MinervaX76

@GeeEssEff

You will find Sony hasnt (at least to my knowledge) bought any publishers.

Lets rectify that: To be able to effectively compete with Nintendo at an international level at the start of their console ventures, Sony acquired the [at the time] largest European publisher, Psygnosis Limited. This was later renamed to SCE Studio Liverpool, and later Studio Liverpool. Mind you, for today's scale, Psygnosis was a tiny indie studio, but so was EA and Activision. In 95, Psygnosis games accounted for 40% of all video games sales in Europe. So, relatively speaking, they were gigantic. Find a publisher today that can claim that share of the market!

It's very likely without that publisher's acquisition, the PlayStation we know today would not exist. Sadly, on a trend that has just ramped up lately, Sony simply shut their development studios in 2012.

In feel a lot of people are forgetting a few things:

Sony didn’t start exclusives, but Natia was not involved with the industry until he became CEO of Microsoft. During his involvement in the industry, it is Sony that has pursued third party game lockdowns the most aggressively to anyone else.

@Kienda

Microsoft didn’t say they wanted to spend Sony out of business, one executive said that in an email.

They didnt even say they wanted to do it, they said they were in a position to do so, and then simply suggested to invest 2-3 billions on acquisitions for the following year. Thats not even suggesting an attempt at actually doing what they thought they could do.

If you listen to some, the only reason we get day one third party games on Game Pass is because someone at MS bribed someone at the government. Yea that somehow makes sense to some there.

There is a lot of overreacting to this quote. For one, it does not end with “we should actually do it”, instead he suggests spending 3 billion in acquisitions. I doubt he really thought 3 billions was going to drive Sony out of business.

Yea; they are now spending 69 billion acquiring ABK, but before doing it they sat with Sony’s President and with Jim Ryan reassuring them CoD (the only game that could hurt them if it became exclusive) would remain on the platform.

So, yea, they are not attempting to kill Sony with acquisitions.

Edit: this statement says something we all believe. Tell me who here, that is opposing the deal, has not been saying exactly the same, thad MS has the money to spend Sony out of business?

The fact that this is the only email used as evidence, despite the FTC having had access to the last 5 years of emails from MS, says that this was just that. They could not come up with any more emails on follow up, planning to actually do that, agreement, anything. If you can find this email and no follow up to bury MS, it’s likely because there is nothing there.

@EquiinoxGII My statement was not that there were no exclusives, there were quite a few, but that most exclusives were contracts, not internal games.

Of the stuff you listed, Only Conker, Halo, Forza were made by internal studios. Everything else were contracts and exclusivity agreements.

@eduscxbox

Ohhh noo, MS destroyed Rare. They allowed them to make a Pirate themed game with 30 million+ Players. Such a disaster.

It's kinda funny, I can understand wanting a new Banjo game, but Rare does not make more Banjo games for practically the same reasons Naughty Dog does not make Jack and Dexter games. They feel they "grew out" of that phase.

It is a bit sad that only Nintendo and Sega's Team Sonic seem to think that kind of game are not something to grow out of, but its what it is with most devs in the last few decades.

I figured I would post this here, just posted it on Push Square, but given the topic of "japan has laws against foreign company acquisitions", I figured I would clarify this myth:

Acquiring Japanese companies is entirely possible and not blocked by any regional laws, outside similar regulatory procedures as those we see in other countries.

The biggest roadblock is for hostile takeovers and not due to legal blocks, but due to cross-shareholding, a practice where banks hold stock in the companies they lend to, while borrowers end up also holding positions in the banks that lent money to them. This creates a complex relationship between the companies and the banks that stifle takeover activities. Even that barrier is slowly weakening.
[link with more info]

Despite the recency of these financial changes, there are quite a few Japanese companies owned by foreign ones. Nissan is, for example, owned by Renault, a French company. And Sharp is owned by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company.

You can actually find companies like this one that specialize in aiding international companies to navigate regional laws and regulations, or hunt for investment opportunities.

TLDR: Japan has no laws to block foreign acquisitions.

Damn, that sounds so low… maybe it’s because outside Hellblade they don’t really own any relevant established IP?

@Baler Phill has stated they don’t like to mandate any studio what they need to work on next.

If they want a very specific game done, and no internal studio is interested, they go out and seek a third party that can be contracted, and has the skills, to do such a project. Problem is there are not that many studios out there with a solid track record making 3D platformers outside of Nintendo. I would not be shocked if the few available, like the makers of Luckys Tales, might be too busy working on their own IP.

Both look interesting to me, just need to find the time.

@TheSimulator Ubisoft is quite big. If the ABK deal goes through, I cant see regulatory agencies allowing MS to get away with also acquiring Ubisoft. If the ABK falls through (unlikely) I would not be shocked if they do pursue Ubisoft next.

@EquiinoxGII

So many great internal games created.

They didn't have that many. What did they actually own? Bungie making Halo, Lion Head making Fable and later on Turn 10 making Forza. There was also Rare making games that didn't really land. Almost all other Xbox exclusives were contracts with third parties.

Alan Wake, contract.
Gears of War? Contract.
Crackdown? Contract.
Mass Effect 1? Contract.
Dead Rising? Contract.
Forza Horizon? Contract (until fairly recently.)

This continued to the launch of the XOne:
Ryse: Son of Rome? Contract
Killer Instinct? Contract
Quantum Break? Contract
Titanfall? Contract
ReCore? Contract
Scalebound (canceled)? Contract

The problem with Xbox is precisely they relied too much on third party contracts during their peak. When they lost ground (and 2 studios) they suddenly could no longer negotiate favorable third-party contracts and didn't have enough in-house force to keep them relevant.

@MattT3142 I heard that Moon Studios was offered an acquisition but they wanted to remain independent.

Asobo is one they should at least invest on, because it would be very bad if they happen to lose Flight Sim dev the way they lost Double Helix Games for Killer Instinct.

Stated this in PushSquare but I would not be shocked if this still can happen after the ABK deal goes through, but should they go through with it, I dare bet they would keep all existing IP multi-platform. All future persona, sonic, etc, all would be multi-platform, mostly because it would devastate Microsoft's reputation in Japan if they took over and made it all exclusive.

This is not to say they would not create new IP that are Xbox exclusive, or resurrect IPs like Jet Set Radio as Xbox exclusive.

Their relationship has gotten extremely close in recent years, they are basically in a dating period and they cant move anything forward due to the ABK deal.

@Reptilio This game was announced that far in advance not for our sake, but so they could start recruiting. Sure, they could had started recruiting without announcing the title, but it's a lot harder to convince people to submit resumes for a new game, than it is with a classic IP that many have fond memories of. Many devs will jump at a chance to work on an IP like Perfect Dark. Few are likely to jump at a chance to work on Microsoft's latest experimental new studio with zero track record.

This does not compute for me…. “Preproduction”, as far as I understand, means… they have not started production. This rumor, as I read it, implies that work is both, progressing, and not actually started….

@SplooshDmg I think every single Creation Engine game made so far has launched with its own mod-manager built in. I doubt they will leave that out on the PC release. I still bought the Constellation edition for PC that just comes with a Steam key, so I'll most likely will be playing it on Steam, still (there is a chance I just threw money at a watch I'll never wear and play the game on Game Pass PC..., yea I'm that dumb with money sometimes.)

Not done with Tears of the Kingdom, but taking a break to play a bit of Final Fantasy XIV on my PC.

Might finally sit down and play a little bit of Bookwalker on Game Pass, the concept behind that game has grabbed my attention.

Maybe, I am not sure yet.

I have a lot of time stacked up, got to go to my account to see how much I have left. I’m still debating if I should stack more time to “refresh” to the limit, or just wait until it expires and only renew whenever there is something of interest to me.

There is a chance at some point there will always be something of interest to me, and the price difference is not that high, but at the same time, I also plan already to some months be likely exclusively playing UBisoft games via UBisoft+ (mirage, avatar, Star Wars outlaws), were I also plan to just subscribe for the month.

So… not decided yet. I have come to a breaking point with subscriptions in general where I had to basically shut down all my streaming services because I was spending too much money a month in them and rarely using them, don’t want to keep doing that for services I don’t use absolutely all the time.

@NEStalgia 20fps, why waste resources in 30fps when you can invest on fidelity?

I would also be that specific after Sony threatened to withhold PS6 dev kits over trade secret concerns. He won't put himself or Microsoft in a position where Sony can force his under-oath statements to become a lie.

@SplooshDmg I can almost understand doubt on the platofrm's long term viability year one, but after that, the success of the Switch became unquestionable. Even ABK has decided it was worth it to port Overwatch and Diablo to the platform. Apex Legends and Fortnite seem to feel the platform is critical, but the Activision side of ABK seems to think if they cant have a sweetheart deal for CoD, then you cant have CoD.

I don't see anything saying they don't either, but after today's testimony, I think the reason CoD games are not on the Switch is because Nintendo told ABK to accept their standard rev share or go [bleep], and ABK [bleeped].

ABK bothered making Wii versions of Modern Warfare 3, if they really wanted to have a version on the Switch, they would have one. Hell, there was a Nintendo DS version of Modern Warfare 3!

@somnambulance I think part of the issue is that Todd is a bit of a control freak. He refuses to delegate IPs to other teams, if he is not deeply involved in the development of Elder Scrolls, Fallout or (now) Starfield, he won't let anyone do any work on it, and any one of these projects are absurd time commitments to be able to lead two of them in parallel.

It annoys me a lot more about Fallout, its not even a game he created, they just bought the rights to the IP. Let someone work on that one, at least!

@Belkan depends who's cloud. xCloud relies on Xbox hardware, it does not run on Windows or PCs, so xboxes would continue to be a thing.

Similarly with Sony's service, it simply runs on console hardware/OS.

Other services would likely result in consoles becoming irrelevant.

I do think both, MS and Sony expect consoles to eventually die off, reason both are working very hard on having a PC presence. Sooner or later, expect Sony to enter the PC market with a Steam competitor, similar to what Epic is doing.

I dont expect that game to release in 10 years. 😔

@UltimateOtaku91

Judging by phils comments today though it seems some Bethesda games will be coming to playstation in the future, most likely ones that are already established franchises on playstation like Fallout, Doom and Elders Scrolls, which the latter he refused to comment if it was still coming to playstation or not when asked by the FTC.

I would not interpret it that way. I do expect the Quake 2 remaster to come to PS5, but the statement i read was worded in such a way that basically meant they would only keep games that are as internationally large as CoD and Minecraft are. His reluctance to talk about ES6 is simply because that game is likely 10 or 15 years away, and who knows if by that point there would be a PS7 or an XBox Series X3, or if consoles have become irrelevant. He specifically said he didnt want to make a call because who has a clue how the market looks once that game comes out.

@PhileasFragg I think you are right. Planets will likely be huge square map patches on certain spots of a planet, not total planet exploration. Either that or planets will be very very tiny ( for a planet).

@Kaloudz being pre-recorded, would be hilarious if his statement brings up exclusivity concerns again despite the emails brought up quoting him as not concerned at all.

I wasn’t expecting land vehicles, but was hoping for small aerial traversal of the planets, not with a jet pack, but either in the ship we create or on a mini-shuttle or something.

Maybe we get something in the form of DLC or Mods. More reasons to play this on PC.

Don’t be shocked if we get Skyrim horses via mods rather quickly. Just slap an extra set of eyes and paint them green, call them alien horses.

The FTC is claiming Microsoft could repeat the same patterns with Activision Blizzard games - essentially locking the company's titles to Xbox, PC and the Game Pass subscription service if the deal is passed.

This is very illogical, someone at Disney might end up having to testify, but an amendment to the licensing agreement is not something a single party can do unilaterally.

Similarly, the Xbox cant back out of the deal they signed with Nintendo, or any deal Sony signs (if they decide to sign it) to keep CoD multiplatform. Thats not to mention that Jim Ryan himself was quoted as stating that he has no worries about exclusivity and that CoD will remain multiplatform.

@UltimateOtaku91 honoring a contact means you are not going to breach it. When you "don't honor a contract", you usually end up in court. A renegotiation that is agreed upon by all parties is not against the spirit of such statement.

I'm sure you already made your mind on this, though.

@UltimateOtaku91 How many contracts have you signed in your life? Serious question, because an amendment to a contract is not "breaking a contract".

Breaking a contract means you don't honor the terms and either go to court or pay whatever penalties are outlined in a penalty clause.

@themightyant I just poked my head and dropped a few comments but already see the place will look like armageddon in an hour. I'm almost done with work so I'll be jumping back into Tears of the Kingdom in a bit and just check the post count later. I feel today Push Square has had more xbox news than PS news posted (hyperbole, of course.)

@UltimateOtaku91 they didn't break the contract. Disney agreed to this. So yea, they are honoring the terms Disney agreed to.

@themightyant saw about the exclusivity earlier.

I been saying since the day the game was announced that the game would be platform exclusive unless Disney literally forced them to ship it to PlayStation.

I am surprised there is no article in PushSquare for that yet. Thats going to make many console warriors from both sides flame each other for a few hours.

@RadioHedgeFund

Microsoft only have themselves to blame. They shut down all their 1st party studios knowing full well people buy consoles to play first party exclusives.

This is a bit of a separate topic but... did they?

How many studios did they shut down? As far as I can recall, they only shut down one: Lionhead studios. They also allowed Bungie to buy their independence, but they didn't shut it down.

The real question, I guess, is... where did xbox exclusives used to come from?

• Halo obviously came from Bungie, and they sold them, but got "replaced" by 343.
• Fable came from Lionhead, got shut down for some reason when Fable Legends got canceled. Not sure why they didnt attempt to salvage what was done and just produce Fable IV with those assets but /shrug
• Gears of War came from a third party deal with Epic Games
• Forza Motorsports came from a first party, is still around
• Rare made various games, none wildly successful until Kinect and then Sea of Thieves, still around

Almost everything else I can think of was done via third party deals. Dead Rising, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery, Gotham Project Racing, Dead or Alive 4, the already mentioned Gears of War... all made as third party deals. Some IPs owned by MS, other retained by the publishers, but still, not done by xbox.

The thing that did happen early in the XBox One generation (given how timelines work, this means it actually stopped about 3 years earlier) was that they stopped making third party exclusivity deals, because "data showed" that 360 users spent more time watching movies and playing third party games. 🤦

At the same time, though, the only one that relied heavily on first party games used to be Nintendo. Sony didn't get to where they got via first party games, they got there via third party exclusivity deals. It was not until Uncharted that they started creating a true first party identity. God of War 1 and 2 were great, but they were end-of-life PS2 games.

@themightyant

The point is Microsoft basically NEVER talked about the "console war" in fact they have done their best to distance themselves from it and point to other metrics like engagement instead. Now however they want to pretend they are a small belittled startup fighting against the big monopolistic bad. Ha!

Well, they stopped talking about the console wars on the XBO generation, because they didn't see any further chance of staying competitive in console warfare. They had to seek a different business model (simply gaming, across PC, Console,
Cloud and eventually mobile.)

As for the "pretend they are small belittled startup", well, that is also extremely hyperbolic. Claiming to be in last place is not claiming they are a small startup, its stating a fact. MS is not claiming they are not profitable in console gaming. That fact is never going to help them with investors or market growth, but it is a fact that will help them during a legal case that is focused around consoles.

But that doesn't mean there aren't many others from Sony's perspective.

Sony's concerns continue to be exclusively CoD, not it's exclusivity perhaps, but "parity", marketing rights, the mere thought that someone will prefer to play it on Xbox due to GP or what not. Sony's obsession with CoD and nothing but CoD, IMO, is extremely frustrating from a gamers perspective. How can we blame ABK themselves for over-focusing on CoD when Sony is obviously equally hyper focused on just that?

Edit:

As for X360 as I said above they marginally came third in console sales but easily beat Sony in almost every other metric. I wouldn't say they 'Lost' that gen.

Agree. In fact, by the end of the generation XBox still had more software units sold than PS3, and that's where the actual money is. I would say that points at the 360 winning that generation. And when you look at individual markets, the 360 was significantly ahead of the PS3 in the American regions, making claims of anyone winning or losing a generation weird.

At the end it’s only PlayStation that suffers the impact of that. As it stands, Apple has for years shared top secret information with Samsung to have them fab their chips, despite them being a direct competitor.

You do this with contracts that forbid division sharing trade secrets with the remainder of the company. If they refuse to do similar things, again, it’s Sonys fault and proves it’s Sony that can’t be trusted.

Curious: if the game comes out and the 30fps turns out to not actually be “smooth” with plenty of dips, would anyone defending it with “so long it’s locked 30fps” actually call them out, or just continue to say “well, so long the universes is huge!”?

@Wheatly

I'm sorted to October 2025 at this point but Xbox aren't in a strong enough position to be pulling out price increases.

This sentiment has been expressed through the comment section so far, but I have a counter argument to this: Xbox are not in a strong enough position to have volume of sold software make up for the losses they are facing in the hardware sales. Despite higher volume, Sony was not able to find that sustainable almost a year ago.

@SplooshDmg

But I think this seriously paints an ill picture for a Pro console.

I was thinking about this too. If they are doing this now, there is no chance they are anywhere near close enough to introduce a slim series x at lower cost, so a "Pro" console would likely be an extremely high cost premium product.

@NEStalgia

This also means PS5 will finally rise in price in the US since they only kept it static because of MS pricing.

Maybe, maybe not. MS is a US based company, they will always prefer to use the US dollar as their baseline currency. Earning money overseas has costs, currency values fluctuates, and bringing money earned overseas comes at high tax penalties.

Not sure what Sony considers their primary bank account these days, but MS will likely continue financing with the USD as their base, and be less likely to want to increase the price in this region. Of course, that can always change, but doubt Sony will want to boost the price here when Xbox is more competitive and less encumbered by the local currency.

Then again, I was entirely wrong about the game pass price increase strategy (canceling $10 tiers and go Ultimate exclusively) so don't listen much to my ramblings.

@BANJO

I'm subscribed up to December 2025 so I'm good for a while yet but didn't Microsoft recently just say they wouldn't increase Gamepass prices as they didn't want to lose momentum

Too lazy to look it up but I bet if we hunt down the quote its full of qualifiers like "at this moment" or "right now".

@PsBoxSwitchOwner

Problem is you are now talking £150+ for a yearly sub, for casuals that’s quite the premium now. (Less likely to know about stacking) on top of all other increases in tv subs and so on, it gets expensive.

There is a reason they sell it only on a monthly sub format, they don't want anyone thinking about the total yearly costs. $120 a year also sounds expensive to anyone.

Edit: I think the plan is still at a point that simply 3 full priced day one games a year make one break even. Might need to play more indies to make it worth it. And going month to month also allows to unsub as soon as you are done a game you wanted to play and only resub whenever something worth-while gets added.

@Titntin

Weird timing, but I guess they are riding the wave of positivity after the show.

I keep repeating myself, I'm not a fan of this move, BUT this is the perfect timing if they are going to do this. They would look very very bad if they increased the price after they are given a green light to move forward with the merger, something that could happen as early as tomorrow if the temporary injunction is denied.

Hell, increasing the price after the merger would had likely resulted in anti-competitive inquiries on most major regions, even if they only did so to match PS pricing.

@gollumb82

While definitely a move with the famed 'bad optics' I have to say I haven't seen people react so violently when cars (a standard commodity these days) have become absurdly expensive. Nobody saying they will just walk lol. So once some people overreact it will be business as usual I guess.

For better or worse, Sony proved increasing prices on games does not hurt their revenue. Any loss in sales results in a net gain thanks to the raise (and they did show fewer software sales in their reports.)

They also didn't seem to face any mainstream backlash at all over their hardware price hike. I honestly dont expect this to change much the minds of anyone wanting an xbox, and anyone that didn't want one already is not going to be persuaded by lower prices, they are going to be persuaded by more first party games and exclusives.

I'm not a fan, but this is likely going to be just a long comment section in various news sites and nothing else. Sony already cleared the way for Xbox to get away with this.

@UltimateOtaku91

This will be fine for the die hard fans but not the casuals,

I feel the opposite. This is more likely to have hardcore gamers (that often still buy the games after a while when the prices go down, or because they really want to own x game) are way more likely to cancel.

A casual user that does not spend time in forums wont likely mind a 1 or 2 dollar increase in their monthly statement so long the kids got games to play without having to buy them new games all the time or renting games every week (if that is still a thing.)

@FraserG for the benefit of audiences that might not be familiar with regional prices, can the article be updated to show the previous prices of Series X in the regions that got the price increase?

On the topic:
I got to admit I am a bit surprised, but only a bit. I stated plenty of times that I expected a price increase not to occur until they simply first killed off the platform specific tiers, forcing everyone into the GP Ultimate tier.

That said, always believed that should they increase the price, it would be in this vein: a dollar or two increase, not the $5 increase that everyone fear-mongered.

The deal is still great, Ultimate goes up by about $24 US a year, GP regular goes up by $12 US a year. Not a bank-breaking amount by any means, but I'll be way more likely to pursue seasonal sales in the future instead of keeping my account on auto-renew.