Xbox Boss 'Trusts' Nintendo & PlayStation, More Concerned About 'Other Tech Competitors'

This might just be a humble way of saying they aren't big enough to be that threatening, and that other tech giants are Microsoft's only real threat.

I agree 100%. The day I have to sign in to google, amazon or meta to play my fsvourite games is the day Ill quit gaming. Glad to see Microsoft on top of this potential problem. Now I just hope Sony and Nintendo comes along and continue to keep the gaming industry and the culture as a whole great and safe.

@JayJ Thats exactly what he's saying and he's right.

@Alduin Same here. Their whole ecosystem is great with game pass as the star but also cloud, backwards gaming and much more.

Sony actually do things that damage gaming like timed exclusivities which is basically wasted money on keeping third-party games from being multiplatform temporarily while diverting funds from their own budget to moneyhatting. I guess that he means that both Nintendo and Sony are relatively small and traditional while Tencent, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc., are more interested in global data traffic.

I love to see the difference between Xbox fans comments about what Phil said and PS fans lol
Xbox fans praise Phil and PS fans say he is not humble etc etc, it's kinda funny

@AFCC

Yeah probably depends on the community. A lot of PS fans find he has a tendency towards double-speak bordering on outright dishonesty. But to be fair, they level that critique at Jim Ryan too. Frankly, I agree this guy is not what I'd call a straight shooter. But no surprise for any CEO, of any company, to be this way.

Xbox fans like him because he gives them a win I suppose, something they weren't getting for a while. That's fair too. He has turned things around. Still find his methods questionable, but in business if it works, it works. And he's doing well with the Gamepass gambit so far.

@AFCC They're diverting their hatred and frustration away from Jim Ryan who is basically sinking PlayStation to another's company CEO 😂. PS publish twice as many articles about what Phil Spencer does than PX but always with a negative spin. They have become a war propaganda pamphlet.

@Banjo-

Not too many Jim Ryan fans. Not sure if 'ol Jimmy is doing a bad job from a purely business perspective, with the huge gains in profits and all that, but he rankles a lot of feathers for legitimate reasons. Plus, some argue Sony's skyrocketing stock prices and sales are just him coasting off the previous leadership successes.

Between Phil and Jim, I don't see much difference. They are both doing well on the business side, and paradoxically, I dislike them both about equally despite the investors loving them.

@UnlimitedSevens Phil Spencer is a gamer that cares about games and making Xbox a bigger, better and, of course, profitable business. Jim Ryan is just an accountant, PlayStation have had much better leaders in the past. Xbox have not.

Obviously, the whole gaming community wants him to speak on exclusivity about a deal that is not yet finished. Once the deal is finished he can say they have decided to protect their massive investment by going exclusive.

@AFCC The problem is that PS users don't know anything about Microsoft and their work, and genuinely don't care about learning about them. Yesterday I presented a post on Push Square stating dozens of examples of why Microsoft is good for gaming and people just shrugged it off, weren't even willing to listen to what I had to say. So yeah, if you're not going to widen your perspectives and only restrict yourself to one company, then you're going to get a skewed view of the gaming industry.

Both companies have good aspects and both have bad aspects, and the scales of who's the most good right now shift every generation it seems like. Microsoft was the bad guy when Xbox One came out, and Sony was the good guy throughout most of the PS4 generation. These past few years, Sony has been perceived to be the bad guy due to a lot of awful decisions, while Microsoft has been recovering and doing a lot of good moves. This could always change in the future, PlayStation becomes good and Microsoft becomes bad again due to arrogance.

But as of right now, I find the good outweighs the bad in terms of Microsoft while my opinion of Sony hasn't changed much because they've been awfully quiet the past six months or so. And this is how I view things as both a PlayStation and Xbox supporter.

@Banjo-

Yeah, the narrative that Phil is a gamer while Jim isn't, I've heard that too many times to count. And I agree, I wish Jim Ryan had more actual respect for the products he is peddling. He just comes off as cold and that sucks compared to previous leadership.

But functionally, they are doing the same thing. Attempting at all costs to improve the wealth of their companies by whatever means. They are CEOs. The 'Phil is a gamer' thing always came off as a superficial public relations gimmick for the social media crowd. One that worked pretty well, apparently.

For the record, I like that Phil Spencer plays the games he sells. But don't get it twisted what these guys are really about. Begins and ends at the almighty dollar.

Once you realise the direction this industry could take; with the Tech giants Google, Meta, Amazon (and a lesser extent Apple) potentially taking over and making Gaming a completely different experience … it really puts everything into perspective. And I mean all of it.

Microsoft owning Activision-Blizzard - gamers can sub to Gamepass or buy an Xbox console to play these games or buy a PC. Or potentially play them on a Playstation and endure the Xbox logo when you boot it up.

Sony having timed exclusives - I hate these but actually the fact that I can still buy a Playstation console, and play through something like Final Fantasy VII Remake without logging into my Facebook account is actually a relief.

We are actually far from the darkest timeline if Microsoft (and Sony and Nintendo) can keep the gaming industry together.

@K1LLEGAL

Yeah I feel like there is actually a lot of professional respect between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo in the actual business sideo of things. Kind of play off each other and fill gaps in one another's libraries. Don't really imagine Sony's goal was ever to banish Microsoft from the gaming industry (that would be a dark day), even if they were able.

Think they kind of symbiotically need each other in some ways.

@UnlimitedSevens "The 'Phil is a gamer' thing always came off as a superficial public relations gimmick for the social media crowd. They are CEOs".

It's not a superficial take at all, it applies to any video game company leader and it affects the way they do business. It's completely irrelevant that they are CEOs making money, we all are expected to do that in this society. It's how you make money what makes you or your company different and, in Microsoft's case, for the better.

Oh look more Garbage from this guy 🤡

Basically this is is a threat, do any deals with Google, amazon and apple and we will ruin you..

Well guess what, the gaming industry has been ruined anyway thanks to Microsoft so why not let those other big corporation's have a slice of the pie as well.

The Fact is the vast majority of the population and you have either an Apple or android phone which you support the Apple store and google play store for apps and games and have an account, you also like all have and use Facebook meaning you have a Facebook account or WhatsApp which is owned by them. You all lost like have amazon accounts for amazon shopping and prime videos. So you already support these companies so to day they are bad is just nonsense. And don't say you're forced to make accounts with them as Microsoft do the same. My partner had minecraft dungeons on nintendo switch but had to create a Microsoft account to play it.

And the funny part is, if it was sony who acquired say square enix, EA or ubisoft then you would all be bashing them saying sony are bad and ruining gaming. I mean look at the slack they get for just timed exclusives, imagine the bashing if they got full exclusives, saying stuff like sony throwing money at devs and Sony are gatekeeping etc I've seen it on here too many times.

The Hypocrisy from Microsoft, phil and most of its fans is unreal

@Banjo-

Sure, but brass tacks the how you are talking about is pretty much the same. You got one company buying 1-year timed exclusive deals (a practice popularized by the Xbox 360 if I recall), and you got one company indiscriminately buying what it can, presumably to keep it out of the other company's playground. Besides the question of scale (because MSFT is so much bigger), I don't see - functionally - any difference in the practices. End result - exclusivity.

The narrative Phil Spencer is a savior is sort of... deluded and childish man, not to call you out or insult you. 'Phil plays games though' is just PR, which if you hit 30 years old and become a cynical chump such as myself, you'd see through that instantly. They are both doing well on the business side, Phil Spencer has (wisely) fostered a more approachable gamer image. But I don't mistake that as one being a more competent CEO than the other. Both are doing well business-wise.

If nothing else, we can agree Jim Ryan is probably a robot.

@UnlimitedSevens You're contradicting yourself. If anything, Phil Spencer has proven to be both a good leader and a good CEO but, of course, you are free to dislike him. I don't think that Jim Ryan is a good leader and has much to prove as a CEO.

@Banjo- Yeah honestly that is one of the main things that has turned me away from the Playstation community in recent years. Seems like it became highly aggressive last gen and by now you got these diehard fans who must defend their chosen side. It's why I go here and Nintendo Life but I avoid Push Square.

That and Playstation has simply lost favor with me as they focused more on cinematic style games.

@Banjo-

You'll understand when you are older. One isn't evil and one isn't good. It's business.

@JayJ Same here. I got a PS4 before an Xbox One but was disappointed with Sony's games except for Wipeout Omega Collection. I bought some multiplatform games for PS4 at first but I disliked the controller and the loud system noise so I started getting them on Xbox even if they were slightly lower-resolution. I noticed the hostility towards Xbox and the cult atmosphere on PS immediately. On NL there are tons of fanboys in denial but there are also people and staffers that speak their mind even if it means criticising Nintendo so it's like there's more freedom to be yourself in there. PX is a smaller peaceful place and people interact a lot with each other... and the best place to get Xbox news!

Of course he is ok with Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft have the muscle and power to deal with them.
The others are massive company’s with similar muscle and power that could be a threat.
It’s like a boxer saying I’m not to worried about those two amateur boxers over there in the ring.
But look it’s Mike Tyson he is now in the ring, dam that’s a worry.

@UltimateOtaku91 how much do they pay you

@I_want_avowed not as much as Microsoft would

@Microbius I don't understand what's so bad about apple, Google, Facebook and amazon, we all use their services one way or another and we don't moan, what have these companies done in terms of gaming? They haven't bought any major publishers or developers and only thing they have are half baked subscription services. Oh and mobile play stores. They have no impact so far on the console market.also what's so wrong with a new wealthy competitor entering the console gaming scene? Microsoft did when they came out with the original xbox, so what's so bad about say Apple coming out with a console and buying some studios to help promote it?

@Microbius Also the fact he says he "trusts" playstation and nintendo, trusts them with what? Are Microsoft now dictating what companies sony and nintendo are allowed to partner with etc

@Carck I wouldn't say I hate xbox as I have one, but I do hate the way Microsoft are in the gaming industry and despise Phil, but that's not a reason not to play gamepass and i dont hate the xbox "brand" in terms of its console or its games

@UltimateOtaku91
You've radicalised my friend. Used to be civil in your comments. Not the case anymore. The number of comments you made in just this thread alone (and a few on Push Square) leads me to believe you are really sour about Xbox and Phil. Let it go mate and let the chips fall as they may. Time will tell if the anger of PS fans is justified or not.

@gollumb82 I'm not sour about xbox in terms of its console and it's games, but I admit the more Phil opens his mouth the more I despise him and despise the way Microsoft are operating and taking away from the gaming industry as a whole.

And I fully admit that I get that none of you will see it the same way as you're all most likely dedicated xbox players whereas those on pushsquare and nintendolife see the bigger picture. The same would be said if it was sony who bought activision, the comments on here aimed at sony would not be nice (in truth I never see any positive things said about sony on this site)

@Royalblues anime is very different, they have left funimation and crunchy roll untouched and you can watch anime using those sites via android, pc, xbox and nintendo devices, it would be the same if you could only watch anime via the Sony ecosystem but its not

The conversation on the PS fan side has been heading south since the good conversations the first day and descending back into "MS makes bad mtx games, real games are on PS, MS just wants money, Sony creates art, and the arts must be patronized at the highest possible price" tripe, sadly.

But I do still agree with their sentiment that this statement is true, but also ingenuine. It basically says "I truest the smaller less well positioned companies to keep the status quo and not be a threat, so they're a good buffer against our bigger actual competitors." It's true. And it even benefits Sony and Nintendo to have a benevolent dictator above them rather than hostile companies. But you don't say that out loud...

You gotta give Phil some props he definitely has a very different view of the industry compared to most other CEOs in the industry. I don't necessarily agree with him all the time but I find his opinion on things to be very interesting at the very least.

@UltimateOtaku91 well they should give you a raise after all this. youre good at this job.

@UltimateOtaku91
Actually, I do have a PS4 and I'm in no way interested in Playstation going the way of the dodo. Neither is Phil and MS, apparently. I honestly believe Google, Facebook, Apple and Tencent are to be feared here, but I get why this is a bad time for Phil to be making such statements. Hopefully Call of Duty stays multiplatform so that PS players can enjoy it too (I'm more of a realistic shooter fan-- Insurgency Sandstorm and such). Also, let's hope Kotick gets fired and AB put on working on more meaningful projects than CoD.

@Banjo- You use a lot of they/them, and us/we. You aren't taking sides, or being tribal. No, you're not a fanboy at all.😂

@gollumb82 but what's to fear from those companies? They weren't even in interested when Activision offered them the chance to buy them. No ones interested in Stadia or Luna. Only real traction any of those companies have in gaming is in the mobile gaming scene.

My only ask of xbox is to not focus on GAAS games and multiplayer games and stick to a lot of single player games but looking at gamepass currently it's looking quite heavy in the online games department

@UltimateOtaku91
I agree with you on GAAS, but I realise Game Pass is the perfect place for these games. So far I think single player games are still the majority on GP, which is great. As for tech giants and their stake in gaming- Netflix has just started making baby steps in this business and I imagine if they'd bought Activision (theoretically speaking) they'd have made their games exclusive to their platform. Apple and Google would do the same. You say that a new competitor would be a good thing... I agree, but only if Sega or Atari were to make a console (I believe there were even some early plans for that to happen in the case of Atari). In other words, companies that have gaming and games in their resume. Not corpos that only care about money.

I will give it to him. Amazon, Google and Facebook are all worse than the likes of Steam, Nintendo and Sony. However... Microsoft as a whole is closer to the dishonest, slimy, censoring, authoritarian big tech. Nintendo isn't colluding with big tech to censor and ban everything that doesn't tow the line.

TENCENT is who we should all be concerned about

Big tech (or even non-tech) getting into gaming is a real threat. MS is big tech but people forget how much they've been part of traditional gaming from the beginning. MS just bought freaking Zork. I mean how "Microsoft" do you get more than Zork and Doom? MS, all of MS is anchored into traditional, legacy tech. They're a dinosaur, they're just a wealthy dinosaur. I think "gamers" tend not to realize just how backward we are from the times and what the rest of big tech is doing. Consoles? Software sales? Even subscription libraries? We're still living the 90's here. And we love it. The 21st century is a horrifying dystopia. Looking at the TV landscape tells us a lot about gaming's future once the "modern" companies get a hold of it.

@UltimateOtaku91 @Gollumb82 I know sometimes Phil says one thing and ends up doing another, but he's already said that they explicitly don't want GP to be GaaS-heavy, because heavy engagement with individual games is counter-productive to the variety that keeps subscriptions going, and that the GaaS focus was coincidental just because that's what their studio teams happened to want to work on and they don't tell the studios what to work on. Bethesda had already said (prior to them being engaged in merger talks) that GP helps them make single player games sustainable, and that FO76 happened because, basically, they couldn't afford to make single player games under the retail model anymore.

For some reason there's this permanent belief (mostly from PS circles, but not exclusively) that keep insisting GP is all about GaaS and ending single player games while single player games companies are saying retail single player doesn't make money but on GP it can....(because those GaaS games pay for it...) ) That's what some are missing. EG, Sony's finance model actually has more in common with GP than they realize. Sony can't afford $200M games that have to make an ROI on their own. It might make a positive return, but not enough to justify the amount of profit over the years it took for a return. But being the platform holder means they get a cut of all those GaaS games (same as the way Apple makes their money on gaming.) CoD, FIFA, Fortnite, and all the mtx involved is the whales paying for those $200M cinematic games that make modest profits, and mediocre short-term sales. Without that whale milk, there would be no way to realistically fund HFW and the like without an investor mutiny. Which is the exact same model as Game Pass, just with the funding spread out differently. Nutjobs spending $1k on space marine cat ears and samurai boots fund Starfield. Starfield doesn't have to triple its investment to justify the cost because SoT and R6 Extraction players are paying to play their games, Starfield players are paying to play their game, everyone's paying the same for access to the same library, and the SoT/R6/Halo players keep pumping whale money in. HFW doesn't have to triple its investment either because all those Fortnite and FIFA players keep buying junk. But Elden Ring does need to triple its investment. It cant spread it's costs from some continuous-revenue product. Unless it goes on GP that is...

People stuck in the 90's business also miss the other truism of modern media, it's not about unit sales but engagement time companies compete. If I'm glued to PS or Xbox or Switch, I'm not glued to TV or Netflix, or iPod, or Facebook. I can only spend so much time and thus money on activities, and the share of my entertainment money is what they fight for more than a specific dollar amount. I hear many PS players talking about buying one game and playing it until they platinum it, and not buying a lot of games, just buying the "best" and playing them fully. Then selling them..... Which means they're not spending a lot into the ecosystem while patting themselves on the back about patronizing the arts by buying commercial factory products at full price (before SELLING them....) MS doesn't care if you spend $120 on two big blockbusters you platinum or $100 on GP + $20 in DLC and try 300 different games for an hour each. It's the same money for them either way. They lose nothing either way, they just spread the financing differently. Sony's model revolves around the idea that getting $15 margin per unit somehow matters, and withholding additional content without payment encourages more spend. Ironically a lot of the people defending that as the ideal are actually the ones (via selling, and limiting the number of games they play) demonstrating why that model isn't ideal from a cashflow perspective. Sony has good reason to be wary of breaking a model that's paying the bills for now, but I'm more amazed at fans that can't see the pros and cons of both models more clearly. Especially when their own habits very visibly prove the holes in that model.

I assume most of the CoD studios will be repurposed to utilize single player Activision (and other) IPs that have been dormant under Kotick's CoD factory. Imagine Ravensoft being able to make Quake 5?! Wolfenstein 5, Heretic 3, SoF 5, the kind of stuff they used to make. They were one of the best corridor campaign shooter studios in the business until they got repurposed to CoD forever. They used to be the right hand of id. Now they have access to all of it again. That would be a fun day in a studio the day Booty walks in and says "ok guys, you're done with CoD. id IPs, Activision IPs, Rare IPs....what do you want to make?" I think Activision will be producing a lot MORE, not less single player games now. For 15 years their model basically revolved around CoD GaaS, WoW GaaS, and Toys2Life. They have underutilized studios, and MS needs infinite content. It's a good fit.

@UltimateOtaku91 : Since 2006 Google has closed 247 of the products and companies they've acquired, so I don't know how you can possibly suggest Google would be a better fit for the gaming community than Microsoft. The Google of today, like Tencent, is a holding company that prioritizes passive income and minimal work revenues above all else, and acquisitions that fail to meet that modus operandi aren't sold or spun-off, they're shuttered forever.

Oh, and for what it's worth Minecraft on the Switch only requires an Xbox account if you're playing online with non-Switch players specifically. You can otherwise play Minecraft on the Switch without an Xbox account.

@NEStalgia : I always appreciate your posts. Thanks for your time!

@eagletrippin Thank you for your magnificent comment 😗. FYI, I was referring to Push Square (where you usually are), not all PlayStation fans. Real example of comment on Push Square: "microshaft is very short on talent, so they buy buy buy. Guess what? Nobody wants xbox still. Lol @Banjo- completely disagree, xbox has to buy all the studios to try and keep up with ps. Nobody wants xbox still. Lol".

I have a PS4 and like a few Sony games (not many). However, I still have eyes and ears... and fingers to type what I think. I hope that you can deal with it. If not, there's always Push Square or the ignore button.

@101Force " The Google of today, like Tencent, is a holding company that prioritizes passive income and minimal work revenues above all else".

I don't know how you know that but I've worked for Google and I can confirm that. Advertisements and commissions are the main revenue.

@NEStalgia It's ironic then that the people that buy the four or five AAA Sony games per generation that they systematically consider "the best game ever made" and platinum them are the ones that consider that they are funding what they consider "the real art" when Sony makes more money with the 30% fee for Fortnite skins or for PS best-selling game (Call of Duty).

@NEStalgia
Jesus, NES... I just want to play games 🤣 Is it too early for Gaming CEO Simulator? I think gamers these days are armchair CEOs already.

@Banjo- Yeah I've been happy here and on NL. It seems like the Xbox fans have always been the most relaxed, you don't really have that fanatical, cultish mentality that you can find elsewhere. Honestly, your experience with the PS4 is pretty much the same as mine. Last gen I bought both consoles when they launched, and I felt like the PS4 was always a big disappointment for me, there was hardly anything in the way of exclusive games that I really liked on it, and I quickly came to prefer 3'rd party games on Xbox One. That and like you said the PS4 was always such a loud console, the Xbox has always been so quiet and smooth running by comparison. Plus I have never had a console that gets as messed up as easily as the PS4, like if the power goes out while it's in standby it doesn't like that and throws a fit when you boot it back up, while on Xbox it was always like nothing even happened. Same deal with updating games, on PS4 it was this long drawn out multi-step process with copying files over, on Xbox it was always a smooth all in one process and much quicker. Considering how often games updated in the modern era, that was a big deal.

@Banjo- I would never have pegged you for a Google alumni. Yuck. I feel like I should send flowers and a fruit basket or something.

Yeah, particularly with the dedicated PS-only fanbase, which is a tiny, tiny fragment of PlayStations actual market, so small as to be almost insignificant to the company, I think people have developed an echobox that really, really furthers misunderstanding between players abuout market they're participating in, even within the confines of looking at the PS ecosystem only. At the top is that common refrain about paying more to "support art". There's this weird belief that major corporate studios are like garage bands and basement indies and that paying more for their creations funds new heights of artistic freedom. And this weird belief that a studio like Santa Monica is in any way different from a Studio like DICE or Infinity Ward, because they personally perceive the result to be more creative. Yet nobody suggests writing checks and donating money tho their favorite studio to support art. It's always just wishing to pay more for products. It's more like it's some kind of consolation for a guilt I still can't identify.

The second is the idea that Sony somehow values the income from a player that buys only Sony games at full price, physically so that a retailer took much of the margin, then sells them so that the next player pays them nothing at all, and ultimately then spent very little on Playstation games at all and boasts about game ownership versus digital rentals. The real prize doesn't appear to be ownership, it appears to be the ability to get your money back so that your gaming hobby is subsidized through corporate lost profits.....kind of like........Game Pass? (Thus why I still believe PS Pass with Day 1 games could net Sony more money rather than the losses PS players often perceive MS takes.)

The third is the idea that people buy PS for the big Sony games. When you line up sales, less than half of PS4 players bought any Sony games at all (or bought them used from the above players? Either way PS Pass would probably break even from the status quo), When you figure that it's usually the same people who are buying multiple of Sony's games, that means the amount of people who bought none of them is even greater. Their first party market matters to them, but it's not their primary interest. In the PS3 days it was, but not anymore. And when you line up net profits, Sony's games are a very tiny component of PS's earnings. To hear fans tell it, CoD doesn't matter because once HFW comes out that'll be the biggest thing. What they're missing is that flash in the pan of "box office" sales will net a profit, but 6 months of CoD, FIFA, and Fortnite nets Sony (and MS) more than HFW will net in it's entire lifetime adjusted for costs. And that's taking only 30% of the pot instead of all of it.

Which is the whole point of GP. Standardizing revenue uniformly across the player base no matter if they're playing Celeste, CoD, or Starfield in a way that makes all players feel like they're getting a bargain without necessarily spending less than they otherwise would have.

My eyes water every time I see a post on Push about the solution being for Sony to buy Fromsoft....yes, because an endless font of ultra-niche Souls games and an occasional Gundam games will really do wonders for Sony's operating budget...

@JayJ Unfortunately the purchase of CoD guarantees the 360 dudebros are going to make their way back here. A lot of the most cultish ponies are yesterday's 360 CoD bros that changed allegiances until they change back. The fanatics shall harsh our mellow once more, this time decrying how PS is behind the times and only cares about movies , and "has no games".... In 6 years time, Push will be the mellow place....

@JayJ For some reason, PS4 copies and updates games using more storage than Xbox One so you always need to have like double the amount of free space available and mine is the 500GB launch model. Fortunately, I don't have many PS4 games because there aren't too many interesting first-party games to begin with but still had to erase some (I erased all the Uncharted and The Last of Us games after beating them once).

Other things I noticed is that SFV needs a game-sized update every time I start it and although Xbox One games also get updated, for some reason on PS4 it's a manual process that you have to accept in the system menus and also in the game itself (the game will update, press OK to accept). Also, no joke but my PS4 started to eject discs randomly and that was a nightmare because when a disc is ejected the console automatically closes the game and you lose all the progress that could be one-hour long in games like Kingdom Hearts and that drove me nuts. Besides, there is a random screen blackout that lasts like a second or so but it's not big deal but happens sometimes, nothing compared to losing progress but still. Last but not least, when I contacted the customer service they were always rude and not too willing to help and when I contacted Xbox support they were nice and even refunded me a game that was not backwards compatible. So this is my experience with my first and only PlayStation 😂. One more thing but this is entirely my fault, I thought that the PS4 had access to the same digital games as the PS3, including PS2 games like Project Zero/Fatal Frame but it doesn't, that was a huge disappointment.

This all is why I think it's funny when @NEStalgia says that hardware is withing Sony's DNA 😜.

@NEStalgia "I feel like I should send flowers and a fruit basket or something".

Ha ha, that would be nice of you.

"At the top is that common refrain about paying more to 'support art'".

That's something some Nintendo fans also say, like it's only fair to pay full price for a Nintendo game whatever it is. Remember, Metroid Dread, Skyward Sword port...

"Yet nobody suggests writing checks and donating money tho their favorite studio to support art. It's always just wishing to pay more for products".

Interesting point but what about the fact that some of them denied Naughty Dog's crunch conditions or that Metroid Dread developers were underpaid when the employees said so.

"Sony somehow values the income from a player that buys only Sony games at full price".

And they value hardware sales a lot, like let's sell cheap PS3 revisions until we beat Xbox 360 or what Sony said recently about PS4 that they will still support it (180 degree shift) because it's one of the best-selling consoles ever.

"but 6 months of CoD, FIFA, and Fortnite nets Sony (and MS) more than HFW will net in it's entire lifetime adjusted for costs. And that's taking only 30% of the pot instead of all of it".

Yes and also why do they waste half of their budget in purchasing third-party deals and exclusivity? It contradicts the wrong idea that Sony is all about fine games and art.

Why did Sony call Phil Spencer to ask about Activision 24 hours later (or sooner)? Why did they say, considering they had been monehatting Activision and ZeniMax before the acquisitions?

Summary: Microsoft sees PlayStation and Nintendo as children in the playground of video games. Hardly a threat. They know that neither have the resources to cause any lasting damage in the industry.

Their more concerned with the flounderings of companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon. All three of which have proven to be completely out of touch with the market. Bonus mention is Tencent which may also be considered a threat.

@Banjo- I said hardware's in their DNA. I never said anything about reliable hardware.

They're a mixed bag. Their cameras are well made but outrageously expensive because they appeal to a small niche of event photographers that have to buy. Their pro audio is the workhorse by which all others E judged, but expensive. Their audiophile stuff is decent and well made but nothing special and abhorrently overpriced. Their disc drives are made of popsicle sticks and glitter glue and fall apart if you touch them with a feather duster. I'm amazed they didn't push the digital ecosystem just so nobody notices they can't build functional disc drives. It's even more puzzling considering they invented the things....Liteon shouldn't be running circles around Sony on optical drives...

Good points. At least Nintendo studios and their games actually look like indie products so I can see the confusion.... . I jest, but yeah Dread especially represents some odd ways of viewing price. Imagine a world where all games from dread to the gunk, to battle toads to HFW are all $70 each because it's worth that much to some...

Fairness to Sony, I don't think they really care about console sales any more than ms, it's just that the only way they can move software is to move more hardware while ms has multiple distribution markets. And they know there's that big underserved bottom tier market even if it's just for subs and f2p cosmetics that switch lite and xss reach, and they have nothing in that space other than PS4 to compete with.

I REALLY don't get why anyone defends the whole timed exclusive thing. Ryan is literally working from Matricks playbook on that one. Think of all the unique SKUs they could sell instead of a year of marketing a Bethesda game for millions that eventually benefits every other platform. I wonder how much they spent buying ff7r twice. Maybe it'll really be exclusive forever at this point. $20 says that Ryan's first reaction to Activision was to call square and extend the ff16 contract.

Between Bethesda and Activision, Microsoft has sure learned a lot about the inner workings of Sonys money hatting strategies. That knowledge alone is pretty valuable to them and harmful to Sony. I kinda feel for Sony with that, but then, if they invested in their own product rather than renting (ahem) others products without ownership (ahem) that wouldn't have been a problem.

Ms is throwing their wallet around but at every turn the impact to Sony has much less to to with anything ms is doing and is mostly because of what Sony has been doing. They REALLY need new management... Maybe they can hire matrick. He still has a vision and all, which is more than can be said for Ryan 😂

@Banjo- how about not that long ago when they were going to double the price of Xbox live gold was that not the almighty phils decision seen as every decision Xbox makes seems to be Phil's Spencer's idea

@Banjo- Yeah funny you bring all that up because that is pretty much my experience as well. In fact the PS4 is the only game console that I apparently need to clean out somewhat regularly like a desktop gaming PC. After a few years it starts to sound like a jet engine firing up when you start playing a game, and it's because the thing seems to be terrible when it comes to collecting dust. In fact when I took one apart one time I found a spiders nest in a corner, never had that happen before and I got loads of old consoles. In my opinion it's just not a well-designed console, especially from a hardware standpoint. I also had the same disc eject defect as well, the solution is to take it apart and remove the metal connector that goes to the eject button. You have to eject discs through the menu, but it's a small price to pay to not have to deal with discs ejecting.

Since you bring up storage, one thing I loved about last gen consoles was the cheap expandable storage. I got a 2TB external HD that I didn't pay too much for a long time ago and it's worked great, I would probably only have, like, 10 games installed if it wasn't for that.

Overall the Xbox One X was easily the king for me. You can store tons of games on it, it enhances loads of Xbox One and 360/original classics, and it's relatively quiet and the kind of console I can just always have on in the background, using the HDMI out for cable or something. A wonderful piece of hardware IMO, only real drawback was the relatively slow storage now that I got a Series X.

@Banjo- How would you know Push Square is "usually" where I am? Are you stalkin'? Thanks for the advice, I'll choose the second option. Anyone (adult?) rocking a damn Banjo Kazooe name & avatar cannot be taken seriously 😁

PlayStation fan over here and I think that this move has been misread. At first glance it looks like big franchise grab. But Phil’s comments suggest that this was a protectionist strategy to keep those franchises out of the hands of an outside player like Google or Amazon.

Not that I play it but PlayStation is the biggest money spinner for Call of Duty (and, as an aside other 3rd party titles like Fortnite) and Microsoft would be dumb to throw all that money away. It is likely we will continue to see Activision games continued to be released on those platforms.

Phil wants to maintain the Xbox/PlayStation/Nintendo status quo and knows the damage a company like Meta or Amazon would do to the marketplace if they just brought up a company like Activision and locked all those games behind a paywall.

The Ponies galloped here very quickly..

@JayJ It’s funny that you mention the auto disc eject “feature” of the launch model PS4, that problem affected mine and would always turn my tv in some random part of the day or night if I forgot to remove the last game disc I played.

The only “fix” that seemed to work was as you mentioned which was just lame. I upgraded to a Pro which thankfully had mechanical buttons. .

I hope that this second time around that I bought a Microsoft platform that I hope won’t self destruct on me like my 360 did many years before.

@eagletrippin My god, you need professional help ASAP.

@NEStalgia All good points. It's interesting to say that about Sony hardware because I remember the family's CD players and Discman all being delicate and breaking. Also there are some teardowns on Ars Technica and other sites showing that although we know the Xbox One had a less powerful GPU than PS4, the built quality of Xbox One was much better.

@JayJ Yep as I just mentioned above the PS4 seems very poorly built and the Pro is like the overclocked version.

Xbox One X is an amazing piece of technology, the perfect Xbox One revision, powerful and silent, quite compact and heavy, it's a beast.

@Banjo- That eagletrippin guy is a perfect example of the kind of aggressive, toxic fans I always seem to find from the PS community. Once in a while a Nintendo fan will act like that, but the PS community always seems to inspire and push for that sort of attitude and approach to online communications.

Once again, it's why I love the Xbox community. You don't find aggressive fanboys trying to get in a fight with everyone who doesn't think the same as they do. It's nice, you don't have to be constantly on guard around here, you don't need to be constantly getting in an argument with someone trying to put you down for not liking the same games as them.

@JayJ
I can’t understand how anyone can be so fanatical over a company. I love my Xbox and Switch but I will still call out the BS from Microsoft and Nintendo, and so do many others around here also.

@JayJ @CaptainCluck They can love Sony as much as they want, disagree with everything that I say and go to bed and sleep with their console or pony for all I care. I just don't get why they are aggressive and toxic towards others. I agree, this is a much better community 😁.

@gollumb82 I'd play Gaming CEO Simulator.

@CaptainCluck @Banjo- Yeah isn't uncommon for people like that to launch into personal attacks when you criticize something related to a brand/company they like. I could never understand it either, but you need to remember how they are the type of people who apparently take criticism of a brand/company as a personal attack on them for some reason.

I think some people just get way too deep in the whole brand loyalty thing and allow it to become a part of their personal identity. I mean it's fine if you really like something, but if you grow so attached that you lash out at anyone who doesn't like them as much as you, that's simply unhealthy and it creates a very negative and off-putting atmosphere.

@Banjo- MS overbuilt the x1. Like REALLY overbuilt it. They couldn't afford ANYTHING to go wrong after rrod so they went a little crazy and built a piece of 80s electronics meant to last 40 years, lol.

Ironically Sony overbuilt the PS5 this time. Though for them I think it was insurance against not having enough testing time so they just overdid it at their own cost so it didn't become a nightmare. I'm glad I have the launch overbuilt PS5. Those new smaller heat sinks are concerning rough I've heard of no problems and it's my xsx that broke in a year (though it has more hours on it.)

Sony definitely makes lousy disc drives though. Always have. Makes me wonder what their contribution to the format was vs Phillips. Probably the discs and not the reading hardware. Because they never seemed to ready understand the hardware.

@JayJ I can see that happening easier with a single industry cottage company associated as the origin of an entire hobby, like Nintendo, Sega, Atari, to an extent. But Sony the TV maker and record publishing mega Monopoly who used to hunt down and get mp3 downloaders arrested and destroy the lives of 15 year olds? Microsoft the big tech, big data company that was hauled in on anti trust regs in the 90s and makers of windows ME? How can anyone associate their identity with these companies like that, I'll never understand. Both are ugly on the inside.

Why doesn't EA and Activision have a loyalty base as strong as the consoles? They've been doing it since before Sony made games and consoles. Activision and acclaim spun out of Atari with angry executives starting spinoffs. True story Activision chose it's name because its sorts alphabetically higher than Atari.... Then Acclaim chose theirs because it sorts higher alphabetically than Activision....

@JayJ

I couldn't have said it better. Your insight is spot on 👌.

@NEStalgia

"so they went a little crazy and built a piece of 80s electronics meant to last 40 years, lol".

Oh that's right LOL.

"Though for them I think it was insurance against not having enough testing time so they just overdid it at their own cost so it didn't become a nightmare".

They overclocked PS5 at the last minute when they realised Series X was more powerful than they expected so it makes sense.

"Probably the discs and not the reading hardware".

Probably. That would explain why BDs are so good (that they also co-developed) and their players aren't.

LMAO Microsoft buying up half the industry. Buying Bethesda and making longtime multiplatform games exclusives and now they come out and say they trust the other two consoles makers to do what's right for the industry like they are some kind of superior force. I have an Xbox and really enjoy it, but this is a next level of absurdity.

@electrolite77 it made me chuckle too because he’s one of them 🤣

I see a lot of people taking this wrong. This is not MS being condescending about Sony or Nintendo, this is not even them saying you should not be worried about them "getting too big."

This is Microsoft trying to remind us how terrible the alternatives are.

Amazon and Google have already acquired studios, and when things didnt go as they expected, they didnt sell them back, they just disoved them entirely. That hurts the industry, and should they get their hands on an even larger studio (like Activision) it could do irreparable damage to the industry.

Apple is terrible with their acquisitions. They poke their noses in acquired industries, leech all the talent into their in-house projects, and quickly these entities stop being. Again: terrible for the industry.

And Facebook... dont even get me started about Oculus and requiring a Facebook account to do anything gaming related, and having entire game libraries lost because the Facebook account was inactive for too long.

As oppose to oh I dunno slapping down a 70 billion bid on Activision harming gaming by restricting game sales to just one console?

Phil the hypocrite.