is NOT meant for normal people.
Its 2022, people don't want to fiddle around with a terminal.
Until Linux and its users don't fix the core problem of linux and thats usability, I don't see people switching to it.
> Its 2022, people don't want to fiddle around with a terminal.
Is this a good thing though?
Computer illiteracy seems to be at a new high-water mark with the upcoming generation. They generally know how to punch some buttons to make a few things work, but nothing more.
If anything, I think we should be teaching the basics of the UNIX command line starting around 5th or 6th grade. Get those kids playing around and learning a bit more about their systems. Maybe teach a few little python or Javascript one-liners to automate some stuff. Not everyone will pick everything up, but a lot of overlooked kids would find a new skill that will help them no matter which direction their lives take them.
I love the terminal and everything but we should not teach people how to use it. The terminal is not the most user friendly thing out there is it? (maybe its harsh saying "should not teach" but lets say make them aware there is a terminal but there should be alterantives)
I would not get rid of it.. ever, but I would love to see alternatives to it. People are too fixated on working from the terminal and using the terminal that they don't see that its literally the thing that gate keeps people away from trying Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows or Macs are better, I do have a windows machine where I game and do ocasionally some work, but they are miles better when compared to Linux and its ecosystem.
Have you ever tried running an old App on linux compared to windows lets say? Windows compatibility is unmatched. I can effortlessly run old programs and games.
If a linux project is abandoned for a few years, good luck making it run. (and I know you can always recompile etc, but thats besides the point, no "normal" user will compile an app)
Which is not the argument that you originally posted.
You repeated an old cliche(which is false) and now you moved goalposts.
PS: I've tried to run multiple Windows apps that wouldn't run on Windows 11. I have an older In System Programming software, that I have to run in a virtualized Windows XP. So...
I'm really excited for the Steam deck sometime this year, especially given GPU prices are what they are. Interestingly, Valve's work on Proton/Wine has created a situation where smaller developers are almost less likely to target Linux first class, as the game can just run on the compatability layer and save the dev the work of obscure Linux issues that effect 1% of players.
Games are software. Changing the upper management/ownership isn't going to change deliverables. If anything, it could delay releases even further out with new overlords. Certainly they can clean house of the former companies HR department as well as any senior leaders that did nothing with previous issues.
It will take a long time before anything material comes from this from a games perspective. I would assume legal agreements are in place for cash-cow games like Call Of Duty on other platforms so that should alleviate any anti-competitive investigation.
One thing we can say fairly certainly is Bobby Kotick's days are numbered. Everything I've read about the guy indicates to me that he won't do well in the Microsoft corporate culture.
I don't really share your impression that everything is consolidated under large developers. Most of the games I've bought over the last few years have all been from relatively small studios (as far as I know anyway, it can be hard to tell).
Very impressive indeed. He was backed by a multibillion dollar behemoth and, against all odds, and despite the commercial failure of the Xbox One (something that would’ve bankrupted any other company), he managed to keep the company afloat long enough to launch another product.
Spending ~$70bn to acquire another company is also impressive. Sure, Microsoft has limitless resources, and using acquisitions to hurt the competition is something they love to do, but still.. He did it. This is his win.
I've never overseen a merger before, let alone one of this scale, so pardon my blatant speculation... but will that really be such an issue?
It seems to me that the mismanagement of Acti/Blizz is a product of a corrupt corporate apparatus. From the inside of Acti/Blizz, the problem is basically intractible, but I don't think that really applies the same way once you install higher rungs of authority. MS is no stranger to acquisitions, either, so it's not as though they will be asleep at the wheel during this transition.
It may well be that he has a job in name in the new structure but not actually a role and after some discreet period he will be put out to pasture. Kind of sucks if you wanted him to receive some sort of cathartic day of reckoning but maybe a pragmatic solution.
The press release says they're keeping Kotick for the duration of the transition, then everyone will report to Phil Spencer. Seems likely that Kotick will be gone soon(ish)
As a longtime Blizzard fan and a former Microsoft employee, maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, but there's really only one thing I care about:
Will they finally start getting the fucking games right again?
Old Blizzard is dead and has been for almost a decade--the name's the same but their job now is not to make great games that push the envelope in game design but rather to manage cash-printing franchises. It's hard not to think this when so many of the people behind the original groundbreaking games (StarCraft, WC3, D2) have left the company and in some cases disavowed it.
Be happy that old Blizzard happened, I say, and look on with eagerness to new indie studios, many of which are being run by the same Blizzard vets.
If they can keep the Warcraft and Diablo balls rolling, with competent releases every so often, I’m fine with it. That way we have the best of both worlds: developing franchises, and the indies.
Hopefully first they will fire everyone responsible for cultivating a toxic culture culminating in sexually harassing a women to suicide and having a "Cosby" room at events. Don't care how good of games they are when thats the company behind them.
> Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position
You forgot to mention he started with billions of dollars backing him up. It was not like a small startup or something.
I feel like the "at Microsoft" already implies billions of funding. However, teams within big companies are not immune to reduced funding and cancelling if their strategy does not work.
Not really. It was clear that there was space for another large player in the console market. Sega was done or dying, Sony and Nintendo couldn't keep the entire playerbases to themselves (and PC and Mac are barely worth mentioning im sorry to say).
I'd say Sega's floundering indicated the opposite, despite a huge portion of that being own goals. I don't see any fundamental reason the market couldn't have been a duopoly.
And, to the GP point of crediting Spencer, there weren't even many synergies to exploit with a Microsoft console in the first XBox generation. It certainly didn't "integrate" with Windows in any way that made you more likely to buy it over alternative consoles.
AFAICT (as someone who doesn't spend much time console gaming now), its success was essentially built on the back of (1) access to capital, (2) savvy exclusives, (3) intelligent acquisitions, (4) avoiding missteps in hardware refreshes, and in later generations (5) strength of social platform. So, props where props are due, because 4/5 of those are skill. Especially while no doubt having to fight an internal battle against all the other Microsoft political power centers.
IMO, and dismiss this as just gut feeling if you want, but it was just a matter of time before there was a 3rd big player. Console gaming was getting too big, too fast for there to be just 2 options for the market. Someone was going to come along and do it better than Sega.
Now, all credit to the bigwigs for having the business savvy to pull it off. But with the size and scale of console gaming, 2 consoles was just not going to cut it. (PC gaming was finished as a true competitor due to cost differences).
My read is that it was really Nintendo's failure to broaden their market that opened up the space. Cart vs CD was a understandable debate when the N64 was being designed. But the GameCube vs PS2 was just... ugh. And Sony has always had arrogance in spades when they get a lead.
I guess, in retrospect, Microsoft's fundamental synergy was "developers, developers, developers!" And realizing trading more powerful commodity PC hardware for decreased programming difficulty was a good deal. There were a large number of developers, or future developers, dissatisfied with catering to {insert Nintendo or Sony weird architecture hoops du jour}.
That's a good point. The Gamecube was definitely underwhelming in it's library of games and frustrated a lot of consumers. I think the point I'm trying to make is that it was basically inevitable that there would be a new major console. The market was too big. I'm sure there was also a chance that this wouldn't happen, and Sega/Sony/Nintendo kept on ruling the market. But it just takes one misstep. And there were two (Dreamcast and Gamecube) right as gaming was really starting to explode into its present-day extent.
I'm not trying to argue about the specifics about what happened, but just in general terms, there was always going to be room for a competitor in a space that big, that was changing that rapidly. Imho.
Makes sense! Between chance of failure & rate of change, the odds looked pretty good.
I'm more flummoxed by the fact that a fundamentally social-native offering didn't disrupt the existing ecosystem, in the 2000 timeframe.
We had chat. We had basic web. Keyboards weren't that expensive, were they? Seems a killer feature for kids.
Not straight "the Web on your console", but something more like AOL, Prodigy, and the late 90s portals.
My only explanation is that the 3 big platform companies were still thinking in packaged software/games, sold retail, terms. Hence XBox Live, when it emerged, was essentially a way to get more value (multiplayer) out of the packaged software you bought.
> Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox"
According to Wikipedia[0]:
> Spencer served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft's European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008
He came to be in charge of Xbox via his experience managing their internal studios. How's Lionhead doing these days btw?
Think of what you acquire when you acquire a company. You acquire intellectual property - products & ideas, you acquire people - future ideas, you acquire customer base - players. If you behead the company you certainly will lose critical people with it risking the products and customer base too. This isn’t Microsoft’s first acquisition, they’ll manage realignment of the new organization differently than just wholesale ejections. I’m sure Bobby’s new schedule has time for rest while he vests.
The video game development industry has a lot of financial similarities to pharmaceutical development.
As a major, why should I take the (large) risk to develop novel product? When I can outsource that function to a large number of smaller companies, who either go bankrupt or produce something of value, which I can then afford to pay a premium to acquire, after its value is known? I.e. if I can substitute money for risk, why wouldn't I?
Can we take a moment to appreciate the irony of decrying platform lock-in when talking about the company that successfully launched a new gaming console against... Nintendo and Sony?
The fact someone else did something is an absurd justification to do it as well. In a practical level, Xbox is much more locked in than Nintendo, as all Nintendo consoles have PC emulators for it and the devices can be jailbroken.
It's not absurd: it's literally proof of a viable and sustainable business model.
Consoles have always been packaged, standardized, and locked computers. That Nintendo is bad at security isn't proof of any great altruism. It just means they're not good at secure hardware design.
Except they weren't -- until Nintendo came along with their 10NES lockout chip.
Actually Texas Instruments had a go at it with their beige TI-99/4A, but by the time that came out most of the TI-99/4As that would ever be sold were already sold, without the lockout. But it was the NES that turned the locked box into a business model.
Yes. I mean the sub-headline is XboxGamePass is now 25M+ subscribers. Logical next step isn't even games: it's convergence.
Curious we don't see similar consolidation in the Japanese market: Square Enix, Konami, Capcom, Tecmo, Bandai Namco, From. Even Nintendo. All seem attractive targets, no?
That's because the Japanese game companies are more or less in friendly coopetition with each other. Both Namco and Sega run game centers (arcades), which means they're buying each other's games to populate said centers (as well as other manufacturers' games). And then there's Smash Bros., in which many of Nintendo's competitors (including Microsoft -- twice) went to Nintendo and said, "hey, could you feature our characters too?" And then there's Mario & Sonic at the Olympics...
They aren't really consolidated so much as they're interlocked. Many of the largest companies in Japan own stock in all of the other largest companies in Japan. It diversifies their holdings and insulates them from market fluctuations while maintaining their independence.
It's really a bit of everything. Some like Fuji, Hyundai, or Toyota, I believe have been historically diversifying across several different markets.
Sony did expand on some fronts via acquisitions, e.g. Sony Electronics acquiring Konica-Minolta, Sony Electronic Entertainment acquiring several studios, etc.
I'm hoping it just means Diablo 3 released sooner since Microsoft has a mountain of resources.
I'm curious how game development is under the large tech companies like Microsoft. Game development is notoriously recognized as a slave driving industry for the labor force. Massive tech companies, like Microsoft, aren't exactly known as places to slack in the software world, but they also don't seem to have as toxic of a labor culture as the gaming companies who pass mountains of costs to their labor to remain competitive (Amazon perhaps being the exception here).
(Itemization and damage looks very bad in Diablo 4 previews though - damage in hundreds of thousands and "strictly better" items instead of trade offs)
I've had fairly good experiences running Blizzard games under wine over the years. Diablo 3, StarCraft Remastered, and a few others tend to work pretty much perfectly. Based on the versions of Visual Studio and stuff that get pulled in when installing them, I have to wonder if the secret to making a game run well on Wine is just to stick with older versions of the Window-specific libraries rather than the cutting edge.
Well Microsoft just released Age of Empires 4, which turned out surprisingly well, best RTS since Starcraft 2. I'd say chances we're going to see anything SC3 or WC4 related only went up by this. Maybe there will even be a WoW2 finally.
About time other studios get a chance to work with Blizzards IPs, they did well creating all those beautiful universes, but they struggle so much making just one new game every few years.
> Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth.
>Starcraft is not going to be re-born anytime soon
you don't need to make another Starcraft game. you can use that IPs to develop different kind of game like Warcraft is used to make Hearthstone the card game.
Starcraft was just a fantastic game - people have been playing it for decades. Not sure how financially successful it has been (fairly well I would imagine) but it has a legion fan base.
Why they never used Starcraft to compete in the same game-space as Eve Online or Star Citizen is beyond me... though, I think that's just wishful thinking on my part. Love the IP of one and the game play of the other =[
Seems somewhat imaginable, since they'll try to do that with Windows and Xbox obviously. At some point with enough games to support that, PlayStation owners will feel left out and Sony might follow. Who knows...
> [...] if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point.
I certainly think this should happen.
The trillion dollar giants should not span multiple industries. They have absurd monopoly power and can make growing your own niche impossible.
Why does a cloud computing / operating system vendor / hardware manufacturer / business software / developer tooling company also own the third biggest gaming outfit?
Why, for that matter, are Amazon and Apple also movie studios (and soon to be game studios)?
This is ridiculous. These companies never have to compete with you. It's easy for them to funnel money into any effort and clone your product. You can struggle to grow revenue and they can simply allocate an engineering team and marketing budget.
You'll probably also have to buy your competitor's products or pay their taxes at some point.
What's funny is that when EPB of Chattanooga decided they wanted a Fiber Network to build their smart power grid around, Comcast said no.
So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies completely seperate in order to operate; otherwise, they would have too much of a competitive advantage over Comcast.
For the customer, it's just EPB, but for legalize and accountants, it's two completely separate companies, and money isn't allowed to go from the power division to the internet division and vice versa.
Imagine if these conglomerates had to do similar type of accounting. I don't know if that would be a positive for the customer/consumer, but it's an interesting thought exercise. Amazon might even consider shutting down quite a bit of e-commerce if they couldn't subsidize it with AWS...
Are you saying it's a good thing that Comcast was able to break up an upstart competitor? I'm not sure a world where that's easier would have fewer monopolies to today. Even in your example the large and established company was suing the upstart.
I do think advanced scrutiny of government owned companies is a good thing. I also think allowing Comcast to continue to compete with EPB was also a good thing.
I don't think Comcast is in a position to claim victimhood, nor is EPB. However, I would be interested in seeing this type of accounting being enforced for companies that receive grants and significant tax breaks/advantages and have localized enforced monopolies, such as Comcast and several other large companies.
I'm honestly taken aback by how middle of the road you are about that situation.
In what world is it a good thing that instead of accepting an offer to provide a needed service that you're in the business of, you refuse the offer and sue/lobby the requester into submission out of spite.
I didnt say I liked that Comcast was allowed to lobby to block EPB. But EPB won and they also won customer appeal.
If you read what I said, Comcast, having received billions from the government to build fiber optic networks that they never built, should be under advanced scrutiny, perhaps forced to keep their internet providing monies separate from their TV cable system monies.
Feudalism is an entirely different beast and either didn't exist or had minor global presence throughout the whole period you listed. Even listing the ancient Achaemenid Empire for example would make more sense in this context.
How would you describe the post-Carolingian economic organization of Europe?
What I was casting about for was the earliest example of innovation-suppressing economic subordination by force, over a wide area.
The Achaemenid (or later Abbasid) seem have featured more individual freedom, with regards to innovation, and less maximally-taxing policy to redirect economic output to ostensible land owners.
If your contention is that feudalism is an inaccurate lense through which to view medieval Europe, then okay.
But the taxing and redirection of excess economic output, accomplished through ownership and lending of land, leading to an underperforming history of innovation, seems borne out by the history of Europe, regardless of the intricacies or framework through which it's viewed.
And that seems pretty on point for exactly what everyone is decrying with regards to consolidation into conglomerates in the tech sector.
> spin off gaming into an independent company at some point
Unlikely without regulatory intervention. The added value for MS shareholders here is that MS has now more leverage to gently heard gamers towards their platforms.
Phil Spencer is my favorite executive. His work since he had taken over has been splendid and I like his calm manner of discussing competition. He doesn’t make it into war. He seems like a genuinely nice guy and I am happy to see him succeed.
No chance. COD has consistently been a huge money maker on PS and Vanguard was #1 last year. They would lose out on way too much revenue, not to mention that massive negative sentiment that would bring towards Xbox and big game / console manufacturers. I think certain games like Halo and maybe some Bethesda will stay (ones that have previously been exclusive). But acquiring a AAA company and then cutting off half of your customer base seems like a big mistep.
Bethesda is AAA, and we've already seen that Microsoft is willing to sacrifice revenue short term, by dropping the PS5 version fo Starfield, in order to drive long term GamePass subscription and revenue. There is no point in taking the risk of making a huge acquisition just to share the games with your #1 competitor.
I'd like to see this acquisition blocked, it will be bad for gaming long term to have so much control with one company.
In addition, I believe they have already announced they plan to continue support for other consoles/systems, and they definitely announced they support a PS "gamepass". Wouldn't be surprised if ABK would be included in a PS gamepass (Microsoft ultimately makes money from that).
I think there is some chance that future CoD will not be on PlayStation. They might even be used as a bargaining chip to get game pass on PlayStation. I could see it as, “if you let us put game pass on PlayStation we will sell Microsoft games on your storefront, including Cod. If not, no CoD.”
This paints Sony as the unwilling party. Microsoft can say, “we would love to have CoD on PlayStation.”
Why else buy them? Most Blizzard games are PC first anyway.
Sony (the studio) is an "arms dealer" and works with many different streamers. No reason they can't do the same on the gaming side and release, say, Spider-man, on Gamepass or Stadia after sales on their own consoles slow down.
I don't think Sony has anything against GamePass on PlayStation as long as Microsoft pays its revenue share. After all, there's EA pass on PlayStation.
What are you talking about? That article literally says they're focused on delivering games exclusively to platforms that support GamePass. The next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will not be on Playstation.
Console exclusivity is no longer the driving force for revenue, that's GamePass.
Selling full versions everywhere else is good business, we saw that from both Microsoft and Sony making more PC ports - and for Xbox it is yet another driver into their subscription model.
Until GamePass is on Playstation, putting Microsoft games on Playstation doesn't drive subscription revenue. We already see future Bethesda titles being withdrawn from PS5, I don't see why this would be different.
There's a difference between "native" MS studios from before the current aquisition wave and recent acquisitions made to bolster GamePass. Last I checked Deathloop did release on Playstation, at least.
Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet:
> When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
It will be interesting to see in the medium-term if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. But for now it's wild to think about the fact that Microsoft owns the Call of Duty franchise.