PS5 had a 43% share of all console sales over the last 12 months in UK (November 2022 to October 2023), but over the last six months (May 2023 to Oct)

Yurinka

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Ok so what's the solution? We should let MS buy more publishers until they finally get some marketshare away from Sony? I know this is what you want but that's not how competition works.

MS needs to be stopped. Point blank. Customers made their choice.
I'd say the solution is to look at the market numbers with a more objective perspective and not only from a Sony fan perspective: to see what market share has each company and to realize that Bethesda or Activision Blizzard are a tiny portion of the whole gaming market. Even of the console gaming market. And even of PS4 and PS5.

If you look at yearly CoD sales on PS and the MAU on PS you'll realize that over 90% of the PS players don't buy CoD. And CoD is by far the biggest 3rd party (non F2P) PS game. Meaning, the impact of losing smaller games and publishers would be even smaller.

Also, we also have to consider that in many cases to see a 3rd party acquired won't mean to lose them as multiplatform developer, because part of the reason of why MS or Sony buy people like Bungie, Minecraft, ABK etc is to get the money they make in other platforms. And also consider that MS has been slowly moving to abandon their console hardware and become a multiplatform 3rd party, somehing that pretty likely will increase once after several years having their finantially suicide gaming strategy they would decide to do something more profitable.

They may stop temporally for while, but MS, Sony, Tencent and the others will continue acquiring independently if players like it or not. And some studios and publishers will collapse. But new publishers and studios will appear and replace them. As of now, none of Tencent, Sony or MS has even a 20% of the total gaming market revenue share, so I don't see regulators stopping them. Only if as happened with cloud gaming they go to care about the potential future of some small market, as could be game subs, console VR or something like that.

As an example, seems that Sony soon will cross the worldwide 50% of console hardware market share (including Nintendo here), something that will reduce back pretty likely during Switch 2's peak sales years. If not counting Nintendo, market regulators may say Sony's becoming too dominant in the high end consoles market somewhere (remember that as now in euro there's a 80% Sony vs 20% MS and the difference pretty likely will become larger).

So they will continue acquiring, but Sony may do it indirectly using formulas as joint ventures intead of acquisitions. Let's say they create a new company participated by Kadokawa and Sony having Sony the majority of shares that includes From Software and maybe some interesting Kadokawa studio more. Or the same between Sony and Square Enix putting there one or two studios that Sony may want.

Yuri has said multiple times Sony needs to be kept in check and they need competition. He was for the Activision acquisition because of that.

He also has been repeating that "MS monopoly" post every time good PS news comes out. Insinuating PS will be fine so MS can get more.
My personal opinion was that I didn't like the idea of MS acquiring ABK and I would have prefered that the acquisition would have been failed.

But knowing it was pretty likely going to happen, the posiive side I saw from it -and what I thought the regulators were going to see after looking at the market numbers- was that was going to help the underdog -MS- compete against the market leader -Sony-, so it would hopefully make the market leader react and improve because of the extra competition.

But I also think Sony is perfectly happy with their current strategy, where they are growing in all their areas (minus mobile, we still aren't seeing results there and I think it's the main 'new' thing we'll see the next CEO focus on) so I think they won't change that strategy. I also think Sony knew that the Bethesda and ABK acquisitions (something that they would have prefered to don't happen) won't really hurt them and this is why they didn't react to them.

In the same way that Sony knew that the 'day one on Gamepass' strategy is a finantial suicide and that Sony didn't need to adopt it because Sony would continue dominating MS in the consoles and console game subs markets using Sony's more successful and profitable strategy and business model. And I think it's a smart strategy on Sony's side.

I think Sony's manpower growth strategy is smarter: instead of spending dozens on billions on acquiring big brands (many of them deads or empty shells) to grow instead the manpower of all their already existing, very successful and prestigious teams. And to acquire partners who successfully worked with them for a long time to secure them, or that would help them grow in strategic areas where they need to grow and where Sony isn't particularly strong (FPS, MP, GaaS, PC, mobile, eSports, VR, cloud gaming, tv shows & movies, Asia particularly China & India) plus also acquiring creators of record breaking new AAA IPs to produce more (case of Bungie or Haven).

Maybe for the headlines Sony's strategy is less flashy because they aren't buying IPs that were very popular 15 or 20 years ago plus a handful ones that are still top today, but I think it's smarter for the long term. Teams like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Sucker Punch or Insomniac will work in more top tier games at the same time and teams like Bungie, Firewalk, Haven, Housemarque or Bluepoint will help them make more new top tier IPs.

And they will also make these IPs more important reaching more people not only in their console, but also in PC, mobile, movies and tv shows to reach markets that already are starting to be very important as is China, India or South America, while also positioning themselves as market leaders before VR or cloud gaming start to grow in a few years and become big markets (but still a minority of the total gaming market).

So yes, I think it's a joke to think that MS has a monopoly or that will have it. I think they spent almost $100B of many empty shells and dead IPs and a few very successful ones with big potential but that their studio management already did suck and had many issues, and becoming that large these issues will grow. Which combined with their suicidal finantial strategy will end in a collapse. I think first many key people will leave and second will abandon their hardware to focus on a multiplatform digital store, and selling again their own games, with GP moving out from heir main priority and removing the "day one on GP" for AAA games.
 
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KiryuRealty

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Where it’s at.
Yuri has said multiple times Sony needs to be kept in check and they need competition. He was for the Activision acquisition because of that.

He also has been repeating that "MS monopoly" post every time good PS news comes out. Insinuating PS will be fine so MS can get more.
Ah, he's one of THOSE morons.

Kind of funny how Sony was just fine in the PS1 and PS2 generations without some homunculus clone of them fighting for a tie, and last generation was fine with the Bone getting crushed by the PS4 in spite of the idiots claiming that Sony has to be "kept in check". It seems like dumber gamers and pundits think that Sony has the same track record of fuckery that Microsoft does, when it isn't even one thousandth as bad.

What these mental midgets want is market parity, which is the main reason the PS3/360 generation sucked, as everything had to be developed to the lowest common denominator due to the sales splits.
 
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On Demand

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Yuri has said multiple times Sony needs to be kept in check and they need competition. He was for the Activision acquisition because of that.

He also has been repeating that "MS monopoly" post every time good PS news comes out. Insinuating PS will be fine so MS can get more.

Oh really? Fuck that shit.

The only company that needs to be kept in checked is MS. They should of been broken up a long time ago.

Competition is already happening. That’s why PlayStation is the market leader. Consumers have chosen PlayStation.

Nobody’s fault but MS that they don’t know how to compete and curate games.
 

Alabtrosmyster

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Wait till next year right? That has been said since 2013.

😂 🤣
Too bad there are no E3s anymore.

I keep wondering, what will happen next year... waiting for the fruits of cloud computing and other broken promises.

It's always possible that next year will be a breakthrough, but given their record, that seems unlikely.... Unless they secretly built up 50 amazing game of the generation level games and they are waiting to release them after the ABK deal is done, so they are in the clear.

Hopefully the next Doom will be good... but given how Eternal was, I don't have much hope.
 
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voke

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I've been saying ever since they announced ABK. All they have to do is push one button, and they will be the biggest 3rd party in all of gaming. How long will they hold on to Xbox is the real question. The console is supposed to be at its peak this year, is dwindling. If I had to guess we see MS transition away from consoles after this gen. Xbox doesn't make sense for them anymore. ABK and Bethesda will be ruined if its attached to Xbox for too long, because before they were bought, I'd say even these two publishers were more relevant than Xbox.
 

KiryuRealty

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Where it’s at.
I've been saying ever since they announced ABK. All they have to do is push one button, and they will be the biggest 3rd party in all of gaming. How long will they hold on to Xbox is the real question. The console is supposed to be at its peak this year, is dwindling. If I had to guess we see MS transition away from consoles after this gen. Xbox doesn't make sense for them anymore. ABK and Bethesda will be ruined if its attached to Xbox for too long, because before they were bought, I'd say even these two publishers were more relevant than Xbox.
Jock itch was more relevant than Xbox since the Bone debut, and its worse now than it was then.

Good thing they already have a drop-dead date planned out. Happy 2027!
 

Bryank75

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Is there actually a reason for Microsoft to sell their own box though?

Is there anything that it offers to the industry beyond dividing a small portion of people off in their own ecosystem?

Creating a need for crossplatform play / saves etc. More platforms to develop for, resulting in less QA time.

If everyone just played on PlayStation, games would launch higher quality, less bugs and faster and Microsoft could still sell all their shit for PS and PC.
 

Gods&Monsters

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Post from Era St Elmo Fire:

Potential data leak of european console hardware sales numbers.
(Jeuxvideo.com forum and IB)

January - September 2023 Hardware sales:

France:

PS5: 750k
Switch: 480k
Xbox Series: 103k

Europe (excluding UK and Germany):
PS5: 2.45M
Switch: 1.55M
Xbox Series 0.35M
 

KiryuRealty

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Where it’s at.
Is there actually a reason for Microsoft to sell their own box though?

Is there anything that it offers to the industry beyond dividing a small portion of people off in their own ecosystem?

Creating a need for crossplatform play / saves etc. More platforms to develop for, resulting in less QA time.

If everyone just played on PlayStation, games would launch higher quality, less bugs and faster and Microsoft could still sell all their shit for PS and PC.
There never was. MS even licensed Age of Empires to Konami for a Japan-only PS1 port that sold well. But Bill Gates had a vision of MS owning every screen in every house, so he wanted something to replace the flop that was WebTV, and Jonathan Blackley conned him into approving a games console.
 

Dabaus

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Post from Era St Elmo Fire:

Potential data leak of european console hardware sales numbers.
(Jeuxvideo.com forum and IB)

January - September 2023 Hardware sales:

France:

PS5: 750k
Switch: 480k
Xbox Series: 103k

Europe (excluding UK and Germany):
PS5: 2.45M
Switch: 1.55M
Xbox Series 0.35M
How do third parties even justify making xbox versions of games? How much worse do sales have to be before we just see publishers soft cancelling xbox versions? Or does MS just pay them to port it like i assume they do for Japanese devs?
 

On Demand

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Too bad there are no E3s anymore.

I keep wondering, what will happen next year... waiting for the fruits of cloud computing and other broken promises.

It's always possible that next year will be a breakthrough, but given their record, that seems unlikely.... Unless they secretly built up 50 amazing game of the generation level games and they are waiting to release them after the ABK deal is done, so they are in the clear.

Hopefully the next Doom will be good... but given how Eternal was, I don't have much hope.

Starfield did nothing for Xbox. No increase in hardware sales or gamepass. If that game didn’t bring any traffic to the platform I don’t believe anything will. People just do not want Xbox.

It’s not like MS being poor at gaming helps anything either.

Post from Era St Elmo Fire:

Potential data leak of european console hardware sales numbers.
(Jeuxvideo.com forum and IB)

January - September 2023 Hardware sales:

France:

PS5: 750k
Switch: 480k
Xbox Series: 103k

Europe (excluding UK and Germany):
PS5: 2.45M
Switch: 1.55M
Xbox Series 0.35M

This is insane. What is even the point of that console anymore. To please the minority rabid fanbase?
 

Yurinka

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Post from Era St Elmo Fire:

Potential data leak of european console hardware sales numbers.
(Jeuxvideo.com forum and IB)

January - September 2023 Hardware sales:

France:

PS5: 750k
Switch: 480k
Xbox Series: 103k

Europe (excluding UK and Germany):
PS5: 2.45M
Switch: 1.55M
Xbox Series 0.35M
If these numbers are real and continue with relatively similar numbers until the end of the generation, I think MS will reconsider their current position and won't make an Xbox for the next generation.
 

On Demand

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This is simply the sheer volume of IPs and developer MS has. Once these teams start releasing games, Sony, with half the studios, will struggle to keep up with game outputs.

Having all those IP’s don’t guarantee a success story. A game still has to be good. MS managing them doesn’t give confidence going by their history.

Sony with less studios(for now)will undoubtably have the better quality of games.
 

Alabtrosmyster

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Starfield did nothing for Xbox. No increase in hardware sales or gamepass. If that game didn’t bring any traffic to the platform I don’t believe anything will. People just do not want Xbox.

It’s not like MS being poor at gaming helps anything either.
Starfield is a broken mess of empty promises... It's easy to say, but if an hypothetical world Halo:Infinite was a CoD killer, RadFall as good as TLoU 2 and Starfield like an Horizon FW, but in space with planets you can land on, etc. we would not be having the conversation.

If people don't buy in xbox it's not because they hate the logo, this is because it has nothing to offer to them.
 
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