@ jjb1981 Sony is the one that is trying to force us to buy 70 dollar games so they can get their 30 percent they are worse than Apple now they need to be smacked with a fat EU fine as well.
Microsoft is the only company with the capital to build it's own IP 1000x over yet we see them trying to buy other studios and claim them for their own. Then they tell Sony to go innovate.
LordoftheCritics - Your example is nothing like the situation, here. It's a laughable example, at best.
Your example states a company buying ALL of the competition, then forcing an agenda. All that is happening here, is like Facebook buying Twitter. There are still multiple other competitive social media apps out there. It's the same here with MS. MS wants one company.. Acti-Blizz. MS isn't buying Sony and Nintendo. We still have Ubisoft, Sony, EA, TakeTwo, Nintendo, etc.
MS buying out COD, has EA play on gamepass, has Halo
Do you not see the monopoly? They are locking down all the multiplayer, popular live service games etc Diablo, Wow, Overwatch etc for a cloud/gaas future.
There is so much to it that any mildly sane person can dig up from this.
That example I gave is the same. Its different industry but finality is control of reality whether news, social media, gaming habits, purchasing habits. Monopoly is market control and reality control.
Lordofthecritics - It's no where near the same; that's an asinine thought process. MS is nowhere near a monopoly. Sony has been far closer, with the PS2 and its sales numbers, than any other company - or system.
They may have some games locked up but it doesn't prevent people leaving, forming new companies and creating something similar for PlayStation. Sony owns market share in almost every major gaming country in the world, except maybe the United States.
Regardless, there are hundred of games out and thousands of ideas and IPs. Sony just needs to reinvent or release something like SOCOM to compete. It's kinda on them to step up and create competition, now, against COD.
Buying every social media app and forcing one perspective =/= MS buying one, or even a few, gaming companies. Still so many options out there.
The scumminess of Sony and their hypocrisy? Their self-determination to be unable to compete with COD by abandoning all FPS development? Their preaching of how "all gamers" will be hurt by the deal while buying exclusivity not just to entire games (as is common practice) but to downloadable/preorder content on games available to all platforms?
They've got COD content exclusivity, preorder content for Hogwarts Legacy, access to betas early. MS honored the Bethesda contracts. MS is stating to honor the COD contracts.
Activision has tons of IP but Sony is going down this path not because of those. Not because of King or Blizzard. It all comes down to an individual IP that Sony chose to not compete against, an IP that routinely gets railed on here because it's emblematic of Activision choosing to neglect almost all of their other properties.
Hopefully people will be informed but opening a comment box just opens the box, it does nothing to get people to think objectively about the facts involved.
What kills me here is people bring up console content exclusives when MS has done the exact same thing. Hell, for every time exclusive Sony has had, Microsoft has had the same.
And I'm sorry, time content deals or time exclusives DO NOT compare to having and entire giant company bought out (which is permanent).
Why people act as those a trillion dollar company is somehow this innocent being "bullied" by a company 1/10th their value is beyond me.
Like for example, people bring up SF V being playstation exclusive. Well, I can easily bring up Splinter Cell Conviction being xbox exclusive. Deathloop being a timed exclusive for Sony. But the same thing happened with Rise of the Tomb Raider with Xbox.
My point is these practices have gone on long before either Sony or MS ever got into gaming. And they BOTH partake in them. But for some reason SOME (not all) of the people here seem to act like Microsoft hasn't done the same as anyone else.
They took a page from Sony's playbook. Sony has been making exclusive deals since the PS1 days before MS introducing the Xbox brand to the console market so it's hilarious to see them crying about this deal when they were the biggest bullies in town back in the day and didn't seem to mind when the PS2 was the closest we ever got to a monopoly in this industry considering that it sold 3x the amount of all consoles of their competion combined: Dreamcast, Gamecube and Xbox.
Tacoboto almost had a fair point until he neglected to throw any shade at Microsoft who not only run their FPS shooter to the ground but chose to attempt to buy the biggest one out there rather than fix or reinvest any money into their IP.
Both Microsoft and Sony neglected the FPS market and chose to let the gold goose COD go unchallenged yet only one of them, and the one who could build studio after studio with their own funds might I add, has chosen to buy the golden goose instead.
I swear Charlie and the chocolate factory covered this. I WANT IT NOW.
It was acclaimed enough at launch for another publisher to directly cite it as a reason their FPS underperformed. And acclaimed enough to receive numerous awards, both from critics and fans.
"rather than fix or reinvest any money into their IP"
Halo MCC not only got fixed, it got enhanced and continues receiving new content, now with mod support. Infinite received Halo's longest dev cycle. The Winter Update is two weeks away and Forge will finally be here. Late, and upsetting with split screen co-op cancelation, but not abandoned left broken.
Forza Motorsport - another franchise receiving its longest dev cycle. The Coalition and Gears another. The individual studios purchased aren't being forced to churn out filler years after purchase.
To suggest MS has neglected FPS games, especially after having purchased Bethesda and their gluttony of FPS IP, is absolutely absurd.
Hey for once ppl can be heard on the subject :)
For once ppl be informed about this deal and it's scummy aspects involved.