Microsoft Business Update Podcast | OT | SEGABOX - 12 PM PT | 3 PM ET | 8PM GMT
- Thread starter John Elden Ring
- Start date
A dangerous idea for sure.
As we have just seen with the Funimation shut down, these companies will absolutely take away your access to products you have purchased.
Paying for gamepass, a rental service, comes with the understanding that it's a rental service.
But buying digital games and expecting companies to honour that purchase? What a laugh.
In general I agree with you. I'm not anti-physical. On PS5, I try to get discs when I can. But Steam is the one digital library I trust, and when I'm bouncing between a desktop, laptop and handheld, a physical copy would be annoying.
"competition" is a meaningless abstraction. is it a bad thing that there's no competition among console CPUs? is it a bad thing that there's no competition among gamepads on consoles? the contested areas where real competition exists in the gaming industry, especially on consoles is pretty arbitrary.
Don't worry
Sony will join the third party club soon
They weren't competition they have not been competing for over a decade. Nintendo is in a bubble not affected by either, nor competing with them and Sony just been on an upward spiral while Xbox has just been reacting and doing dumb shit in gaming. There is no competition. Samsung and Apple, thts competiton, not this lol
Xbox isn’t competing though, it’s just responsible for an attempt at a race to the bottom, and as far as the software output it’s shambles for years and years, failing to ship a single game that captures the zeitgeist.
Xbox sucks, has sucked for a long time and it's existence is a net negative for the gaming market.
Keep playing on your Series console if you like it so much.
Not all competition benefits consumers.
A competitor that works to attract consumers by proposing a quality product is, of course, always desired.
Competitors who are driven by quality encourage quality in the industry as a whole.
But since Microsoft entered the console market, the following happened:
- Online multiplayer paywall became normalized.
- Drive to digital only, harming legacy games conservation.
- Drive to the bottom in terms of aggressive microtransatctions and nickel-and-diming costumers. MS heavily promoted and were the ones who encouraged Todd Howard to introduce the infamous "horse armour" that started everything.
- Drive to the bottom in terms of games quality due to an obsession of copying the Netflix business model. The proliferation of this subscription craze (that in fact circles back to the first item in this list) has led to a contraction of the games industry.
- Pursuing anti-consumer consolidation by acquiring third-party publishers wholesale with an obvious intent of starving the competition of content.
This company not only directly harmed consumers, it also influenced their competitors to follow suit in the worst possible ways.
If it wasn't for nearly a decade of propaganda shoved down people's throats that it's ok to pay a second rent just to be able to use your internet to play games online, Sony and Nintendo would have never dared to start charging for online multiplayer.
No, not all competition is good. Microsoft would not be missed if they were to leave. Anything but that disgusting corporation.
I don't think they'll stop making hardware altogether, but I will say that I'm not a fan of them buying up third party publishers just so that their games can't reach Playstation anymore.
Last edited:
OP
OP
The Funimation thing was not really "purchases". They bought physical copies and there was a code to get a free digital version on Funimation. I'm not sure how the licence works in that case, It's like a grey area.
OP
OP
PlayStation released their titles on PC and created the new PlayStation Plus Service in response to Game Pass and Play Anywhere. I don't think we would have God of War on PC if it wasn't for Xbox abandoning console exclusives.
I personally can't wait for sony games on switch 2. I don't want to play them of course but I'm glad their on my favorite big corporations products.