I find this entire thing interesting. If you look at percents then sure, the PS5 is "winning" by a large margin, but from a units sold prospectrive if the PS5 is really selling 2:1 the Series X/S than we can estimate that the PS5 is around 38 Million and the Xbox is at 19 Million. From the best I can find that is still better than the Xbox 360 was by this time (someone please correct me if I am wrong in this case, finding concrete numbers for this is difficult). That number is nowhere near a failure.
That being said, its also obvious that Microsoft is playing at a different game and that it is largely fanboys and news sites keeping the "console wars" alive. (And I guess this case now but that's something else entirely) Every game that Microsoft publishes is day one also on Windows and on Game Pass. The box that is an xbox is just another avenue to playing games from Microsoft, but not the only way they care about.
I have an Xbox because it is my preferred console to play on (Xbox Live, the UI, Controller, etc) if I am playing on a console instead of a PC. I have a PS5 but that is only for exclusives.
Personally I am hoping this deal goes through because I want Xbox to be taken more seriously. Not because I want Microsoft to control these specific games or I want xbox to "Win".
But because I am particularity worried about a cocky Sony. We saw it before with the PS3 erra and we are starting to see it again with the PS5. They are making certain decisions that are not gamer friendly (cross play, paying for third party exclusives, and paying for exclusive content being some key examples). My concern is that unlike the PS3 erra where they stumbled hard, gamers are not pushing back against it this time and Sony is just continuing what they have been doing. For me personally an unchecked Sony/Playstation power in gaming is worse than this deal going through. They are both harmful for gaming, but I don't see a choice outside of it.
> Personally I am hoping this deal goes through because I want Xbox to be taken more seriously
It was taken seriously by the 360 era. MS just bleed away all the good will the following generation, ceding significant market share to Sony. Now Sony is riding on the momentum from the previous generation to an easy 1st place.
> They are making certain decisions that are not gamer friendly (cross play, paying for third party exclusives, and paying for exclusive content being some key examples)
Was Sony buying any exclusives before MS attempted to take over Activision-Blizzard? (Those that they fund don’t count since it makes no difference to their competitors - the games wouldn’t be available to them either way; either it doesn’t exist if Sony doesn’t fund it or it’s exclusive to Sony if Sony did.)
Microsoft screwed up with the announcement of the Xbox One and they were never able to recover from that. They basically made one big mistake that has screwed them over. You are right but we are talking about a mistake from 10 years ago.
Yes they were, they have been doing it for years including in the PS4 generation. The distinction between funding and paying for however is a complicated one since we don't know whether or not something would have existed if it was not for Sony stepping in.
A few examples of this practice from Sony:
FF7 remake (3 years ago) and FF16 (there is no way in hell you can convince we either of those would not have been made without money from Sony)
We know from yesterday Sony tried to make Starfield exclusive
GhostWire Tokyo and Deathloop (both of these have since come to Xbox but it is unclear if this would have ever been the case if Microsoft had not bought Bethesda)
KOTOR remake that has yet to come out
Death Stranding (The exact situation for this is a bit unclear, but I doubt sony specifically funded it considering it is on Game Pass but not on Xbox)
It is not a hard to find a list of third party exclusives that Sony has paid for.
And again this also doesnt even get into the exclusive content for games. Meaning someone playing on another platform is spending the same amount of money and getting less of a game. "But its just one mission" I don't care, we spent the same amount of money. Off the top of my head I know of Call of Duty, Harry Potter, Destiny 2, and I know there are others.
The exclusive content thing during the 360 era was to counter MS buying up timed exclusives. Sony basically said, sure you can do time exclusivity for MS but we demand that games that launch late on our console have content exclusive to it or you don’t launch at all. So I guess developers just cut content from the 360 version and repurpose it as exclusive content for PS3.
Does Sony still do it now? I’m a bit out of the loop. Which games have they demanded exclusive content and are they timed exclusive to MS?
Edit: I think the real issue with MS buying Activision-Blizzard is games that were original multi-platform, i.e. available on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, becoming exclusive to MS platforms. PlayStation and Nintendo consoles will lose games.
No one cares that God of War is exclusive to Sony’s machines. No one is losing anything - you can’t lose what you never had.
IMHO if you cannot stomach say Sony buying EA and making all their sport franchises exclusive to PlayStation then you shouldn’t be OK with the MS and Activision-Blizzard merge either.
> PlayStation and Nintendo consoles will lose games
No one loses games. Previously published games will still be playable. They may not have access to new titles in those series, but they were never guaranteed that anyway. Just like with console generations, sometimes you have to buy a new box to play the next game in your favorite series.
It seems that switch owners may even get access to Call of Duty, which they never would have without the aquisition.
Microsoft has been messing up the stewardship of their platform, the games on it and the studios that make them for a long time. Not just with the early Xbox one.
Halo's fall from grace as an IP, for instance, cannot in any way be blamed on anyone other than Microsoft, at multiple times and with multiple bad decisions. It's not due to one bad big screwup with the Xbox one; it's an ever-continuing quality problem with Microsoft.
I was fully ready to but an XBONE but ended up getting a PS4 after that. Could've lived with the downsides, but not with all the arrogance that they were announced with. Based on the games that generation I probably made the right choice too.
Don Mattrick fucked up good and proper and Sony owes him a huge debt of gratitude.
> "Microsoft screwed up with the announcement of the Xbox One and they were never able to recover from that."
Put the blame where it belongs: Don Mattrick screwed up the positioning and announcement of the Xbox One and they were never able to recover from that.
I don't see how an unchecked Playstation is at all comparable to how much Microsoft can leverage ABK across several industries. Microsoft knows this, it's why they're OK with Game Pass destroying software console sales (something they admitted during previous trials). It's peanuts for what they want to do.
I used to keep a Ps4pro for their exclusives and they certainly were enjoyable. But... Seeing previous exclusives now make its way to desktop has me a bit sad about missing out on high fidelity gaming. I could have enjoyed God of war, horizon, rdr2 at higher frame rates and resolutions, if I were just a little more patient.
I'm not happy about the way Epic wrings exclusives, I shouldn't be a hypocrite for Sony.
I feel like I should train myself to be more patient, but I just can't. I tell myself I will wait and then I am up at midnight playing the new Horizon game at launch.
I have thought about that option, and if Sony does continue to actually put out games on PC I will likely consider it. But I hate how long of a wait it is. And then we see how badly some of the ports like the last of us launch.
That being said, its also obvious that Microsoft is playing at a different game and that it is largely fanboys and news sites keeping the "console wars" alive. (And I guess this case now but that's something else entirely) Every game that Microsoft publishes is day one also on Windows and on Game Pass. The box that is an xbox is just another avenue to playing games from Microsoft, but not the only way they care about.
I have an Xbox because it is my preferred console to play on (Xbox Live, the UI, Controller, etc) if I am playing on a console instead of a PC. I have a PS5 but that is only for exclusives.
Personally I am hoping this deal goes through because I want Xbox to be taken more seriously. Not because I want Microsoft to control these specific games or I want xbox to "Win".
But because I am particularity worried about a cocky Sony. We saw it before with the PS3 erra and we are starting to see it again with the PS5. They are making certain decisions that are not gamer friendly (cross play, paying for third party exclusives, and paying for exclusive content being some key examples). My concern is that unlike the PS3 erra where they stumbled hard, gamers are not pushing back against it this time and Sony is just continuing what they have been doing. For me personally an unchecked Sony/Playstation power in gaming is worse than this deal going through. They are both harmful for gaming, but I don't see a choice outside of it.