From a human standpoint I don’t particularly like this trend of big money company throwing big money at existing developers rather than taking the time to build their own inhouse teams and new IP. It stinks of monopoly. I also feel for anyone working for Activison at the moment with all the troubles and many people probably wondering and worrying how his will affect their livelihood and jobs.
From a gamer who owns a pretty high end PC and has recently been using game pass to play forza horizon 5 I like the idea of having more games available for cheap on the Xbox Game Pass. I don’t love the feeling of not owning the games I’m playing and Microsoft holding ownership of my save files in my Xbox account but it feels pretty inevitable to me that ill be playing most games on PC using game pass.
From a consumer who has basically boycott anything from Activision Blizz for years because of their predatory and money grubbing ways and slow drop in quality I actually think the Microsoft oversight and drive for good quality games to make Gamepass appealing I think this is actually a good thing.
As someone who’s favorite games are the Sony and Nintendo first party games I can’t really see this having much impact on all that except that this is going to potentially kneecap Sony and I really don’t want to see them fall since they make so many of my favorite games. But I’d be happy enough if Sony games were to have day 1 releases on PC.
I thought about this on the other thread but I actually feel like because of the juggernaut size of Microsoft now it might make sense for Nintendo and Sony to merge. Nintendo becomes the handheld arm but then both benefit from having their IPs shared across both platforms. This really seems to me the best way that S&N can continue to stay relevant against the juggernaut that MS is trying to use their big money to become.
I think it’s pretty obvious MS will be going after Rockstar next, and if they’re willing to pay 70 bil who knows how far they’ll go for R*
I get where you're coming from, but I wholeheartedly can't agree with it. Why? Because the feeling you're describing is one gamers had to go through for a long time now. How do you think Nintendo gamers felt when they found out the only way to play FF VII or Dragon Quest VII was to buy a PlayStation? How Sega gamers felt when they found out games like Tomb Raider 2 were locked away through exclusivity deals by Sony so the only way they could play them going forward was getting a PS1?
It's always happened, and every time, gamers by and large adjusted and in some cases the platform holders negatively affected also adapted. A company like Sony today isn't suffering from internal conflict or confused priorities the way a company like Sega did in the mid 1990s', so there's reason to suspect they won't adapt accordingly and get through this well enough. But it'll mean playing to their strengths, and trying to compete at the level of companies like Microsoft in an acquisition game is not one of those strengths.
Also FWIW just because Microsoft are making these massive acquisitions doesn't mean they haven't been "organically" nurturing their own internal studios or aren't building their own teams from the ground up. I'm sure a few others have already said this, but games like Psychonauts 2 only got the quality polish they did thanks to Microsoft's funding and investments. IP like Forza Horizon have only gotten better and better over the years and arguably the best in the franchise now comes post-acquisition by Microsoft. And they're building 1P studios like The Initiative while investing in the teams they have acquired.
About Sony/Nintendo merging...first of all Nintendo isn't even a factor here and this affects Sony a lot more than it does Nintendo. Secondly as some others have said Sony and Nintendo are more in competition with each other (over Japanese 3P support and marketshare in regions like Asia) than Nintendo and Microsoft are with each other. I think people underestimate how good the relationship between Microsoft and Nintendo actually as, considering Nintendo's American office isn't that far from Microsoft's Redmond site.
If Embracer Group and Tencent weren't enough to drive Sony to seek out Nintendo for a merger (because in all honesty it would be Sony the one trying to make that happen as they're the dependent in such a scenario, not Nintendo), Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard won't, either. It's not like either Sony or Nintendo are in the market to be sold, and a hostile takeover of either would fail as well.
But time and again we've seen that Nintendo can get by more or less on their own 1P content regardless of 3P support; Sony's 1P games not only cost a lot more to make (on average), but even in a record year only accounted for 18% of their fiscal year revenue for the PlayStation division. Never mind that they don't have the profit margins on console hardware at the level Nintendo does (though they might be trying to pivot that way). It'd be up for Sony to make a hell of a pitch to Nintendo and there's nothing short of mobile gaming completely eating away Nintendo's portable market that would be a good enough reason for Nintendo to agree to such a merger.
