Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard

24 Jun 2022
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6,917
This POS blaming Sony for restructuring Japan Studio and 'not investing in Japanese games'..... yet they turn around when Sony does fund FFXVI or Street Fighter V or help with tens of other games through XDev or partnerships or deals and cry foul.... 'Sony moneyhatted the Japanese games so they wouldn't release on Xbox'...

What does this POS expect? Sony to fund all Japanese games and launch them exclusively on Gamepass? Either these people have absolutely no brain or they are trolling....one thing is clear, they would never give Sony / PlayStation any kudos for ANYTHING.

Resetera is a joke, allowing these fools to post shit like this all day in that acquisition thread.

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For this guy, the 'healthier practice' is to allow MSFT use money garnered over 30+ years in 2 large monopolies to buy out publisher after publisher and offer their games for nearly free on a subscription to bleed out the competition to the point that everyone becomes dependent on their subscription and retail / physical media has been killed due to them buying all the biggest retail games..... then they can ramp up the price to the skyyyyyyyy. Healthy, huh?

People like Stormbrewer show just how inanely stupid they are about actual facts. When did Sony shut down Polyphony? Most of Japan Studio was restructured into Team Asobi. They prioritized increasing console availability in Japan and partnering with big Japanese celebrities to help market the brand there. They have worked closely with Square-Enix, a Japanese developer & publisher, and assisting them from funding to technical support for games like FF XVI. Most of the "large swath of games removed from the market" were either actually 3P IP that 3P publishers stopped supporting themselves, or the few actual 1P games that people like Stormbrewer probably never supported when Sony were trying to push them during the PS3 and early PS4 era like Tearaway Unfolded, PS All-Stars, Puppeteer, Echochrome, Gravity Rush etc. And yet act stupid when they wonder why new installments in those or new takes of those from 1P hasn't happened.

Sony's dependence on 3P is no different than Microsoft's; in fact going by revenue they are LESS dependent because Sony's 1P games actually sell, something that can't be said for most of Microsoft's games that aren't Minecraft. Maybe if people like Stormbrewer actually supported the PS Vita, you'd of seen less Japanese developers turn to Nintendo to find a place in the market because people like Stormbrewer don't seem to realize that Japanese 3P developers were gradually shifting away their focus from home consoles anyway for a variety of reasons most of which would not be realistic to expect Sony to have been able to address, as those reasons were mainly macro-economic.

What Japanese presence did Microsoft cultivate in the XBO era? EVERY small gain they made with the 360 in Japan was nullified and then some with the XBO. I have never seen a platform holder regress that terribly in the region outside of NEC/Hudson with the PC-FX. And leave it to a brainlet like Stormbrewer to evangelize the benefits of Game Pass in bringing "greater visibility to a ton of genres and indies"? To whom? The 25 million (if that) subscribers who are mostly Xbox people who upgraded from the XBO? I.e mainly the people in the console audience space with the lowest appreciation for genre variety and indies going by historical sales data and completion statistics even when the content was there? What new indie has Game Pass itself wholly funded and launched to relevancy of its own merit, no piggybacking off of the game already being on Steam or another console?

I don't think it's PlayStation or Nintendo gamers, or even Switch gamers, who "need" to be exposed to games like Neptunia or Theatrhythm or Ys because they are already aware of those games and have generally supported them over the years. Meanwhile Game Pass gets a Day 1 in Persona 5 Royal and falls out of the Top 50 after two weeks. They get a game in HiFi Rush (which started development in 2017, so not something you can say is the result of Game Pass) where less than 5% of subscribers have beaten it and only 2 million people out of a combined base of 190+ million bothered to even try the game out, when for 25 million of them the game was "free" in Game Pass? Give me a break.

People like Stormbrewer have the gaming IQ of a potato. They espouse an idealistic fantasy and try their best pseudo-intellectualist to make it sound like reality, but forget to keep any actual facts in mind when they type. They have to literally omit huge portions of actual truths just to make what they say sound appealing, but that's precisely the reason they fall apart.
 

daniel5043

Veteran
19 Jan 2023
637
654
People like Stormbrewer show just how inanely stupid they are about actual facts. When did Sony shut down Polyphony? Most of Japan Studio was restructured into Team Asobi. They prioritized increasing console availability in Japan and partnering with big Japanese celebrities to help market the brand there. They have worked closely with Square-Enix, a Japanese developer & publisher, and assisting them from funding to technical support for games like FF XVI. Most of the "large swath of games removed from the market" were either actually 3P IP that 3P publishers stopped supporting themselves, or the few actual 1P games that people like Stormbrewer probably never supported when Sony were trying to push them during the PS3 and early PS4 era like Tearaway Unfolded, PS All-Stars, Puppeteer, Echochrome, Gravity Rush etc. And yet act stupid when they wonder why new installments in those or new takes of those from 1P hasn't happened.

Sony's dependence on 3P is no different than Microsoft's; in fact going by revenue they are LESS dependent because Sony's 1P games actually sell, something that can't be said for most of Microsoft's games that aren't Minecraft. Maybe if people like Stormbrewer actually supported the PS Vita, you'd of seen less Japanese developers turn to Nintendo to find a place in the market because people like Stormbrewer don't seem to realize that Japanese 3P developers were gradually shifting away their focus from home consoles anyway for a variety of reasons most of which would not be realistic to expect Sony to have been able to address, as those reasons were mainly macro-economic.

What Japanese presence did Microsoft cultivate in the XBO era? EVERY small gain they made with the 360 in Japan was nullified and then some with the XBO. I have never seen a platform holder regress that terribly in the region outside of NEC/Hudson with the PC-FX. And leave it to a brainlet like Stormbrewer to evangelize the benefits of Game Pass in bringing "greater visibility to a ton of genres and indies"? To whom? The 25 million (if that) subscribers who are mostly Xbox people who upgraded from the XBO? I.e mainly the people in the console audience space with the lowest appreciation for genre variety and indies going by historical sales data and completion statistics even when the content was there? What new indie has Game Pass itself wholly funded and launched to relevancy of its own merit, no piggybacking off of the game already being on Steam or another console?

I don't think it's PlayStation or Nintendo gamers, or even Switch gamers, who "need" to be exposed to games like Neptunia or Theatrhythm or Ys because they are already aware of those games and have generally supported them over the years. Meanwhile Game Pass gets a Day 1 in Persona 5 Royal and falls out of the Top 50 after two weeks. They get a game in HiFi Rush (which started development in 2017, so not something you can say is the result of Game Pass) where less than 5% of subscribers have beaten it and only 2 million people out of a combined base of 190+ million bothered to even try the game out, when for 25 million of them the game was "free" in Game Pass? Give me a break.

People like Stormbrewer have the gaming IQ of a potato. They espouse an idealistic fantasy and try their best pseudo-intellectualist to make it sound like reality, but forget to keep any actual facts in mind when they type. They have to literally omit huge portions of actual truths just to make what they say sound appealing, but that's precisely the reason they fall apart.
You could just say they probably from the US or South America
 

daniel5043

Veteran
19 Jan 2023
637
654
Brazilians like Sony and Nintendo more. The people that buy xbox here only do it if they're low on cash and even then, they'd rather save money and buy a PS console than an Xbox. Gaming culture on Brazil was fostered by SNES, N64, PS1 and PS2.
The people who buy xbox in Brazil are much more likely to console war and be militant about it Though unlike the PS and Nintendo players
 
24 Jun 2022
3,961
6,917
One thing I've learned over the years is when they personally benefit from it, certain people will deny facts and twist them to prop up their personal preference. Blaming Sony for the westernization of Japanese games, the illusion that MS has made any real effort to capture markets on a world wide scale, and Game Pass worship are about what I'd expect. What I'd like to see is "I like cheap games over all other criteria so I support Game Pass and MS" or "I have stocks" and, most importantly at this time - "I support MS buying publishers because all I care about is how it benefits me".

In short, even if I don't agree, I prefer honesty over the tripe these people normally go on about. Since that level of self-awareness is unusual (particularly at Ree), it's probably best not to pay much attention to disingenuous people like this. They're not worth your time.

This one is always funny because the generation where Japanese devs REALLY started Westernizing their games is the same gen where Sony were doing so poorly at first they almost went bankrupt as a company.

You think that would make people like Stormbrewer happy but I don't think they are capable of realizing the irony. If they really wanted Japanese devs to not start Westernizing their games, then PS3 would've been the PS2 on steroids (which as the PS1 on steroids) and Xbox would have probably died and left the market somewhere near the end of 7th gen altogether.

Sony's downfall with PS3 is what helped Xbox become relevant enough to where it could limp along for several years so that people like Stormbrewer could post their idiotic talking points in sheer ignorance today.

I was on GAF then Resetera back to PS2 era. It has always been this way, posters relentlessly cheering against PlayStation. Back on PS2 it was bad graphics, cheerleading for games skipping PS2 like RE4. The PS3 trolling was absolutely relentless, to the point there were constant threads about Sony leaving gaming, and every sales thread a constant warzone as they sat in denial about PS3 slowly clawing back to overtake 360

The only brief reprieve from that was WiiU and Xbox One being so bad that they were undefendable for awhile

My history with GAF doesn't go anywhere near that far back but now I'm tempted to see if any of those pages are archived or just buried deep in the thread page counts.

Article mentions a new study showing that Microsoft's current lineup poses no threat to PlayStation, and suggests Microsoft could use this study to argue that they need Activision because everything they've bought so far isn't enough. Personally I don't think they should be allowed to gobble up everything just because they're behind, and I think the arguments of there being a doomsday scenario and a monopoly forming if the deal gets blocked are dishonest at best.


Well we don't need a study to show that MS's current 1P lineup is no threat to Sony's. Halo Infinite is practically dead, RedFall looks DOA, Starfield is about to get nuked by Spiderman 2, Forza Motorsport won't provide nearly as many user features as GT7, the list goes on.

But that's all Microsoft's fault with their lack of studio leadership, talent cultivation and organization. None of those get solved by just buying up big publishers.
 

Doncortez77

Veteran
8 Jan 2023
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How much are you guys willing to bet that MS will soon have their usual defenders write articles explaining how their handling of Zenimax games isn't relevant to what they'll do with ABK?
They already having an emergency meeting the the Xbox Ambassador's discord as we speak coordinating the responses. Every rebuttal will be the same and never original. Throw in a few Ponies here and there and cry more.....and you will have the standard responses and articles
 
24 Jun 2022
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6,917
the funny thing its the ot side of era its much more leftist and anti consolidation link and this thread lasted only 5 pages,need to be refloted to show the hipocresy

They're "progressive" and against monopolistic practices in capitalist markets until their favorite company that's ironically a mega-conglomerate, is the one engaging in a strategy that can even slightly be posited as potentially anticompetitive. Then suddenly they defend that company in ways that would probably make Conservatives blush.

Great point. I do think this is a possibility sony do need to consider and attempt to lock down key partners though.

They're going to be forced to, even if they don't want to take that option. Nintendo will as well (yes, Nintendo does have some choice 3P partners such as Sega, Sonic's home has been Nintendo since 2002).

How much are you guys willing to bet that MS will soon have their usual defenders write articles explaining how their handling of Zenimax games isn't relevant to what they'll do with ABK?

Isn't Jez Corden overdue for another 3/10 op-ed?
 
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Zeroing

Veteran
6 Jul 2022
577
1,046
They're "progressive" and against monopolistic practices in capitalist markets until their favorite company that's ironically a mega-conglomerate, is the one engaging in a strategy that can even slightly be posited as potentially anticompetitive. Then suddenly they defend that company in ways that would probably make Conservatives blush.

You are right, actually it was one of my biggest complaints and I even tried to imply they were being fanboys but I was banned ahaha 🤣
 
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