Ar¢tos
Member
I love indie games, as long as there is a steady flow of indie games for PSVR2, I'm happy with it. One AAA game a year is more than enough for something like VR, it will always be an accessory, no point pretending it is more than that.
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Coulomb_Barrier
Member
MS won't win by just buying Acti Blizz and not focus on their fundamental problems as if the sale goes through, it will force Sony to react and buy Square Enix and/or Capcom, and any other lucrative Japanese devs and fully leverage their new ip's.
Sony are going to dominate sales next year with that 23m target, PSVR2 launch and Final Fantasy/Spiderman 2. Assuming deal goes through in 2023 (and with massive concessions), Xbox will likely only have a chance of a small comeback in late 2024 or 2025 if they're not buried under the momentum from their rival.
Basically the gen is lost. Next gen who knows what the landscape will be.
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DarkMage619
$MSFT
Why? Sony isn't even doing what MS is doing with regards to subscriptions. They could easily improve their offerings if they want more subs.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
What's your source for this data?
- At console launch in Fall 2020, the launch console disparity was not 2.5 to 1.
- There is no data available on this. Please share your source.
- Again, there is no data available on this. Please share your source.
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Ar¢tos
Member
They only need to buy Kadokawa to get my attention, cheaper than Square (not sure about Capcom value, current Capcom is a shadow of the Capcom of 20 years ago).
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
So many billions lost and they still have more than 2:1 gap from PS like last gen. incredible. And this year it’ll only get bigger lmao
Sanepar
Member
His crazy fanboy mind like all fanboys
Sanepar
Member
20 years xbox fanboys waiting for the day Xbox will beat PS. Instead of be happy and play Xbox games they are more worried about Sony future.
MasterCornholio
Member
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Spent does not necessarily mean lost. The turnaround from the acquisitions may not have happened in 2 years, but it will happen.
brian0057
Banned
Activision/Blizzard is not half of the industry.
And this is a problem because...?
Are you a Microsoft investor?
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are not the only publishers and developers. They are not "the industry".
Damn, sounds like someone should've gotten a PC instead of a PS5 with no games to play.
Imagine going "Using the market to disrupt the market" without a shred of irony.
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
Hum hum
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Why isn't buying Bethesda\Zenimax not enough?
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
Would this mean at the start of 2022, Xbox Series would have been at around at most 8.6 million sold-through?
That settles it then; Ampere's 13.8 million in that June report was definitely based on sold-in shipments, not sold-through. No way in hell they sold 5.2 million Series consoles in six months when those are among some of the slowest months of the year in console sales.
Because they can buy more. If an opportunity comes up for a video game company to own ABK and all the IPs they control, you really can’t expect them to pass that up because it’s not fair to Sony.
That’s not how capitalism works.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
As said numerous times the only reason MS should not be allowed to buy Activision is if the law is being broken. Hurting Sony's market share is not a reason to block the deal.
yurinka
Member
Modern engines like Unreal and Unity, by far the most used ones by the 3rd parties, support both architectures with no problems. If the game isn't too ambitious in the technical side, is small enough and doesn't require to tune it down too much (native resolution, fps, textures, amount of stuff on screen, etc) due to lack of horsepower there's no technical problem at all to port them to Switch. With Unreal or Unity it's easy and fast.
The thing is that many games are in a somewhat middle ground where they could have a Switch port but needing a ton of optimizations, tweaks and downgrades to keep it with a decent quality. Maybe needing too much work and budget compared with the limited sales that multiplatform games have on Switch. And in many cases aren't sure if they'll be able to achieve it or not, so they end avoiding the Switch port.
We don't know the exact sales of PSVR1, we only know it sold over 5M and that Sony was happy with it. With Vita instead we know it sold around 12M and that Sony wasn't happy with it because PSP sold around 80M.
Nintendo became way more powerful in portables because merged there their teams and catalog from home consoles. And now there's also the PC handhelds, and the mobile market keeps growing, so there's less market for non Nintendo portable consoles than before. And well, Switch got benefited from having no competition for a while and getting the role of "portable 3rd party indies & AAAish machine" between era of Vita and the PC handhelds. I think the PC handhelds will eat a huge chunk of that Switch market and the Switch successor will be less successful than Switch.
As happens with cloud gaming, VR instead is an emerging, growing market with a lot of potential that is making its first baby steps. Sony invests in VR not to sell a ton of units now, but instead as R&D and innovation testing the waters of that emerging market building related technology, expertise, catalog and knowledge, positioning themselves in a good position and also to have an additional unique selling point that adds an extra point to their consoles: PS are the only only ones with high-end VR and the ones with the biggest cloud gaming catalog.
If you want to play the MS games or most 3rd party games on a portable, plus basically all games from past gaming devices via emulation, you can do it on a Steamdeck, you don't need a MS portable console.
When Xbox debuted in home consoles there was market for them, specially when Sega quitted or when Nintendo decided to focus more on portables and casual/family friendly stuff than in hardcore games with high-end visuals. Xbox consoles don't sell a dozen millions units like Vita.
Also, MS until now struggled to have a constant and frequent good amount of big first party releases, but with all the recent acquisitions and new internal teams created seems that in a year or two they'll start having a good enough output comparable to Nintendo and Sony, if not bigger. If they would have to cover another device they'd struggle again, as happened to Sony with Vita.
I'm a PSP and Vita super fan, but Sony wasn't capable to provide Vita a good enough amount of exclusives to make it successful, and AAA games now take more resources plus also have to cover VR, pc ports and mobile games. Sony doesn't have enough resources to properly give enough exclusives to a portable. MS had issues to provide a good enough amount of great exclusives to their home consoles, so would struggle even more if also had to make exclusives for a portable.
Sony and MS will support Steamdeck with their PC titles, and will also bring their console games to mobile via their cloud gaming service (Sony should re-release theirs soon, pretty likely in 2023), plus a few native mobile ports. They may also release dedicated gamepads or adaptors to play consoleish games on mobile. That's all.
In fact, looking at the market numbers as MS says it wouldn't almost affect Sony's market share and Sony would continue as the market leader in consoles and game subs, and also the top 2 in the overall gaming market.
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mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Is this what competition should look like though?
That's what competition does look like. Sony have bought a number of developers and publishers and third party exclusives in their aim to get to and maintain first place just the same as Microsoft have to try and take it for themselves.
Whether it should look like that is up for debate, but if it shouldn't then I think it's quite suspicious that the line suddenly gets drawn at the point where a competitor might cause a problem for the market leader, instead of at the point where the market leader is trying to consolidate their power.
If the ABK deal is bad competition, then we should be splitting up both Sony and Microsoft from their acquired studios.
Personally, I think competition should look like this as long as it's not detrimental to the industry as a whole - not just to a particular industry participant.
There's a reason that only Sony and Google are publically denouncing the deal, while all other devs and publishers don't really care, and industry unions want it to go through.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
You can't possibly this deal is the same as a Sony buying Bungie or an Insomniac.......right?
Not the same, no, it's much bigger. The deal being for a bigger monetary amount, though, doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed.
You can't set a maximum dollar value on allowed acquisitions without making numbers up, which makes that impossible to justify as there's no logical support for it.
I'd be interested to hear your justification for whatever number you pick if you think you can.
Instead, I use the 'does the deal have a negative effect on the market as a whole' test, and it's pretty clear through the general lack of market participants siding with Sony to get the deal blocked, that it doesn't. Much like the Bungie and Insomniac deals from Sony didn't have a negative effect on the market as a whole and went through without complaint.
If the deal doesn't have a negative effect on the industry, why should it be blocked?
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I think it will have a negative impact on the industry, personally. They are buying multiple publishers for goodness sake (not just devs).
Deputy Moonman
Member
Better not allow that Activision acquisition. It might lead to actual competition and oh no what will Sony and Nintendo do!
As a consumer, your knowledge of the industry and what is and isn't beneficial for it is not comparable to the knowledge of businesses involved in the industry. You may think the deal will have a negative impact on the industry, but only Sony (for obvious reasons) and Google agree with you - everyone else is either neutral or in favour of it.
The deal will have a negative impact on Sony, but that is not the same as having a negative impact on the industry.
And again, this is how competition works in this industry.
Both Sony and Microsoft have bought publishers (though MS's purchases tend to be much bigger than Sony's). They have both bought developers. They have both paid for third party exclusives. All of which is what happens in the gaming industry when competitors are trying to get ahead of each other.
That Microsoft have more money than Sony and so can buy more things shouldn't matter. There is no monetary cut off where deals about $x should be blocked, because that doesn't make sense.
The deal should be approved based on what is good (or, at least not bad) for the industry, not what is good (or not bad) for Sony. As mentioned above, industry participants are in a much better place to say what is and isn't damaging to the industry than you or I, so our opinions don't count. Those of the companies participating in the industry, with billions of dollars on the line, do. They are broadly in favour of it going ahead, so who are we to disagree?
kapshin
Member
Story of my life
Henry Panic
Banned
Did no one realize PS4 sales are part of this chart?
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Yep. They're being disingenuous.
Jaybe
Member
Lots of people on the first page
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Yes, but the PS4 didn't really sell alot of systems in 2021. I think Sony showed 2 million PS4 sales in 2021.
Henry Panic
Banned
From the looks of it MS is including high numbers of PS4s with the PS5 to give it that lead. But no Xbox Ones with the XS.
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Topher
Gold Member
Why makes you think Xbox One is not included?
DarkMage619
$MSFT
The Xbox One was discontinued in 2020. It made more sense for MS to focus on the XSS if people wanted a low end device.
Topher
Gold Member
One X was discontinued in 2020. One S was discontinued in 2022.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Topher
Gold Member
Ah....misread. I stand corrected.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
So are you claiming that MS could be lying about these Playstation 2021 hardware numbers?
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
I think people are overshooting how many PS4s were manufactured & sold for 2021. They only reported 1 million PS4s for FY 2021.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
I think the point is that Sony continues to make and sell PS4 in addition to PS5 where MS only made Series consoles. It further proves the point that Xbox is a distant third in consoles and clearly no where near dominant in video games. The Activision acquisition will not change this.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
But that's Microsoft's choice to make, and they did so because for them the Series S is their XBO replacement. Sony doesn't have a PS4 replacement in terms of something that fits the general pricing and (vaguely) performance profile of that system, and the only reason they extended PS4 production was because of chip shortages last year.
Therefore in a way you can view the Series S and PS4 as being roughly equivalent in each company's product lineup, but in Sony's case the PS4 production increase was always only meant to be temporary, and by very little. Going into 2023 they will most likely cease new PS4 production altogether if they haven't done so already. Meanwhile MS will continue manufacturing Series S for at least a couple more years.
I agree that regardless it shows MS's in 3rd, but that doesn't say why they're in 3rd. And whether ABK would change that or not I don't think is actually a main reason why the acquisition is being looked at. MS says it'll make them more competitive, but they said the same about Zenimax. And so far they haven't shown how either actually makes them more competitive outside of folding in 3P revenue into the Xbox division.
ZoukGalaxy
Member
*Phil livecam*
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Sony not having any product that replaces PS4 in terms of pricing is the Sony's fault right? The FTC is arguing that the XSS is a 'high performance device' isn't it? It doesn't matter why MS is third. You can speculate all day as to why Xbox is third. The only thing courts and regulators should care about is the fact that MS is not dominant in video games and their acquisition does not change that. Acquisition approvals should not be based on feelings and biases it should be based on reality. The reality is Xbox is third.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
And it's all on them as to why.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
So, PlayStation being more competitive has nothing to do with that?
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
Yeah, if that were Sony's business goal. It isn't, though. They just want a product that'll be able to a few years from now, sell at the price PS4 sells at today. And they do, it's called the PS5
I mean, it is considering it plays all the same games as Series X and the same multiplats as PS5, just at a lower resolution. It's in the market towards many of those same gamers because of the library and because it's a non-portable.
It does kind of matter why they're in third though, because it highlights particular business decisions and management issues that are almost always the reason for why they're in 3rd. Considering they have intended to compete directly with Sony & Nintendo for 20+ years, them being in 3rd does ask the obvious question: Why aren't they in 1st? What aren't they doing right?
Whether ABK makes MS dominant or not (and in terms of revenue, it actually could. It'd put them ahead of Nintendo, and neck-and-neck with PlayStation, with the possibility of outpacing them in revenue post-acquisition) isn't the only focus of regulators.
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