CarlosX360 Writes: "Electronic Arts blocked Porsche from Forza Motorsports racing for Xbox 360. This is a company that has been supporting Xbox since the first console landed on retail. Microsoft and EA Sports have made contracts over Madden, NASCAR, and other sports games. Turn 10 is a company created by Microsoft to create a simulation game competing against Gran Turismo. I think blocking Porsche from Turn 10 will just piss off Microsoft more than it has the gaming industry as a whole."
EDIT: I can't really find an image the "fits" the N4G image size. I uploaded a large size and it doesn't show the image in full rectangle box.
With Arkane Austin no more and Lyon living for who knows how long, the superb Dishonored is in serious danger; Microsoft cannot be trusted.
I love the Dishonored series so much and really want Dishonored 3. Microsoft better not screw this up.
I mean, I think the fans will probably kill Arkane Lyon by cooking up reasons to hate whatever they do next without playing it. I've never seen a game so artificially disliked as Deathloop.
Lol, why don't we just say, we are worried about all studios owned by MS now. They will keep closing studios until they have none left ...🙄
Just merge them all into a single studio, have it churn out a single Call of Duty every year and call it a day, lol.
I think it's becoming clear based on matt bootys comments there's no future for any IP that can't sell above 10 million within the launch window. But is also a small game that gives them prestige
/S it's beyond a joke right now
EA senior staff has been investigated for sexual misconduct involving female coworkers, and these said people have been named publicly.
Aye just call Phil, i mean he somehow made Bobby Kotick's scandal disappear and gave him a few million dollar high five on the way out.
EA about to go down like Activision and then Phil saves the day saying.this is good for the industry and consolidation will help create competition. /s.
What's up with all these horny creeps. You gon be horny, fine. Just not at work take care of that shit before you go in. Rub one out if you have to. Don't be a creep at all. ESPECIALLY at work. But don't be one AT ALL.
You think deviants care where they are? Work sometimes makes it an even better situation for them because they can abuse their power.
"it seems that according to EA, given the events transpired outside of work between two adults, and the fact that once investigation has started that the alleged perpetrators didn’t do it again, the investigation is considered closed. [...] The victim still has to work with the people that harassed her."
Yep, EA is disgusting.
I mean the fact stuff happened outside of work puts EA in quite a difficult position legally. These women don't seem to have reported the matter to the police which kinda ties EA's hands on what they can do. If they don't file reports of the crimes then yeah from EA's perspective it is stuff that happened outside of work. The only exception is the guy that apparently referenced things in the slack channel for work, spending on what he said proving it may be very hard and he may well be able to get away with plausible deniability. I don't like EA and I think these people need to be dismissed but without any legal action being taken, EA can't really do much without risk of being sued themselves for unfair dismissal etc.
Paul Thurrott in a recent episode commented on the on-going Microsoft fiasco hinting at more job losses and that "there's more to come".
There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future . Xbox has to pay Microsoft back. It might take two decades to do that.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xbox IS microsoft so there’s no “paying back “.
And MS gross profit in 2023 was over 140 billion dollars so forget your 2 decades.
Unless you mean the money MS invested in Xbox (acquisitions included) and the time it will take for xbox as a brand to gain that money back on it’s own, then yeah, that could take a while.
The better term to use might be return on investment, xbox is simply a division of Microsoft one that MS can easily do away with if profit margins are not met. So in that regard he's right, if xbox isn't showing the expected return on investment the higher ups are expecting than it's unlikely Microsoft will acquire any other studios any time soon, especially if they are spending billions buying developers just to shut them down in the end.
Xbox is a division that they discussed shutting down but doubled down on after Gamepass was pitched.
It needs to make money at some point. Big money.
According to Statista the net income of Microsoft is about $72.4 billion dollars which is a bit lower than last year profit. That is almost as much as Activision's acquisition but I assume that would be a one off since it costs so much plus I see how their focus has been shifted to AI, thus any major future investments will probably be in that area.
@romulus23
That is not why MS buys studios. They might continue to buy because it's about taking that sweet sweet IP out of the corporate husks of their acquisitions.
“There won't be no more acquiring game publishers from Microsoft in the future”
No bro, there do be is for Microsoft not acquiring for what is now if not what it be is 😂
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Let’s be real, this is the media spinning all the acquisitions and liquidations of said developers and spinning it to make M$ the villain.
This was bound to happen, a bigger slice of pie and cut costs, when the games come they stand to make more and that’s their agenda—it was the writing on the wall when the sales went through and legally all those who approved the sale and mergers knew this would happen.
Snowflakes need to realize business is ugly and you can cry all you want but this is how capitalism works. And it works.
That said, M$ needs to steer the narrative and grab hold of all this, make their plans known, hype the hell out of all those dead IP’s they plan to revive, and be honest about the timeline. This is likely to involve mobile and IP on other consoles, and most people realize that.
The problem is this company is incapable of being transparent and seems to often want to dissuade and confuse is customer base. The lack of E3 has hurt Microsoft and I don’t think they know how to properly or effectively market their brand anymore.
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit here. You buy these companies just to put people out of jobs. And it’s not like something happened to derail their plans this WAS the plan. Microsoft has no business in this space at all.
Microsoft has been doing this for years. They simply want the IPs. Look at Nokia. Look at Skype. This time it simply expanded to games. Gaming is not as important to Microsoft’s executives as it was to the founders too. Bill Gates was willing to sell the og Xbox at a loss. Steve Balmer approved the red ring of death fiasco. This CEO isn’t really a gamer.
Maybe it's time though to put a stop to it and use a big giant like Microsoft as a huge example to the rest of these big companies.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
People like the FTC and the like went against Microsoft yet their Actvision deal was still allowed to go through yet look what's happened...it's not even Acitivisions studios aswell, it's Bethesdas.
You do realize this happens in ALL industries? Or are you just saying this because it is Microsoft? In any case I feel for those that are being let go but the trch industry is suffering right now.
This absolutely does NOT happen all the time. Let me know the last time 1 company with a terrible product track record spent 100 billion onto acquire MULTIPLE successful companies in under a year only to shut them down and stop making their products regardless of how successful they were. Not merge them, completely shut them down.
And you can’t use Microsoft in your example.
Class action lawsuit? The law is on their side and protects them at all costs. There are no rules to protect the people at the bottom.
Ninja Theory, Perfect Dark, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Wolfenstein 3, Dishonored, Prey, Doom, Quake... something tells me that bad things are going to happen to these entities under Microsoft.
ID software, the makers of Doom and Wolfenstein that have been with us since 1991 could be gone and MS will keep the IPs.
I hope some of these studios can buy their freedom from MS otherwise this is going to be even more devastating for the industry and gamers.
That's exactly what I'm worried about. I've been a fan of id since Wolfenstein 3D and I'm honestly afraid.
Toys for Bob saw the writing on the wall and bought themselves out.
Wouldn't be the first time a company did that under MS either. Bungie and Twisted Pixel did the same. Considering what just happened, I can see some other devs trying to buy themselves out too.
Won't make a difference.
The whole structure needs to be overhauled. Anyone that replaces Phil will be no different than him, Mattrick, or anyone else.
Until the company changes how they go about business, nothing will change
I just don't have any idea what they would do , they have done sooo much damage on their xbox brand, they have a show at July or June I think, but will it even matter even they show amazing games, idkn
True,
But they may as well get it over with. Whether it happens now or later, the burning is going to hit the same.
Reality is the ONE move that can alleviate a lot of this is the one move they can't make. Remove day 1 from gamepass.
EA's falling back into their old habits again. They're getting bigger with battlefield 3 among other titles and they're just pissed their NFS titles can't seem to pick up more sales than their predecessors.
I still can't believe EA has been the sole company sitting on the Porsche license for so many years now. Either they must be paying a fortune for it, or the EA lawyers conned the Porsche lawyers back when the deal was made. Probably the latter :).
And people say activision are bad.
EA almost gonna hit Bobby kotic's douchebagery level.
sigh
EA should really drop Need For Speed. It's gone past its "Best Before" date, and needs to be dropped in favour of something that more easily matches today's market, rather than just revamping an old series.