Sony got their market share by doing the same thing MS is doing… throwing money around.
That lawyer video you guys are throwing around and speaking about negatively because he doesn’t massage Sonys balls said it best, MS got trounced last gen and they’re responding. That’s what competition is.
Buying up once-independent 3P developers & publishers isn't exactly the "competition" many people had in mind. When Sony was getting beat by Microsoft in the 360/PS3 gen, Sony hunkered down on fortifying their 1P output, taking more chances and increasing the quality. They zeroed in on 1P gaming experiences by...actually releasing 1P games, regularly, aimed at the hardcore/core gaming audience and re-establishing goodwill during the end of PS3 which paid its way forward for PS4.
Microsoft could've done the same thing. They could've not cancelled Scalebound, not cancel Phantom Dust reboot. Delayed ReCore to polish it up further. Delayed Bleeding Edge for more polish and have a Series X-optimized version available for the system's launch. Maybe actually have had the foresight to make a Banjo-Kazooie remake much sooner. Helped co-fund and get exclusivity or timed exclusivity on upcoming big 3P games of the time like RDR2, RE2 Remake, Sekiro etc.
Instead they focused on services and buying studios while going too off-hands in several other aspects. It has now been five years since their reinvigorated focus on Xbox since 2017 (GamePass) and the only 1P games they have released (as in, from studios they had prior to acquisitions or IP they owned prior to acquisitions) are:
-Sea of Thieves (troubled launch, pretty stable now but not really a big-ticket style of game)
-Forza Motorsport 7 (solid game, but more of the same Forza/Gears/Halo that became a meme)
-Halo Wars 2 (I think this is actually developed by a 3P developer but I'll count it)
-Flight Simulator (great simulator, but primarily geared as a PC game getting console port a year later)
-Ori 2 (solid game ,only one here that meets criteria of not being Forza/Gears/Halo, being console-exclusive AND
setting an industry standard in some measurable way (high-fidelity 2D visuals production))
-Gears Tactics (basically Halo Wars but for Gears, also was PC-exclusive for a good while)
-Forza Horizon 5 (solid entry, but again part of the Forza/Gears/Halo meme in a way)
-Halo Infinite (decent start but now struggling to retain interest and dying a slow death)
-Age of Empires 4 (does nothing for console, PC exclusive)
On the whole, there's not a lot on that list appealing outside of the usual Forza/Gears/Halo. So now let's look at the games from studio acquisitions up to this point:
-Bleeding Edge (dead)
-Psychonauts 2 (good game but very little creative input from MS, also multiplat)
-Death Loop (currently PS5 console exclusive, also very little creative input from MS)
-Ghostwire Tokyo (currently PS5 exclusive, also very little creative input from MS)
-Outer Worlds (decent WRPG, but multiplat, also very little creative input from MS)
...and we should've been able to add RedFall and Starfield to that list but both of them were delayed to ambiguous H1 2023 release windows. As you can see, however, that's a very stark contrast to the effort we saw from Sony during the latter half of the PS3 generation, where they really diversified their output and spread the appeal of their 1P to cover a lot of areas (for the most part) while releasing games that put the industry on notice in one way or another. And they did all of that without having to resort to buying up 3P developers or publishers. Oh, and it was done in a smaller time frame than what we've seen from Xbox so far given the games mentioned above.
When we can see the final fruits of labor with games like Starfield, Hellblade II, Avowed, Everwild, Project Midnight etc. and they not only inject some much-needed variety in Xbox's AAA offerings but also are high-quality works that the majority can recognize, and offer at least something that leads the industry in some measurable facet,
THEN we can say that competition has been brought to the table. But that requires results, results we've yet to see in a finished, released product.
So really, all we've seen from MS so far is: flexing of their disposable income in buying up developers & publishers, further irrelevance of Halo, potential of further Gears stagnation, Forza mostly remaining the same (could also potentially start stagnating, at least the Horizon side, if the next game there isn't a massive shake-up), multiple new IP revealed way too soon, some of the new games with those IP and rebooted IP in development hell, and a very small handful of quality games that don't do much for the Xbox brand either because they aren't AAA (Ori 2), are too niche a market (Flight Sim), or are actually extremely PC-centric with Xbox versions coming well later down the line if at all (Flight Sim, Gears Tactics, AOE4 (still PC exclusive), Halo Wars 2).
Honestly they haven't done much in terms of actual 1P or exclusive games to draw attention to the brand beyond the people who were already with the brand prior to the 2017 period. And, I think things like the recent Ampere Analysis & CESA sales numbers for Series consoles, while very good for the platform, are kind of indicative of this. Considering if the notion that crossover between PC and console gamers isn't very high, then Xbox games on PC wouldn't suppress console sales theoretically speaking, and mobile/cloud is at best still a complement to the console side. Meaning most of the brand growth would still be on the actual consoles.
Which, we HAVE been seeing in ways with the revenue increases, although it's debatable how much of that is due to the acquisitions or not. But anyway, the Series consoles might be outpacing the 360, but it's not by the significant degree people might've been thinking earlier and realistically I don't see how the idea Series were at 16 - 17 million sold (through) or whatever ever took hold. So I'd say a lot of Xbox's revenue growth is probably some mixture of Zenimax figures being rolled in, increases for games like Minecraft (most of that coming from the combination of non-Xbox platforms), some increase in spending by existing members of the ecosystem (a bit through GamePass, a bit through DLC, more through purchase of additional 3P games, a good chunk from peripheral sales) and some of that also coming from new members into the ecosystem through Series S though, again, it's not by several millions more in all likelihood.
Also keep in mind MS just reports Xbox revenue, not profit, so there could be an influx of new people into the ecosystem via Series S who aren't spending that much beyond buying the console (which MS makes no money off of) and getting a GamePass subscription....and those subscriptions could vary
significantly in terms of how people are paying for them (or if they're really paying anything at all for it).
(tho tbh the only ones I care about are Phantasmagoria, Leisure Suit Larry (oddly not on that list), Guitar Hero, Gabriel Knight, DJ Hero and Crash Bandicoot).
