Oh boy, can’t wait for more average but poorly managed games!
Don’t forget console exclusive.
This is the real hell
That’s not so bad now gamepass is a thing, usually they’re on pc at launch
oh okay as long as it’s on pc we don’t care. cool. Honestly I have such a hard time with the video games community. for a long time I was a big supporter of the idea that a certain company shouldn’t be buying up exclusives because games should be for all.
but as soon as Microsoft started doing it, everyone has this apathetic response suddenly because “i got mine”. As soon as the shoe is on the other foot gamers show themselves real quick.
Because Nintendo and Sony are doing it too, but at least Microsoft is putting their games day one on PC… They’re going to make their games exclusive one way or another, but this is preferable to the way other companies are doing it.
This whole thing has confused the ever loving balls out of me. Xbox and Microsoft having been getting MURDERED over the last few years and ridiculed by pretty much everyone for one reason and one reason only, they have no games. Why get an Xbox? PlayStation and Nintendo have all the good exclusives. Xbox has nothing.
Now, Microsoft goes out and buys up some IP’s and studios that have games they can make exclusive if they want (even tho they’ve said over and over they won’t for the ones that currently aren’t console exclusives but we’ll see on that one). So, for the first time in pretty much forever they’ll have the opportunity for console exclusives other than Halo and now everyone is complaining that they’ll make the games console exclusives. It’s like the biggest damned if you do, damned if you don’t for them lol.
“Fuck Xbox they don’t have any good exclusives.”
Microsoft goes out and gets good exclusives
“Fuck Xbox they’re making the good games exclusive.”
Astroturfing is a very real thing that major companies participate in to sway public sentiment.
Especially if they released a really successful game and then they released a really bad one that got them sued by their shareholders and they had to issue a public apology but internet sentiment is somehow still positive. Especially if that game had a $163 MILLION marketing budget.
It’s modern advertising. Just start a friendly discussion on social media about your product or service with some purchased or fresh accounts, or just upvoted anything positive and downvote anything negative! Imagine the effect you could have on discussions if just a single person focused on this 8 hours a day for weeks, compared to organic discourse.
People worry about Russian or Chinese botfarms but don’t stop to think that corporations are the ones with the most to gain from altering public perception worldwide.
yes, this is the part where I gave up trying to say
“Hey it’s bad these guys make their games exclusive, pc players and xbox players and whatever should all be able to play these games”
because now fuck it, why bother. pc players and xbox players do not care as soon as they got theirs. they won’t show the same support as soon as they get their games.
Why should I show support for players on other systems, if players on other systems will not show the same support back?
pc players and xbox players do not care as soon as they got theirs.
Sony players don’t care as long as they get theirs
Nintendo players don’t care as long as they get theirs
Who cares? Fans will be fans.
Sony players don’t care as long as they get theirs
I used to, you generally saw the sentiment of “this isn’t good for us, we dont’ want this”, now everyone is suddenly okay with one company owning all this stuff because it comes out on pc.
It’s hard to care about people complaining about exclusivity anymore, because they only care when it affects them personally.
Thats arguing in bad faith, given that even after the buyout, Zenimax still produced games on the other devices. Arkane Lyon (deathloop), ID interactive (Doom), Tango Gameworks(Ghost Wire Tokyo), Mojang(Minecraft) and auch still produced games for other consoles, despite being owned by Microsoft.
Microsoft puts its developers games on other devices more often than the reverse. Its only within the past few years that Sonys been putting about half of its titles on PC.
Most of those were preexisting contracts they needed to fulfill. You’re the one who’s arguing in bad faith.
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It won’t fulfill your apparent need to have people pat you on the tummy and say you are a good boy but:
Okay, we know where your head is. but i’m going to engage anyway just to say that i’m looking for solidarity, and not finding it. I’m finding selfishness. Previously I was in support of not having things exclusive, I didn’t want it, It didn’t benefit me. but I’m not seeing that support back from pc gamers like you.
Do you think it’s okay for me to say “it’s okay for final fantasy games to be exclusive to one system, you should have bought a playstation”. are you happy with that statement?
I’m confused. You’re angry because you want games on the PlayStation? Nobody forced you to buy it. There are plenty of good games on there, and Sony do the same. I’m not crying that Bloodborne isn’t on PC. (not publicly)
Also, your wording was CONSOLE exclusive, so my comment pointed out that they’re not only on consoles, which is great! They’re open for more people to play.
Just get a PC and play everything! (except bloodborne)
I’m not crying that Bloodborne isn’t on PC
I used to say that I think it should be. Now I don’t. why don’t pc gamers want to support games being available everywhere?
Of course games should be everywhere, but exclusives sell consoles.
To answer your question about PC gamers, it’s not that we don’t want games to be everywhere, its because they already have the system where all the games go, so why should they even think about it? We don’t care about your console wars, just get a PC and stop complaining.
‘Madmen elevator meme’
There is no way that Gamepass is going to remain a good value once it’s past trying to get new members in the introduction phase. I would give it at most 2 years before the enshitification really takes hold. It could be merely months since they are trying to look good to regulators right now.
Is gamepass dies the Xbox on pc store will too… Then they’ll come grovelling to steam and the deals come back 😅
Laws against monopolies don’t exist, anymore, eh?
Because this won’t give MS a monopoly in the slightest. There’s still tons of Devs and publisher’s out there on various states of first, second and third party relationships with MS, Sony and Nintendo and new indie Devs pop up almost weekly. It gives them a massive advantage having CoD as a first party Gamepass title, yes, but that’s not what a monopoly means.
People conflate monopoly when they should be saying oligopoly
After this deal MS will STILL be in third place.
3rd place in… What? I’m trying to search around to see what you’re referring to here, but I can’t find anything.
By total market cap, Microsoft already blows these companies out of the water. By just videogame divisions, Sony and Nintendo are way farther ahead because of hardware sales, but that doesn’t really make sense to include in the conversation about acquiring a publisher. I can’t find any solid numbers either way isolating publishing, other than that the top 5 in recent years seems to be Tencent, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Activision/Blizzard (with EA hanging around too). Seems like any of those two merging is going to be bad for everyone other than shareholders.
Yes, third place in total gaming revenue. I agree it will be bad, but let’s not pretend this is going to shift the market in a big way, because it won’t.
How do you figure that 2 of the top 6 merging won’t shift the market in a big way?
Also, total gaming revenue wouldn’t be a good way to compare it because that includes revenue streams that’s are unrelated to Activision/Blizzard. Microsoft is hardly even competing with Nintendo at all considering they don’t have a handheld device. And Microsoft releases way more games on PC than Nintendo or even Sony, which further reduces the relevance of hardware sales.
It’s the developing and publishing industries specifically that are going to be impacted by this, because that’s what Activision/Blizzard does.
The impact to hardware sales will be indirect: I would guess a pretty small number amount of people might switch to Xbox or buy an Xbox in addition to a PlayStation just for version exclusives, but probably not a huge amount as long as Microsoft keeps COD on PlayStation.
Out of all these studios I suppose I like Microsoft’s games the most, but I still think it’s bad that the regulators didn’t shoot down this merger from the view of competitiveness.
I don’t think the gaming market is healthy when only a handful of corporations like Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA Games and SquareEnix hold what I assume to be 75% of the gaming AAA market. It restricts creativity and stifles competition and the ones paying the price are going to be us consumers.
Even worse if they go and start vendor locking games to Windows, which sucks for us Linux gamers or Xbox which sucks for Playstation gamers.
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Steam Deck has put a small thorn in their OS side. It used to be ridiculous to have a Linux gaming computer, but it’s become much more viable thanks to the Deck’s existence.
Basically to say Microsoft wouldn’t be able to pull a massive move like requiring Windows subscription prices without a lot of gamers going to Linux.
Rip
Blizzard was already dead
I mean for gamers in general. This merger will not benefit consumers.
Activision Blizzard was already about as anti-consumer as possible, so in this particular case at worst nothing will change, at best Microsoft might actually clean house and there might be some improvements for the consumers…
I genuinely love your optimism.
Microsoft will use this purchase to further restrict releases to non Xbox consoles, no matter when they agree to to industry bodies. It is in Microsofts interest to only release on their platforms as releasing to PS or Switch will cost them in Xbox purchases.
Yeah, sorry, I was thinking from a PC standpoint and sort of ignored the whole console perspective (though, frankly, the console market seems to have been absolutely fubared from its inception, from a consumer standpoint, so anything Microsoft does will probably be as relevant as farting into an ocean of shit…)
Yeah but game production isn’t about the consumers. It’s a business.
Benefits me as an Xbox owning, Gamepass subscribing consumer.
Short-term, maybe. But surely we can all think beyond that?
I didn’t even get D4 yet (but planned to) and all my friends have stopped playing it already ☠️ I don’t think they have anything else up their sleeve at this point. Seems they haven’t made anything new since warcraft.
They are still pumping money like crazy though.
Get D4 (Dungeons 4) instead! It’s coming out soon!
RIP ABK franchises
All three of them that actually get any focus under ABK at the moment? If anything we might get to see some of the ones usually ignored have a day in the sun if MS wants to diversify their Gamepass offerings. We may get that Tony Hawk’s 3&4 remake rather than Volition being thrown in the CoD mines, a Crash or Spyro game with Rares involvement, etc.
lol
Finally. Screw the UK for holding this up. 100% pissy I ended up posting for Diablo instead of having it on gp.
