Microsoft Consoles and Updates

[DANGERMAN]

Playstation

Steam

Nintendo

Ouya

Xbox

Epic

GoG

Game.com

GP32

N-Gage

Apple Pippen

...

...

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Stadia

 

[Nag]

Dunno, I do know I've seen both Sony and Tencent named bigger than Microsoft in terms of gaming so maybe they're just talking publishing terms?

[Maf]

I think he’s just talking about platform market leaders

 

I could see 

 

Apple

Playstation

Steam

Nintendo

Xbox

[DisturbedSwan]

To be honest, I think he's talking a load of bollocks and trying to downplay Microsoft's position in the market so the acquisition looks more attractive to the anti-competition authorities. 

 

How can you say you want competition and buy a huge 3P publisher, thereby eliminating an element of competition in the overall industry? Nonsense.

 

I was going to post this last night but there's also another investigation ongoing in the UK as to the oligopoly of cloud services in the UK split between just three companies (#1 Amazon - AWS, #2 Microsoft and #3 Google) which coincides with the CMA's reservations over Microsoft's market share in the cloud market in the UK.

 

 

[Nag]

5 hours ago, DisturbedSwan said:

How can you say you want competition and buy a huge 3P publisher, thereby eliminating an element of competition in the overall industry? Nonsense.

 

Shaking up the status quo could be seen as creating competition surely... Sony don't have a right to have their first place protected somehow. 

[one-armed dwarf]

What will probably happen out of this thing is the deal still goes ahead but MS are asked to provide a commitment to keeping Call of Duty available to competitors for a long period.

 

I guess that CoD is like Fifa in that the majority of people who play it aren't particularly curious about alternatives and will just buy whatever has that brand. Titanfall II was much better than CoD but never caught on even when CoD was in a downward spiral for a while.

 

Sony aren't first place either I thought, they are second behind Nintendo. The PS5 is doing poorly in Japan. Or I'm wrong I dunno

[DisturbedSwan]

6 minutes ago, Nag said:

 

Shaking up the status quo could be seen as creating competition surely... Sony don't have a right to have their first place protected somehow. 

 

Why couldn't they do that by making exclusive marketing deals, getting 3P exclusives etc. like Nintendo and Sony do then? Why do they need to spend $80 billion on one of the biggest 3P publishers, it's obliterating the competition not creating it. 

 

I get they feel they need to shake the status quo to reach the top and they obviously thought they weren't going to get there by taking steps like I mentioned above, but I just think it's such a big, drastic move, buying such a large 3P publisher and a huge player in the industry as a whole. 

 

As I've said before, what's to stop them buying all the Western Publishers and leaving Sony solely with their 1P studios and some JP 3P Publishers. It sets a bad precedent for the way the industry could go is my point. 

 

Of course Sony have no right to first place (are they in first place? Nintendo?) but they've earnt their right to be there over the years, they've never torpedoed the competition and haven't bought a Publisher since 1993 and that was nowhere near the scale or influence of a Publisher as big as ABK. 

 

Again, this isn't a fanboy Xbox v PlayStation thing, this is something that I think will be worse for the industry and it's future overall, no matter what your favourite console/system is and where you game. I see this as a big L for everybody in eliminating one of the major Publishers, I know many here don't care about their games (myself included) but CoD is one of the biggest franchises in the world, their IP back catalogue is vast, I feel this combined with MS' oligopoly of Cloud services will harm competition ultimately.

[Nag]

1 hour ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Sony aren't first place either I thought

 

We had this last night...😂... depending on the criteria you search for you'll get massively different lists, pretty much none of them have Microsoft in the top position.

 

@DisturbedSwan tbf I'm starting to see this as absolutely no different to some uber rich football club going on a massive spending spree and buying up a boatload of top flight players, sure they could incorporate some amazing training regime and create those players but that would take years to come to fruition so why bother when you have the funds to splurge... 

 

45 minutes ago, DisturbedSwan said:

Of course Sony have no right to first place (are they in first place? Nintendo?) but they've earnt their right to be there over the years, they've never torpedoed the competition and haven't bought a Publisher since 1993 and that was nowhere near the scale or influence of a Publisher as big as ABK. 

 

 

Sega got torpedoed pretty hard... and if they had the money I'm sure they'd be doing all they could to do the same to Microsoft and Nintendo.

[Maf]

Playstation are definitely bigger than Nintendo right? They have the PS4 and PS5 vs the Switch and have outsold it. 

I would have thought market share is who has sold the most units/who has the most users. Which is why I said Apple because technically every iPhone is a unit

 

Quick Google says Xbox has only sold 50 million units compared to PS and Nintendo who are over a 100 million. So it’s been quite the washing for Xbox. 
 

Which explains the drastic moves really. They’re so far behind the competition they’re trying to buy their way back in to it

 

It would be better if they got back in by being serious competition by having incredible franchises, exclusives and features. But they can’t seem to get it together. So they’re using they’re other key strength: cash. 
 

Which I said before is harder to respect because it’s like a little rich kid using their parents money to be successful. 
 

But it creates the turbulence and I’m in to it. I like seeing Sony freak the fuck out, it’s entertaining in and of itself 
 

Of course if @DisturbedSwan saying “what’s to stop them buying all the western publishers” 🤔 well then that would be a monopoly. But owning CoD is not what this is. It’s just the biggest one. 

 

You can own the biggest game, hurt your competition a fuck tonne, and still not have a monopoly on all of video games. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. 

[DisturbedSwan]

45 minutes ago, Nag said:

 

We had this last night...😂... depending on the criteria you search for you'll get massively different lists, pretty much none of them have Microsoft in the top position.

 

@DisturbedSwan tbf I'm starting to see this as absolutely no different to some uber rich football club going on a massive spending spree and buying up a boatload of top flight players, sure they could incorporate some amazing training regime and create those players but that would take years to come to fruition so why bother when you have the funds to splurge... 

 

 

Sega got torpedoed pretty hard... and if they had the money I'm sure they'd be doing all they could to do the same to Microsoft and Nintendo.

 

I do get the analogy and I'd say to a degree you're right in that respect, Microsoft are like the Man City of the Games Industry, maybe the Man City of 2008 or so when they'd just been bought out and were trying to build out of being a midtable side to a top-table side more specifically. 

 

I would probably argue Sega got torpedoed more from their own stupidity than anything else to be honest but I'm sure Sony arriving on the scene and the N64 being a moderate success at the time didn't help matters either.

 

6 minutes ago, Maf said:

Playstation are definitely bigger than Nintendo right? They have the PS4 and PS5 vs the Switch and have outsold it. 

I would have thought market share is who has sold the most units. Which is why I said Apple because technically every iPhone is a unit

 

Quick Google says Xbox has only sold 50 million units compared to PS and Nintendo who are over a 100 million. So it’s been quite the washing for Xbox. 
 

Which explains the drastic moves really. They’re so far behind the competition they’re trying to buy their way back in to it

 

It would be better if they got back in by being serious competition by having incredible franchises, exclusives and features. But they can’t seem to get it together. So they’re using they’re other key strength: cash. 
 

Which I said before is harder to respect because it’s like a little rich kid using their parents money to be successful. 
 

But it creates the turbulence and I’m in to it. I like seeing Sony freak the fuck out, it’s entertaining in and of itself 
 

Of course if @DisturbedSwan saying “what’s to stop them buying all the western publishers” 🤔 well then that would be a monopoly. But owning CoD is not what this is. It’s just the biggest one. 

 

You can own the biggest game, hurt your competition a fuck tonne, and still not have a monopoly on all of video games. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. 

 

I'd have to go and look for a load of stats, so I'm going to say I'm not sure. PS may be #1 in terms of revenue, either them or Tencent, but then they're behind Nintendo in other aspects, in terms of the current gen the Switch is still selling better than the competition so I'd say they're the market leader at this time. I think PS4 sales at this point are somewhat irrelevant as they've stopped even giving out the sales figures.

 

I definitely get where you're coming from, but Microsoft as a company are anything but underdogs and this gen was always going to be a transition back to goodness or greatness due to the abysmal launch of the XB1. In terms of the gaming industry and sales figures they're likely well behind Sony and Nintendo, similarly it's probably safe to say 3P games don't sell as well on XB systems as rivals. 

 

I get for the drama side of things and shaking the industry up it may be entertaining, but it's ultimately the consumer that gets harmed in the end with a lack of choice.

 

It's not just about owning CoD, it's about owning King (one of the biggest mobile players), having a further stake in the cloud market, having a huge wealth of IP to choose from and a few new development studios. As mentioned previously they already have an oligopoly in the cloud space in the UK (likely in the US too) which is also what the anti-competition watchdogs will be looking out. 

 

These bodies aren't necessarily looking for monopolies, they are looking at takeovers that are anti-competitive.

[Maf]

I had to look up the difference between a monopoly and anti competitive because I thought it was all the same thing. Like being anti competitive lead to a monopoly on a market so I was using it interchangeably. My understanding has increased by a tiny bit more.

 

But ok speaking about the specific definition of stopping other companies from having the chance to succeed, CoD isn’t this great power balancer between the 2 companies. It already sells more on PS and like said previously Nintendo washed Xbox without it. So in the subject of CoD and it’s ability to stop companies being competitive or stifling others in the console space, I just don’t think it is that. It is a huge loss for PS but it isn’t going to destroy them. 

 

In terms of King. I don’t really know. The mobile market is so different to the console market and out of what I know or read about. But it doesn’t read like the affects on the mobile market and app stores is what’s being investigated. It reads like it’s just console and cloud services. 
 

Which is a thing I know even less about. No one likes cloud gaming, right? PlayStation don’t even do it? So I dunno. If this relates more to that other story you posted about MS/Amazon/Google etc and this deal contributes towards that then that’s a thing I will need to learn more about and it could change my opinion.

 

But focusing just on consoles and the affect this deal has there. I think it fucks PS and will annoy a lot of CoD fans (in 3 years when they find out that year’s version won’t be on PlayStation) but I still don’t think it’s anti competitive. It just buys Xbox back in to being a real competitor. 

[one-armed dwarf]

It's an interesting point when you look at the stack MS has here. Azure cloud, hardware (PC and Xbox), and supply (ABK). It's a stack which offers lots of ways to control the mainstream user's 'diet' of games. Well tbh I don't know what azure does for games exactly, I guess it gives them an advantage in multiplayer stuff.

 

One prediction I have is we are going to see much more flavours of gamepass. You'll have a battlenet addon which will subsidise your WoW account and battle pass or whatever it is called for Call of Duty. Where the frog could start to get boiled here is if gamepass becomes a strongly favoured option WRT playing call of duty at all. It can even be something as simple as 'play it first on gamepass'. I think people really underestimate the impact of things like that if it leads to a slow trickle of users migrating to xbox which could be compounded by a lack of crossplay. Suddenly PS is a stunted platform for people who play this particular game.

 

You also have another thing I saw mentioned somewhere, now that a major third party competitor has been taken off the board it provides even less incentive for other major publishers to do something ambitious in that space, eg EA and Ubisoft. People already have less to choose between so why even bother and your games are already on all platforms

 

Again this is all supposed on CoD actually being this massive factor. But if it is then MS are in the position to do whatever they want to make their platform the one people migrate to without really making the market a more interesting space at all. Only real win is CoD being free on gamepass maybe, if that's something that you really care about.

 

The point again is the leverage a company gets by having control over multiple stages of production, and what that means for a huge IP like CoD. If CoD matters at all in the first place.

[Maf]

8 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

One prediction I have is we are going to see much more flavours of gamepass. You'll have a battlenet addon which will subsidise your WoW account and battle pass or whatever it is called for Call of Duty. Where the frog could start to get boiled here is if gamepass becomes a strongly favoured option WRT playing call of duty at all. It can even be something as simple as 'play it first on gamepass'. I think people really underestimate the impact of things like that if it leads to a slow trickle of users migrating to xbox which could be compounded by a lack of crossplay. Suddenly PS is a stunted platform for people who play this particular game.

 

This is the entire thing everyone anticipates? Even if you have CoD on PS, if you can play it for ‘free’ on Xbox that’s where people will go. Especially if like a large chunk of gamers have a PlayStation and a PC then get in on PC Gamepass that’s where the player base will go. You don’t even need to buy an Xbox. 

 

It will take time for people to move over but that’s the whole bet. Not sure why people would be underestimating that. Playstation sure as fuck ain’t underestimating that lol. 
 

It’s not just a stunted platform it becomes no platform for this game. But does it stunt the platform as whole? I don’t think so, but it does makes their job of selling PlayStations so much harder. Which is why I think it’s really interesting because what will Playstation do to stop their CoD fans going away? My hope is make amazing games whether on their own or with partners. 
 

19 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

You also have another thing I saw mentioned somewhere, now that a major third party competitor has been taken off the board it provides even less incentive for other major publishers to do something ambitious in that space, eg EA and Ubisoft. People already have less to choose between so why even bother and your games are already on all platforms

I think that would be true if CoD had any kind of rival. Like if you have Coke and Pepsi and Coke goes away than Pepsi just soaks up everything else without having to do anything. But if you have Coke and Pepsi go away then there’s this huge gap in the market for loads of money to be made. There was already that article from the EA boss talking about this as an opportunity. All of the sudden there’s all this CoD money on Playstation but no more CoD to get it. So other companies I think would definitely capitalise on that and end up competing for the next game in that space. 

[one-armed dwarf]

8 minutes ago, Maf said:

Especially if like a large chunk of gamers have a PlayStation and a PC then get in on PC Gamepass that’s where the player base will go.

Nah, gamepass on PC isn't that big. The client is too buggy and fails to delete games too often. They have to fix that and wait for the negative impression to wear off first.

 

8 minutes ago, Maf said:

It’s not just a stunted platform it becomes no platform for this game. But does it stunt the platform as whole? I don’t think so, but it does makes their job of selling PlayStations so much harder. Which is why I think it’s really interesting because what will Playstation do to stop their CoD fans going away? My hope is make amazing games whether on their own or with partners. 

 

They are not going to make a 'CoD killer shooter' cause we already have gotten FPS games that are demonstrably better than CoD which failed to make a dent. They will go in the other direction and become a platform for people who don't really care about shooters, that's a more likely outcome. 

 

They will not be able to stop people leaving PS for the CoD-box, it ain't possible. I think if CoD is a big enough deal to have a big impact it just means that Sony will end up settling for being a smaller competitor in the market, cause the risk in undertaking these massive projects to grab that momentum back will not be satisfiable to their decision makers. Especially as we head into a painful recession. 

 

Sony will become more risk averse and boring, or less AAA-focused at the very least

[Maf]

I’ve had no problem with Gamepass on PC. I had one problem with the linked EA service where Crysis wasn’t playable but I’ve never had another issue so I dunno. I think based purely on value people will play on PC over Playstation if it saves them £60.
 

Make amazing games I didn’t mean to make another shooter. I agree CoD can’t be replicated even when there are better military shooters/shooters period. But if it means they have to explore more avenues for different games then great. I think trends have moved away from FPS games anyway. There are the big players like CoD, Apex, Rainbow Six and Destiny (kind of). All games that have been innovative in the genre in their own way and hold their own sub genre of shooter. But unless there’s a game with actually something new to do they’re too hard to challenge and that’s why FPS games have really slowed down. 
 

It’s all fucking Souls games now. 

 

See you could be right about the risk averse thing but I would bet the other way. Based on nothing but what I would like to see tbh. But I think Playstation would start branching out more and creating a new identity for itself. Maybe bringing more Japanese talent back in to first party instead of being all western studios. I think they’d do new things and potentially start making really interesting games. 

[one-armed dwarf]

wrt the gamepass thing, try to check how much storage you have on a drive and delete a bunch of games and check again to see if that space got reclaimed. Or update a bunch of games

 

based on this thread these issues still occur, no matter how good a deal gamepass might be I do enough debugging in my day job to be deeply allergic to spending a second doing it in my free time. 'I fixed the issue with a powershell script', says somebody in this thread, no thanks 🤮

https://www.resetera.com/threads/gamepass-pc-is-a-ticking-time-bomb-that-results-in-permanently-lost-hdd-ssd-space-unless-you-nuke-windows.340696/page-35

 

As for making japanese games I get the sense sony are pivoted more towards the west right now as the ps5 isn't doing that well in Japan, partly due to availability I guess but handhelds seem more popular there.

 

[HandsomeDead]

I'm wondering if this hypothetical CoD fan that doesn't play much else and can be swayed to wherever CoD is are they even much of a loss to the PS platform.  I guess if they spend a lot on microtransactions too they could be but I dunno.  If they don't buy much else it's not much of a loss.

 

I think I agree that maybe the threat is more in having Azure Cloud and how it intersects with sections of MS with and outside of Xbox, but then this isn't really a threat to PlayStation as much in the console space so it's weird that they are the one fighting the most and not Amazon or Google.  I'm not saying it won't be a hit and they'll have to restrategise but it can be overcome.  I know it's hard to come up with a straight replacement especially like that time when Sony was telling everyone, or at least encouraging everyone to say that Killzone was the "Halo Killer" which proves you can't just say something over and over and hope it to be true.  But they have that TLoU Factions game, or whatever title they settle on and it may just be a case of embracing another direction and setting a new standard.  I think mainstream games have been getting a little more diverse in the last generation and there is a good timeline where the loss of a reliance on CoD could be a good thing, but maybe I'm just being glass half full about it.

[one-armed dwarf]

imo AAA is headed towards a kind of brinksmanship with budgets at this point anyway. My hot take is that almost all of sony's AAA exclusives are boring even now cause they're so expensive to make and so focus tested in every aspect (I happen to fall into the right focus group with Ragnarok tho I guess) that they rarely surprise and are mostly motion capture tech showcases now

 

It's all about the middle tier game now I think, some of the most interesting games have been kickstarter backed or cheaper titles imo. You wouldn't see a AAA do something like Subnautica. I guess these games won't be threatened whatever happens

[DANGERMAN]

On 23/09/2022 at 16:00, Nag said:

 

 if they had the money I'm sure they'd be doing all they could to do the same to Microsoft and Nintendo.

I'm late to this as I've been away, apologies if I'm repeating something that's been said, but isn't this the entire point of anti-competition laws? To stop the biggest company just buying up everything and ending competition and consumer choice

[DisturbedSwan]

On 23/09/2022 at 20:41, HandsomeDead said:

I'm wondering if this hypothetical CoD fan that doesn't play much else and can be swayed to wherever CoD is are they even much of a loss to the PS platform.  I guess if they spend a lot on microtransactions too they could be but I dunno.  If they don't buy much else it's not much of a loss.

 

I don't think it's hypothetical, I know it's anecdotal but I personally know folks who have current gen systems just to play CoD Warzone and FIFA. One has a Series X and another has a PS5. They exist, and exist in their droves.

 

It's a huge loss in revenue to PS because of the amount Warzone players spend on PSN through Microtransactions, it's one of their biggest digital earners along with Fortnite.

 

On 23/09/2022 at 22:11, one-armed dwarf said:

imo AAA is headed towards a kind of brinksmanship with budgets at this point anyway. My hot take is that almost all of sony's AAA exclusives are boring even now cause they're so expensive to make and so focus tested in every aspect (I happen to fall into the right focus group with Ragnarok tho I guess) that they rarely surprise and are mostly motion capture tech showcases now

 

It's all about the middle tier game now I think, some of the most interesting games have been kickstarter backed or cheaper titles imo. You wouldn't see a AAA do something like Subnautica. I guess these games won't be threatened whatever happens

 

I can't really get this to be honest, I don't see why Sony's AAA is a dangerous policy in any way, if you meant brinkmanship in a way that they've kind of hit a glass ceiling than I somewhat agree with you, but I think their AAA titles (whilst most not appealing to you personally) are still selling very well, resonating well with reviewers and the general public. Their AAA output is why I got my PS5, I think they're peerless and unmatched in quality, as time goes on and other publishers either get bought by Microsoft or don't want to invest the tens of millions into making these titles they will become even more so.

 

Again, I take umbrage with the boring tag, they're personally what excites me the most every year, flagship titles that I look forward to the most and anecdotally I see many feel the same way still, they are PS' USP. I agree insofar as they might be a little more trite, more 'corporate' and less risk adverse going forward but Returnal has shown us they will still take risks in the space, just maybe not quite as many in the future.

 

The final paragraph, speak for yourself, I personally don't find many middle tier or smaller titles exciting, it's still all about the AAA flagship releases as I only get so much time to play stuff and I want to play those over a smaller title which are usually flawed in one way or another. I do agree insofar as that middle and smaller titles can be more innovative and riskier propositions though, they can be more experimental for sure, but that isn't always a positive thing for me, it usually means aesthetically pleasing but lacking in gameplay or vice versa.