Microsoft has already said that they're not done with acquisitions. I personally believe that we haven't seen the end of the beginning yet to be perfectly honest with you. I believe they keep going until next generation starts if not beyond. Microsoft slept for 19 years. The bear finally woke up and they're not fucking around anymore.
But if they think the answer to being "asleep" is to just consolidate the industry, then sorry that's not something I can rock with. MS's problem has been lack of consistent quality of 1P titles. Outside of the Forza games and the Bungie Halo titles, the consistency has been lacking. In terms of any 1P games that have been industry-leading in terms of pushing visuals, game design, tech etc., they have been terribly lagging in comparison to Sony and Nintendo and, as a platform holder, I find that unacceptable.
However in order to resolve that, you don't need 30+ internal 1P teams. You just need a good enough stable of really strong, really well-managed 1P studios. So what does buying yet more publishers do for MS to address the actual shortcomings? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They have more than enough studios now to where, even if some fall by the wayside, they can produce enough high-quality AAA games of strong variety that are industry-leading in some way or another, to turn around the perception problem with majority of gamers outside their ecosystem...
...only if the management, leadership and creative guidance are supreme, though. That's where having even 100+ 1P teams means absolutely nothing, if those things I just mentioned are still lacking. And you can't "buy" that type of talent; it has to be fostered and cultivated over years of experience within your 1P teams and network of teams.
Game Pass is definitely their primary focus when it comes to Xbox but as before, I disagree with them having enough studios. It's never enough and after having only 5 studios for the majority of the duration of the Xbox One generation, I honestly don't want them to stop. Give me more. The more studios and/or publishers they buy, the less games I have to spend $70 on and can play them for a $10 monthly rental which is perfect for me as im not a collector, have only one game in my backlog and prefer to just go from game to game to game.
Except that isn't guaranteed. Like, at all. Look at it this way: MS have already spent ~ $80 billion on gaming acquisitions over the past four years. At some point, Xbox division has to start pulling its own weight in terms of covering those costs. How does it do that? How does Xbox do it, and not simply piggybacking off their more successful non-gaming divisions and their revenue? Because that's what it's going to come down to, eventually.
That's why people bring up the possibility of GamePass price increases, and other things of that nature happening in the future. Otherwise, I would think competitors have very good grounds to claim that MS are, in fact, price-fixing their own subscription service, leaning completely on Azure/Windows/Office to offset GamePass costs and finance gaming acquisitions, pricing services like GamePass to unrealistically low levels to make other competitors bleed out through money loss, etc.
Those claims become real if MS can simply keep buying up more publishers/developers, especially major ones, and yet there are no changes whatsoever to GamePass pricing, discount availability, Xbox pricing etc. Which are all things regulators have expressed concern about, btw.
The only thing I will say is that there's studios and publishers I prefer while there's a lot that I have zero interest in. For example, ABK is massive for Microsoft and Xbox but I would have preferred WB with all of DC, EA and Ubisoft instead. Only reason I have Ubisoft third despite being my favorite publisher is because they're supposed to be bringing Ubisoft+ as a separate subscription to Xbox and PlayStation so for me own personal preference, I don't need or even want Microsoft to acquire them since I would still get what I want out of Ubisoft. Also, while I forgot his name, there's a new person in charge at Ubisoft for the games and whatnot and want to see how he does for the rest of this generation.
Okay, let's say you got your wish and MS acquired WB/DC, EA & Ubisoft instead of ABK. We're already looking at maybe 80% of ABK's owned IP that are likely still not coming back even with MS now owning them...what are the hopes dormant legacy IP from WB, EA or Ubisoft come back bigger and better under Microsoft?
Otherwise, again, the only real benefits we're looking at are the same games you were already getting, just being "cheaper" through a subscription service. That's a change of the content delivery model, but why need consolidation to do that? I mean you've already mentioned Ubisoft have their own sub service, so they can offer that new content delivery model but still remain a 3P independent publisher, which is probably the best outcome. Nothing's really preventing WB/DC, or EA from doing the same.
In fact, if WB/DC did that now with the HBOMax and Discovery+ sub services, they probably would have a better marketing hook for those services and wouldn't have needed to cancel as many projects as they did. I'm just speculating, anyway.
Ninja Theory is all about Hellblade 2. We'll know exactly how they are when this game releases. Bleeding Edge was an experiment by a small team and at the end of the day, didn't hit because it was so similar to other games plus it wasn't very good. But no biggie. Obsidian's Pentiment I believe will surprise people. I'm expecting an 80+ for it. It's Sawyer and he knows what he's doing. Game isn't for me whatsoever but I do believe the quality will be there. Grounded has been huge for Obsidian and Microsoft. Over 10m players as of last February and is only being on by about 15 or so people. Considering the manpower (or lack there of) put on Grounded, I would say that they have a big hit on their hands and will only get bigger. But like Pentiment, not for me.
No, I think what happened with Bleeding Edge is exactly the kind of thing MS should have avoided. Someone at MS (Matt Booty), should've seen the opportunity to make Bleeding Edge bigger and better. Delay it, give it more time to cook, position it as a game truly optimized for your new flagship console's launch, and give it a real marketing push.
That's the thing: they wouldn't have needed to buy ABK for an Overwatch 2. They could've already HAD their Overwatch with Bleeding Edge, if only leadership had more faith, creative ingenuity and daringness. That's ultimately why so many are still hesitant with MS and these acquisitions, to be honest. I don't honestly care what MC scores Pentiment; MC has lost much of its value to me given the flaws in how it handles review aggregations, but I've talked about that a lot before so not retouching on it again here.
Whether the quality is there with Pentiment or not, for a console brand that needs to do more in terms of showing off strength in the AAA space, a game like Pentiment isn't doing much for their optics in that regard. They can also blame insiders for getting people's expectations up as for what it was actually going to be, compared to what it's actually turned out
to be. And WRT Grounded; again things like MC scores or player counts, I don't care about. Those don't really tell us a lot about how these games are faring in the zeitgeist of mainstream mindshare among gamers and people as a whole, which is what Microsoft actually needs to make some big improvements in as they are woefully behind Sony and Nintendo in that regard.
Maybe that's where owning COD comes in, but they've got themselves in a very weird position there because they can't do TOO much to try shifting brand association among the mainstream and casuals with COD to them instead of PlayStation, else that strengthens concerns among regulators. But just having "another Minecraft" where yeah this IP's bringing in money but honestly vast majority don't think of "Microsoft" or "Xbox" when they think of the game, isn't going to do much for MS's image and mindshare among enthusiasts gamers, mainstreamers or casuals either.
As for Bethesda, we would have had Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo but since they agreed to a timed exclusivity deal with Sony pre-acquisition, Xbox fans had and have to wait respectively. Neither game is for me so I honestly don't care about they're an 88 and 77 respectively on OpenCritic so the quality is there.
Xbox fans only had to wait because Microsoft did not outbid Sony for the games. Heck, the chance is real that Microsoft did not put in a bid for the games whatsoever.
At which point it's almost impossible to blame Sony; I mean they are only continuing a strategy Microsoft themselves really honed in on with the 360 generation for MULTIPLE big Western 3P AAA releases, and even some Japanese 3P AAA releases. They helped perfect that blueprint even if companies like Sony, Nintendo and Sega dabbled in it here and there with past consoles.
The first paragraph is obviously for you personally but you're not an Xbox fan so it makes sense than you want to see games get released and Microsoft be consistent which is perfectly fair and reasonable but at the same time, I think that too many PlayStation fans believe that Microsoft is going to all of a sudden make and release Sony level games which outside of Gears of War and Bungie's Halo, they haven't really done. Microsoft's direction is simply the opposite. It's like when people say, why don't their games have realistic or better visuals like Sony does and it's because, that's not what they focus on. Being an Xbox fan since Xbox 360, I know that they're not copying Sony in that regard. They'll still release great or better games and while we'll get a "Sony type game" here and there, the vast majority of them will be the opposite which is why they will keep acquiring studios and/or publishers. They want every genre and they want it all in Game Pass and they want to get to a point to where they don't need to go to publishers to see if they're interested in Game Pass deals but to where publishers will go to them.
This is where the big disconnect happens, then, because for roughly three console generations Microsoft have tried competing directly with Sony in having those big, theatric, industry-defining AAA games, they just did so through a mixture of some 1P titles and having lots of deals with 3P publishers for AAA content (especially in the 360 generation).
Now we're suddenly supposed to accept Microsoft going this completely other route, not wanting to make games to compete with Sony's marquee 1P AAA (despite purchasing devs like Ninja Theory explicitly for that reason), but then having this mixed messaging where MS CEO Satya Nadella says they want to "compete" with Sony (by buying 3P publishers), several MS executives openly associating with Xbox console warriors on Twitter who do nothing but talk about/attack PlayStation 24/7, market their new consoles on power metrics directly in comparison with PlayStation 5, etc...?
Nah, that's not doing it for me. They want to have their cake and eat it, too, but if that's the case, commit to one or the other. It's obvious Microsoft want to make games like TLOU Part 2, otherwise they wouldn't have launched internal investigations to meticulously analyze & review the game. Are we supposed to think that Microsoft want to be more like Nintendo, then? Well, they don't have any of the IP or cultivated developer talent that can realistically, consistently provide that type of content. Maybe Rare and Double Fine, but that's about it. They want to do their own thing? Well, fine, and that's preferably the best solution. But that doesn't mean MS won't be compared to Sony and Nintendo, and they still need a clear identity in game development ethos, some type of specialty or two they clearly excel in and can produce industry-leading content in consistently. Outside of niche simulators and maybe RTS games, MS have no such spaces, and they don't have anything in those spaces that appeal to the vast majority of gamers.
There's a great chance of Sony heavily investing in companies so they CAN'T be acquired by Microsoft or someone else. Sony will also continue to make their normal exclusivity deals and whatever else they do. Sony will definitely be making more acquisitions but they will be those that fit with what they do or potentially want to do like with Bungie. Microsoft is all in with getting the ABK deal done but they still talk with other companies. Just because they're waiting on an acquisition to close doesn't mean that they all of a sudden stop conducting their normal business in regards to acquisitions. They just wouldn't finalize or announce anything until after the ABK deal closes.
I agree that part of Sony's reason for certain investments of late have been to cockblock Microsoft, more or less. I also think Sony & Tencent might be forming a sort of gaming alliance, and it seems Tencent want to seriously disassociate themselves from the CCP going into the future, which would make such an alliance more appealing to me, personally.
However, while I'm not gung-ho against Microsoft acquiring other publishers, I do think they need to slow down. Again, I'm going to keep pointing to Satya's own words. If it's about "competition" with Sony, they they will have more than enough by the time the ABK deal closes. Just focus on what you've got and actually bring some real competition, i.e bigger, better games, some industry-leading games, results that justify the strategy.
But that will take a few years and that's why I don't think MS need to actually buy anything else until a good 3-5 years out from now. Take some room and breath, and show us, the gamers, what you can do with the lot of resources you already have. Don't be too greedy.
Apple would only buy a publisher if the rumors of them being in R&D with a gaming console are true. Of course, how far out their console is if it's true would determine if/when they make an acquisition. Funny thing is that with the rumors of EA being for sale and Disney snooping around, I would prefer Disney over Apple or Amazon mainly because im set with Xbox and PlayStation. I don't want a third console.
But now you're denying the chance of that third console maybe doing better than the two you already have, just because they'd be the new kid on the block. I'm saying, if you want to shake things up for real, why not entertain Apple coming in with a console of their own? And since they'd be a new player in the console gaming space, I think them needing to "resort" to buying a publisher like EA would be expected.
I'm actually against Disney buying a gaming publisher because for one I doubt they have the money to buy an EA in the first place (not without taking out loans), and I also don't think they would have the money to finance typical EA gaming projects, new big gaming projects by EA AND all the Star Wars & MCU content they are already invested in. Keep in mind Disney's nowhere near as big as a Microsoft, Apple etc. in terms of revenue. They're slightly bigger than Nintendo and somewhat smaller than Sony in terms of market cap.
Everything Microsoft is doing when it comes to Xbox is in regards to their as you put it, content delivery model and their bottom line which if anything, should be pretty obvious and apparent by now if it wasn't already. I would love Road Rash to come back and under Microsoft due to Game Pass, I do believe that this would be at least possible where as right now with EA, no chance. Loved Road Rash back in the day on Genesis but it was the 3DO version that was fucking awesome!! Bought 3DO for that and Need For Speed back in the day. As for ABK, I actually want to see StarCraft Ghost get resurrected.
My thing is, you don't need EA being acquired for those games to come back. It's just that theoretically, an acquisition may slightly increase the chance of that happening but when it comes to Microsoft's gaming acquisitions, we haven't seen such things really manifest.
Again, look at Rare. Playground were acquired in 2018 and are only now branching out into something besides Forza Horizon, and it's "only" with a dormant IP that maybe would've been better off under Obsidian while giving Playground the keys to, say, Crimson Skies or a new futuristic (F-Zero/Extreme G-like) racing IP open-world like the FH games.
If we'd have already gotten a Banjo-Kazooie 3 or remake, stuff like Scalebound and Phantom Dust not getting cancelled, a better Crackdown 3 etc., the vast majority of concerns over MS acquiring Zenimax, ABK or future publishers (especially Japanese ones), you wouldn't be seeing.
Gonna have to respond to the rest of that comment after my workout :/
. Everything you just described with MS buying EA only shows a benefit to MS's bottom line and a change to the content delivery model. But the gamer in me, doesn't care for any of that. Not a single mention of bringing back Road Rash or Haunting Starring Poultryguy, just like how I've seen no one else mention about possibly getting some WoW adventure games like that cancelled (and pretty good-looking) one from 1996 that never got released (Activision had the publishing rights IIRC).
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