Microsoft's Satya Nadella says the tech giant wants to create more competition among game publishers, with its proposed offer to buy Activision Blizzard.
You don't create competition by making a point of trying to buy up the biggest publishers. In fact, what that shows me is that you have to buy up the industry because you feel you can't compete.
They stay to type and former example, they'll buy a studio/publisher and let them stagnate till said studio/publisher either buy's themselves out or let MS shut their doors possibly dragging out the remains in a gimp suit - see Rare.
“Our entire goal is to bring more options for gamers to be able to play [on every platform] and for publishers to have more competition,” Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, told CNBC’s Tanvir Gill in an interview Thursday.
1. Destiny is still multiplatform 2. Sony doesn't say things like 'our entire goal is to bring more options for gamers to be able to play [on every platform]'.
@Gamer we were here questioning Sony too. Granted this Activision deal is 19x bigger than Bungie. NINETEEN TIMES. It's the biggest games deal ever by a lot. Anyway, Sony may have decided to buy Bungie as a defensive move so they can use Destiny as a bargaining chip. Remember the freak went through after the Activision announcement. Just speculating though...
@GamerRn the post of a desperate cretin clutching at straws, the article is obviously about PUBLISHERS yet you scrape the barrel with a studio acquisition, here's hoping that was just a brain spasm and you're ok now.
They just take people for fools, coming up with this bs, typical ms strategy lie, lie, lie
He should say straight we wanted to be more competitive against Sony so we acquired as many studios as we could to have competitive 1st party exclusive games hoping to sell more consoles, it's not a crime to improve your product...
Nadella isn't a gamer by any stretch the fact that he's involved definitely worries me he needs to leave it to the gaming guy's over at Xbox. I don't trust his involvement.
If sony were to allow gamepass on its platform I'm sure they would be happy to allow it. Microsoft is trying to force sonys hand by buying the biggest 3rd party publishers and starving them of content, it's their only move left.
They could also try making compelling games on a regular basis, like other platform owners.
That would require actual work, without shortcuts though, and isn't really in Microsoft's playbook.
Xbox has fumbled the ball so many times at this point, big daddy Microsoft just wants to buy the referee instead of honing the lad's skills or finding a more suitable pursuit.
Let's not think about cod for all of 2 mins they own the following and truste there's more in their back cat
Blur Caesar Crash Bandicoot Diablo DJ Hero Empire Earth Gabriel Knight Geometry Wars Guitar Hero Gun Hearthstone Heroes of the Storm Hexen Interstate ’76 King’s Quest Laura Bow Mysteries The Lost Vikings Overwatch Phantasmagoria Pitfall Police Quest Prototype Quest for Glory Singularity Skylanders Solider of Fortune Space Quest Spyro the Dragon StarCraft Tenchu (legacy games) TimeShift Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater True Crime World of Warcraft Zork
@Profchaos Wow! That list of Activision ips only tells me one thing... As a PS only gamer, I won't be missing out on anything(nothing on that list interest me) ! Including COD because I don't even play that.
@army crash and Spyro are famously associated with PlayStation and Tony hawk pro skater is a long standing fan favourite game I'd want to play those over cod
More drivel from the interview: “With gaming, for example, for us, it’s a streaming workload. It helps us build the right cloud infrastructure. Think about artificial intelligence, these AI-generated models, differently and how they can be used in both creation and testing of games,” said Nadella. You can pretty much tell this guy is just spewing buzz words at this point.
He's talking about building games faster and easier with the cloud and AI. Sony and Haven are working on something similar. It's not drivel, it's literally the future of game development. Faster and easier game development leads to shorter dev cycles and lower costs. Using AI for testing means better, more comprehensive QA, which should mean more polished games on release. These are all good things.
Oh yeah, and Microsoft can create games with those Ai models as well. Those are the benefits that Microsoft can bring to these studios. Power of the Cloud (sounds familiar) and AI models that build and test your games (for Halo, they called their AI models "offshore consultants"). Just a bunch of vaporware/slideware buzzwords that refer to a world that doesn't exist.
And to add to the Chopmeister above, we have reached a point in development where the technology far exceeds the talent required to use it. Hence why 30 years ago 2 guys could churn out a game in eight weeks and now it takes a team of 2000 five years.
AI and Cloud technology can hopefully help to reduce the gap a bit - allowing for some tasks to be created in hours or days that would take a team of humans months, bringing down both costs and development time.
If we don't have this, the entire industry could crash because only the likes of Apple, MS, Google, Meta and Amazon will be able to even afford to make a AAA game anymore. Nobody wants that future, even MS. And thus, this is the point being made. Setting a template for future development will aid everyone.
In that quote Mr. Nadela is addressing the things MS can uniquely bring to publishers and customers. All this aspirational talk is slideware "future". They have AI/ML tools in Azure just like AWS has. But they haven't made this slideware reality. Otherwise they'd be creating their own good games instead of, well, whatever it is they're doing now
Create your own games. Don't take games from others. Create. Something that you seem not able to do since the 360 days... Remember when gears was launched? In 2007! The hype. How amazing and ahead it was! Huge blockbuster
Competition isnt buying publishers.... Even if it's to get candy crash, of course.
I remember the time that the big three existed and was a healthy competition cause each one of them were offering unique IP game experiences and it was awesome to own all three game consoles, but now is only the Big one, Playstation only, the only console that is still managing to stay true to its roots and offering awesome game experiences, meanwhile Ninty and MS are only offering cheap gaming and the other the same old and cheap gaming as well with GP.
From time to time Nintendo does release noteworthy titles like recently with xenoblade chronicles 3 and Bayonetta. They also have the new Zelda out soon. Heck Nintendo has more games to look forward to than XBOX.
Well, he would hardly say the opposite while it's being probed by regulators.
That being said, acquisitions are a normal, and regular occurrence in this industry and have been for decades, and the industry still feels competitive today for the most part.
No difference between buying 2 big publishers and buying 20 smaller studios/publishers. All adds up to the same amount of studios/content at the end of the day.
Kk which company bought 20 studios in a 5 year span?! Or a publisher as big as Blizzard? Oh right no one. You're just talking out your behind at this point just like Nadella. That would be 2 big publishers in that span. There's not a single company out there that has purchased 2 publishers like MS is trying to
Most of the studios owned by Tencent, Microsoft, Sony, Embracer, EA etc are all the results of acquisitions.
Heck, Sony have acquired about 10 studios in the past 3 years, 9 of which were in the last ~12 months.
Acquisitions are a fine and healthy part of the industry.
I think it’s fine that MS are acquiring Activision in the same way that I think it’s fine that Sony acquired Bungie. Really the only company I’m against acquiring things is Tencent - but that’s more for political reasons than gaming/games industry reasons.
And let’s be honest, if they had the money, Sony would 100% be in the bidding for Activision.
You're actions are the opposite though dumba$$. So sick of PR bs trying to justify all this garbage going on, i miss what the game industry used to be. Yeah it was still cut throat but it was at least a lot more straightforward than this underhanded, constantly lying straight to your face industry we have today.
Yeah, but Microsoft understands that if gamers have choice, the great majority wont choose to play on Microsoft machines. They are last, millions and millions and millions away, aren't able to create blockbuster. Their market share its the smallest. They aren't growing, gp numbers already are declining....
The only path is to buy many publisher that have blockbuster games and to take them from the competition.
After activision/blizzard deal, I don't even give 6 month for another publisher to be in Microsoft hands..
Everyone was so pleased to see the back of Don Matrick that's Phil's had WAY too much slack from gamers.
He claims to be 'one of us' and maybe that's the problem. Stop playing games and start managing the production of them. In fact actually don't bother, it's too late for you, we need a fresh mind on this.
I never liked Phil from the start. He was there during the DRM fiasco, and is partially to blame for all the stupid decisions made by the Xbox division for well over a decade now.
I have to admit though, if you're Sony or Nintendo, Mattrick and Spencer have done a 'great job' secretly helping out.
Microsoft are the masters of misdirection through world play and consistent 24/7 PR. They are only matched by the most deception political figures. And they propagate their PR by having others repeat the same nonsense.
You don't create competition by making a point of trying to buy up the biggest publishers. In fact, what that shows me is that you have to buy up the industry because you feel you can't compete.
“Our entire goal is to bring more options for gamers to be able to play [on every platform] and for publishers to have more competition,” Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, told CNBC’s Tanvir Gill in an interview Thursday.
So why take it away from a platform then?
What competition we don't see that imo. If you are taking away Activision games from other platforms.
More drivel from the interview: “With gaming, for example, for us, it’s a streaming workload. It helps us build the right cloud infrastructure. Think about artificial intelligence, these AI-generated models, differently and how they can be used in both creation and testing of games,” said Nadella.
You can pretty much tell this guy is just spewing buzz words at this point.
Create your own games. Don't take games from others. Create. Something that you seem not able to do since the 360 days... Remember when gears was launched? In 2007! The hype. How amazing and ahead it was! Huge blockbuster
Competition isnt buying publishers.... Even if it's to get candy crash, of course.