Skewed and Reviewed have posted a fun opinion piece that compares the console battle between Sony and Microsoft to the Coke vs Pepsi Cola Wars. The article cites how both companies have passionate fans and will throw huge amounts of money into ad campaigns to try to win over undecided consumers.
A new patent recently published by Sony wants to gather biometric data of gamers to track whether one is being harassed using AI tools.
I hope this is one of those patents that never comes to fruition.
I already dislike the fact you can pay a significant amount for a online service buy associated games and content on said service and get banned from that service over potentially a misunderstanding the bans are already handed out for flimsy reasons
I'd rather see money invested in a ban that simply removes the offensive players ability to communicate with unknown players allow them to continue party chats with friends but not with Joe blow on cod.
Agreed. Blizzard recently banned a college Overwatch 2 player who's dependent for saying "shit." Pretty harsh.
Take my social security and bank account numbers too! Here’s a picture of my wife and our address.
At this rate I feel Sony will eventually sell a room to play games in it where they can monitor your every breath
After laying off almost 2,000 people, Xbox finds itself in a position at odds with the community-first image it has cultivated for itself.
lol I’m not a big MS gamer but Sony and a number of others have laid off ton of people as well. Where are the ridiculous articles about them not being your friend? Gaming news is such a joke and these sites wonder why they have to beg for money/patreons or flood with 5x more ads.
I think the sentiment is corporations are there to make money they are not out friends that are harsh and cutthroat when lt comes to the bottom line so why do we proclaim our love for any gaming company from the rooftops when they wouldn't care about us unless we are buying the next thing.
We need to beore objective with how we view these "teams"
This is the absolute truth. The only part of you these companies, ALL companies, want to be friends with is your bank account. They don't care what they have to say, who's job they have to cut, or what shady underhandedness they must engage in. Bottom line is all that matters.
Because people unfortunately make these companies and products part of their own persona, so when they are scrutinized, they see it as an attack on themselves. There is some neuropsychological research around this phenomenon, but it basically has the same effect as religion. It helps foster a sense of community that humans need to feel comfortable. So that is not happening unless we have a sudden surge of people actually understanding how they work and taking control of themselves.
While it's true Sony isn't a friend either, let's not pretend that they're even in the same ballpark as MS's anti consumer practices. Sony is not a friend but atleast they're not an enemy like MS.
@twopickles, were you not paying attention? Sony was heavily criticized when they laid off people weeks ago, more than Microsoft did with their massive abk layoffs.
That’s Whataboutism. Sony and other game companies didn’t pay more than $80B to buy up publishers. Microsoft said in court that it wasn’t going to have redundancies and fire people. Microsoft told Xbox owners that they would have a AAA on GamePass each quarter. But here we are with Microsoft Game Studios shrinking. Consolidation doesn’t benefit the consumer, and no company has consolidated more than Microsoft.
Exactly. They love their SonyToo instead of looking at everything in its totality. You spend $80B to buy up so many pubs/devs, you damn well should have something to show for it.
That said, this article is old and someone is clearly looking for clicks!
I’m glad you see the thru the reality distortion field so many on this site don’t. My brother-in-law was just let go from PlayStation (here in PV/LA) literally just weeks ago after taking the job just 2 months before. He quite his previous job that was doing just fine to work for Sony.
ok here is a reality check. Tech companies have been firing thousands of employees the last couple of years.
I find it odd that the percentage of employees sacked from MS
QUOTE
"Microsoft announced approximately 1,900 job cuts across its gaming division, including Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox. 8.6% of its colossal 22,000-strong global workforce. "
is worth writing an article condemning the company, when Sony Interactive fired 8% of its workforce (900 people approximately).
https://news.crunchbase.com...
Is the writer concerned about the percentage of the workforce fired or the number of employees?
Lets not forget that Unity laid off 25 percent of its workforce (1800 people) and Discord laid off 17 percent of its employees.
You also have to take into account the AI issue reported in the article. MS is heavily invested in A.I. They have invested in Open A.I (chatgpt 4+Dalle 3), in Abu Dhabi’s G42 and in French AI company Mistral.
These LLMs have already replaced thousands of jobs as A.I usage becomes more common
https://www.cbsnews.com/new...
https://www.theverge.com/20...
https://tech.co/news/compan...
This is the new reality. Even nvidia CEO said that games will fully A.I generated.
https://www.pcgamer.com/sof...
Nevertheless, no company should be ever viewed as "your friend". MS had numerous anti consumer practices in place and the same is true for Sony (not only in video game space) and Nintendo (60$ dollar games without permanent discounts, remasters of 10 year old game with full price, no console price cuts, expensive joy cons which are prone to drift, to name but a few).
As part of its plans to cut 1,900 jobs, Microsoft has reportedly shut down operations at Bethesda France, letting go roughly 15 people
They can form a company if they want, they are just as jobless as if "Microsoft had left them as 3rd party".
"MIcrosoft leaves Bethesda do what they know how to do best" ... close! Oh the irony ....
(Citation from a week old article)
I think Microsoft and other game publishers are letting people go because they think ai will replace them. Doesn’t matter how much profit they make. They were always going to be let go.
Bethesda France was made up of roughly 15 people... they couldn't of being doing much
Bethesda France mainly did publishing and marketing within the region
that's a shame for you to say that, i'm sure Elite loves hearing what you just said.
Bethesda France focused on publishing and marketing in the region. And 15 people lost their jobs as part of the closure.
I wonder if this is part of Microsoft's strategy to abandoned physical media or possibly gamepass advertising makes their roles redundant you don't need to market a game as hard when the majority of players get the game as part of a sub which already promoted upcoming games
It's France too, there's a high likelihood only 1-2 people on the team even had an Xbox.
Tbh Microsoft I think Bethesda being 3rd party same with Activision would probably more competitive than thus scenario imo
I think it would have been better for all parties really especially gamers
The recently purchased Activision French offices might take over all the licensing and marketing for Microsoft in France from now on.
good analogy.
and coca cola destroys pepsi.
@snookies12, im a coca cola fan myself.
Thank you. It came to me earlier this morning. I used to ask why do Coke and Pepsi spend so much on ads especially during the Super Bowl. People prefer one to the other and no matter how much they spend that is not going to change the status quo. I know the goal is to try to get a few of the other sides supporters to try your new stuff and so on. But Xbox fans are not going to jump on the PS 4 bandwagon and vice versa regardless of how much money they spend. It is money spent to give the impression of dominance and to gather in the undecided parties. But in the end, Xbox fans will get the new Xbox and Playstation fans will get the PS 4 regardless of how much money they both spend.
Which makes me wonder if either of them is going to set themselves up for a New Coke failure where they change what worked for them so much that the fans revolt and they have to go back to the way things were.
I still think Classic Coke was the plan all along as they went from New Coke to Classic Coke in a few weeks. It did not take them long at all to have the new name, look, and product in the store which I believe indicates that they had it stockpiled and just moved it up when the reaction to New Coke was so bad.
Pepsi and microsoft for me hate coke.
Screw them all. I like Cheerwine :D