The most important question I have is: will they replace Bobby Kotick?
EDIT: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. [...] he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture."
There’s probably an essay that could be written to answer your question, but the short version is that Kotick is not a gamer, but an executive. He specialises in extracting maximum value from an existing property, everything else be damned.
For example, Activision had a successful franchise Call of Duty that did releases every 2 years or so. Kotick’s insight was that they could release one every year and basically print money. He was right. He then used that money to acquire Blizzard, a company that had many beloved franchises. He then applied those same principles to the running of Blizzard, to the point where the company releases half baked, buggy, awful excuses for games. An example of this is Warcraft III Reforged. They did it because re-releases of old games are a reliable way to monetise nostalgia.
And that’s just the somewhat justifiable part. Because making money is good, right? Shareholders love that shit.
What’s less defensible is the toxic work culture that was fostered under him, where sexual harassment was endemic. Of course he never saw the fallout of that. They fired some patsies and called it a day.
> For example, Activision had a successful franchise Call of Duty that did releases every 2 years or so. Kotick’s insight was that they could release one every year and basically print money.
To be fair though, they put two studios on it, which is very unlike other annual games, and a much better approach for WLB and avoiding (some) crunch.
I remember a Starcraft II fan map named Bobby Kotick TD. If he hits you, you loose money. If you hit him, you loose money too. It was banned after a short time.
To be honest, I think Microsoft and Activision deserve each other.
On the other hand, since the news that he knew about years of sexual harassment at the company the stock has dropped 33%. If "maximising shareholder value" is the only metric for success it seems that making one of your employees kill themselves for failing to tackle a culture of abuse seems like a poor way to do that.
And 100% of that drop (and more?) has been recovered for shareholders by this acquisition.
One could argue that Microsoft would have paid more, and I’m sure some enterprising lawyers will get paid by tricking some shareholders into suing over that, but that’s like arguing with the waves about when high tide is.
Corporations should be about maximizing value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders. Historically the creation of a corporation had to be justified to be in the interest of public good. Anyway I agree.
Kotick got a good run for the shareholders - he's now a liability having had all the sexual harassment under his watch. The sexual harassment/lack of leadership discipline has discounted the sale price of ATVI (microsoft swoops in) - he sticks with firm for a bit during transition to ensure smooth transfer and steps away afterwards. I don't see any other way - he's become a liability especially for a company like Microsoft.
Value skyrocketed, but IP was demolished. Warcraft and Starcraft are two of the most popular game franchises ever. Today, nobody cares about the story of these games anymore. Popular characters have been written into a wall or killed off in an unsatisfying way. The overall story is a tangled mess of retcons, 1000 IQ BBEG, and directionless plot lines. While Activision made record profits, they did it at the cost of player numbers. Every new character is shallow, uninspired, quickly killed off, or never used again after their initial use(Bwonsamdi, Rexar, many more). By failing to appease players with the story, and putting systems designers in charge of gameplay, they have been draining the value of their IP for the last 10 years.
For games to be successful today, they need popularity. Twitch streamers need to play it. Youtubers need to make "how-tos", and word of mouth is king. Activision drove the final nail in their coffin with the PR nightmare this year. No amount of necromancy (Warcraft Reforged, Classic WoW, Diablo 2) can save the company long term.
Short term it was increased but how much long term damage was done? Warcraft III Reforged has yet to receive most of the promised features or even a single patch.
Who exactly do you think the CEO of Microsoft Gaming reports to? This is a pretty common corporate structure. I've worked under a total of 4 CEOs in a hierarchy before (CEO of an investment firm reports to CEO of the owning bank's European investment division reports to CEO of Europe reports to actual CEO).
It probably isnt and it should become an integral part of Microsoft Gaming within 3-6 months. There is nothing dramatically different between it and other gaming projects/units in MS Gaming. This is not a large enterprise acquiring a startup and letting them run independently.
Apparently his shares are worth about 385 million and his golden parachute is like a maximum of 293 million.
So if Microsoft buys out and fires Kotick, he'd walk away with like 678 million dollars. It's pretty weird that there are people who are happy about this proposition and are not named "Robert Kotick".
I share your dismay. Even if you're someone who doesn't care about the issues that have come to light over the past year, the blatant mismanagement (dare I say running into the ground) of the once golden Blizzard portfolio has been painful as a long-time Starcraft 2 fan.
For a moment, I was truly hopeful that we might see some reinvigoration for blundered projects like the Warcraft III reforged.
Perhaps even some hope that Microsoft might breathe new life into Starcraft II, which still stands as an incredible game.
Everything under Blizzard's portfolio feels like it has been left to rot. The only thing they seem to put effort into is their Pay-To-Win card game, Hearthstone.
Unfortunately even under new management I don't see Starcraft getting much love, the focus is now on cross-platform games and RTS games are PC only (which is a small niche compared to the overall market).
They catapulted over the shark with the conclusion of SC2's campaign, so it wouldn't surprise me, buuut if I've learned anything in this era of reboots, it's that no IP is really dead, some of them just hibernate for a while, and promises a popular franchise is done aren't worth the electrons inconvenienced to convey it.
Given how ActiBlizz doesn't even want to acknowledge Starcrafts existence anymore, excluding it from Blizzcon e-sport highlights and leaving the broken ranked system unfixed for I don't even know long it's been, I believe change in company culture there would need to be pretty substantial to bring some love back to Starcraft.
Wait, did they start putting effort into Hearthstone? I stopped playing a couple of years ago. To me, the bellwether is whether the game still locks up for a second right before a match starts as it synchronously produces a megabyte of logs or something.
The game never really felt that great after Ben Brode left. Battlegrounds was pretty OK though.
They put a lot of effort into their new game mode (which might as well be an entirely separate game from Hearthstone), but by all indications it flopped pretty hard.
There has been more activity than normal on the core game mode and Battlegrounds, although mostly focused on content (whether actual cards or cosmetics) than actual technology changes or new features.
I'm not so sure. Microsoft recently revived their Age of Empires franchise, and has has been pretty good about supporting it as an e-sport (sponsoring tournaments & streamers, reliably re-balancing, releasing updated versions, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if they took a long term view for the much-larger-RTS Starcraft, especially given its size relative to AoE.
This can't be permanent. I bet this is to keep the markets happy in the short term while this gets absorbed, and then Kotick will "retire" at some point in the next year.
The reason he's still there is because this deal has probably been in the works for a while, and they weren't going to cut him loose until it settled. I'm sure that as soon as it's possible after the acquisition that he'll suddenly decide to spend more time with his family, pursue other interests, or get sent to the farm to play with the other dogs, whatever euphemism you like.
If you take over a company, you don't necessarily want to plunge it into even more chaos than the acquisition will create already by immediately getting rid of the CEO. It's entirely possible that they will get rid of him after a transition phase.
I'm hiring now, and I had the pleasure of interviewing someone who was leaving Blizzard. He was pretty sharp and I was bummed that I had to pass on him.
Anyway, I think this acquisition will actually stop the bleeding snd create some stability
Honestly, this is the sort of thing they have to say right now - the deal isn't closed yet, and saying they're going to dump him might lead to shareholder lawsuits, especially if the acquisition is blocked.
Realistically, there's a high chance that within a few months of the acquisition being completed he'll be expected to leave quietly.
Businesses learned long ago there are plenty of very easy legal ways of making people leave of "their own accord" by adjusting work environment factors to a point no sane person would stay in the position.
Or May be the whole woke uprising thing was to drive the market cap down so Microsoft could get a better deal. As usual the media doing the bidding for the big tech.
I'm not American but on this side of the pond we expect more proof than twitter allegations before firing people.
Hopefully woke culture will take more of a toll on US tech and we will see more US companies opening up in Europe. The US tech centralization is bad for the world (and US consumers).
Are CEOs who make 100+ million USD per year responsible for the behavior of those under them? What about when they are informed of such behavior and do nothing?
Sometimes it seems we hold those working the drive-thru window at a fast food place to a higher standard than major CEOs.
I am not saying real people weren’t hurt. But some of these allegations are years old. You don’t think those same insiders who were pushing those stories in news media could buy the lows and now riding the spike in the stock price?
So you don't think your original comment was (or at least seemed) dismissive of the allegations and was instead purely a note on the timing of them coming to the public?
So far, only allegations.
Outside the US, in the civilized world, we expect people to be found guilty in a court of law under the due criminal process.
Yeah and surely the timing of this whole campaign has nothing to do with it. That’s exactly what a “woke uprisings” is. Conveniently exploiting victims to fit your own benefits be it political or economic. Last 2yrs have seen plenty of that.
I would _guess_ that ousting a CEO AND acquiring the core company at the same time are expensive propositions - I'd also guess that MSFT fully plans to address the leadership issue there (Kotick) but going to give him a year to age out of the newly acquired company and take his golden parachute elsewhere.
Smaller M&A where it's easier to swap the leader (like a startup - which most of us are used to) is MUCH easier/cheaper/faster than swapping out an established CEO of a public company.
They'll do it because he's a liability and they want to make a statement to the new company - but it'll be slow.
yeah, it's going to take a little time for Microsoft to worm its fingers in there and get a feel for a massive org like that. I've got a feeling Kotick is going to be out of there within a few years.
Stephen Totilo shared this back in June of last year. Apparently Bobby's got an agreement signed that if he gets terminated he makes $292 million off of it, double what he made last year.
Microsoft is spending $70 billion all-cash on this, an extra quarter billion isn't much. I don't expect they'll cut him loose until after all the ink is dry.
How long is that valid for? Also does buyout by Microsoft count as a “change of control” … I’d bet Microsoft would wait out whatever time span that’s valid for and then immediately refuse to give him another one and can him…
The name Blizzard is still magical to me. As the maybe 15-year old playing Warcraft II and drawing strategies on a piece of paper.
I don't play computer games anymore. But it was magical.
Not just "like" - they are a completely different company.
It's well known that in the wake of the huge success of WoW they had to completely re-organize the company in order to be able to properly support a game with an active audience of that size. Their size, their structure, their culture, everything changed.
Back in the day, Starcraft was my thing. I didn't get into Diablo too much, but I thought it was cool. I remember playing the original up to the final level. A few years ago, I played and beat it on my retro PC, and it was exactly as fun as I remembered it.[0] I tried Warcraft, but I didn't get into it.
Even outside of the recent scandal, I've long had mixed feelings about Blizzard: harassing independent servers, always-connected DRM (I got booted out of single-player CoD: MW so many times), and milking franchises with remasters. I will say, though, that after a several year hiatus, a friend and I have discovered StarCraft 2 co-op with weekly mutations, and it's a lot of fun.
SC 2 recently went free-to-play. If the rest of their catalog is added to Game Pass, that will be something. Blizzard games have been stubbornly expensive years after release. I wonder what this means for Battle.net?
> Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog. [Xbox PR]
> The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft’s Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass [MS PR]
In case anyone still doubts that Microsoft is all-in on Game Pass.
If they want to be all-in on game pass, then they should actually go all in.
As somebody who just got game pass, I feel kinda cheated for what I get; All the games offered there are the “f2p” versions, even MS first party titles like Halo only offer the “default” versions to play “for free” when paying a monthly subscription.
It’s like those free versions Epic hands out; They are playable, but they usually lack any and all of the “extra DLC content” that too often are needed to make a game actually fully fleshed out.
You've got to be kidding. The version offered on Game Pass is the "Standard" edition, that isn't just a "free to play", "stripped down" version of the game. It is 95% of the game! The remaining 5% is almost always cosmetic items, like skins or cars, that really do not impact the core experience.
There are some exceptions, like Destiny 2 I believe, where the meaningful DLC is excluded, but that is not the rule. Game Pass is an incredible deal.
You’re getting the “standard” edition of the game. Sure, you’re not getting the expansion packs or other cosmetics, but neither is any other person that doesn’t buy the deluxe editions.
No, what they usually give you is actual customization options because in the full-priced standard edition those do not exist anymore.
As character customization has by now been apparently redefined as being wholesale "cosmetic" and thus locked behind an deluxe version up sale, MTX spending and FOMO season pass grinding.
It's a sorry state for AAA and increasingly even mid-tier developed games.
Often enough it directly affects gameplay, instead of playing with/against individual other people, which in many games used to be recognizable by their character customization choices, too often multiplayer now ends up looking like the clone wars.
As the only people that stick out with their customization are those that spend money on having any choice other but the one default choice.
Pretty much all meaningful multiplayer customization. Past Halo titles let you unlock a variety of different armor styles, and colors, by just playing trough the singleplayer.
Now pretty much all of that is either locked behind "Deluxe edition", MTX or dozens of levels of season pass for a single item.
Which is particularly cynical considering how they advertised this Halo as the "most customizable ever, no two Spartans will look alike!" [0], when the only way not to look alike is to spend at least 10 bucks for a new armor core.
Want that new armor core in a different color? Enjoy spending another 8 bucks [1] because color schemes are now armor core specific.
This is objectively worse than what people used to get when they bought the "standard" version, as effectively all meaningful multiplayer customization is now paywalled behind a ton of MTX and not just the "nice extras".
Halo isn't the only offender on that front, pretty much all the games that nowadays get released with a "standard" 50-60 bucks version, and then a 100+ bucks deluxe version follow this very same MO. Which would be okay if those "deluxe version" actually offered the full package, but they don't, what they offer is the same extend of customization options that used to be included with games out of the box, while getting "everything" has by now come an exercise of unlimited spending [2] because creating unlimited new color swaps, with every new "season", is the new most profitable business model, not releasing a fully functional and fleshed out game out of the box, that's by now the absolute rare exception in the "AAA" sector.
This is also exactly what many people have been warning about where MTX will ultimately takes us for literally decades, game pass is the ultimate manifestation of it; You subscribe to "games as a service" with a monthly fee, then you are supposed to spend money on those rented games to upgrade them to proper fully fleshed out versions, and then you are locked into the subscription because not paying for it now also means losing access to all the content for the games you purchased on-top of your subscriptions.
Anybody who looks at this and goes; "This is great for consumers!" must not be a consumer and must have completely missed all the relevant discourse about these developments during the last decades.
Character customization has always been a huge part of multiplayer games even before MTX became a thing, particularly for Halo titles.
Disregarding that as "you only want to play dress-up" is not only unbelievably reductive, it's also a very lazy way to just hand-wave away a very real issue.
The same way you could disregard the vast majority of features from any game except core-gameplay features; "You want to color your car in your racing game? How silly, you only want to play dress up!"
I guess it's just naïve of me want to play things in games?
Maybe if you started with Halo 2. Halo 1 lan parties and Xbox connect you had a choice of maybe 10 colors. It was about the shooty-shooty. And maybe that's why I like infinite, I get pretty darn good shooty-shooty.
I agree to an extent that the customization system is a little broken though. Team games should force red or blue coloring, half the time I can't tell who is or isn't on my team. "Outlines" aren't enough. All so people feel that their $50 armor purchase isn't hidden.
I "started" with Quake, but that's besides the point.
> Halo 1 lan parties and Xbox connect you had a choice of maybe 10 colors.
At PC lan parties people had a choice between a myriad of custom skins particularly with GoldScr mods, all for free.
> It was about the shooty-shooty.
It was also about the community, particularly at a lan party, and part of a community is also being able to individualize your avatar.
This used to be very well understood for the longest time, and now it's suddenly considered "playing dress up" because billions dollar heavy AAA publishers, and developers can't be arsed anymore to put in any meaningful player customization that isn't monetized and FOMO'ed to hell.
> All so people feel that their $50 armor purchase isn't hidden.
Would you disagree that previous Halo games, short of going back over a decade, offered more, and particularly more meaningful, multiplayer customization options out of the box?
> Team games should force red or blue coloring, half the time I can't tell who is or isn't on my team. "Outlines" aren't enough.
They are enforced to such a degree that picking any blue color skin already gives you a slight advantage as enemies will always be colored red and allies always be colored blue.
Which is btw a very separate issue from armor types customization, people having different armor types makes it much more likely for you to recognize enemies from friends as 90% of people wouldn't sport the exactly same armor style that's completely indistinguishable.
It gives the whole affair a real "clone wars" vibe where you ain't fighting individuals, but yet another of the same model, something that wouldn't have been acceptable in single-player FPS games or multiplayer mods, like CS, decades ago.
I didn't write a single thing about my enjoyment of the game?
But it's fascinating how your difficulties of differentiating players and teams trace directly back to the lack of non-monetized character customization, and that just passes right by you like a non-issue.
Maybe you enjoy fighting in the clone wars, I think it's greedy design and not conductive to good gameplay.
20 years ago non-commercialized mods got this right, I really don't see why wanting it to get right in massive AAA titles, with a pretty rich and established history in exactly that, is suddenly such a controversial opinion, on HN out of all places.
On one hand I get called out for wanting more than only the purest "core-functionality" ("You can shoot people, what more do you want?"), on the other hand people disagree with the notion of how these "low-content" version are very much "f2p" versions, as a lot of content that used to come out of the box is now relegated and hand-waved away as "playing dress up".
This criticism has nothing to do with Game Pass. There are micro transactions whether you buy the game stand alone, play via Game Pass or play the free to play multiplayer.
If they were already in talks to buy, how much of it is a case of "wasn't willing", and how much is it "wasn't allowed"?
For all the flak ActiBlizzard deserves for this situation, I'd be happier if it were illegal for Microsoft to publicly give them shit about while already in talks to buy. There's just way too many ways to abuse that for leverage.
I think it’d be problematic for a buyer to take public actions in devaluing its target amid takeover talks. Not just for Activision — but it’d be impossible to see Microsoft’s denunciations as principled rather than profit-motivated
Lose-lose situation. If Microsoft talked shit about ATVI in the months leading up to the acquisition, people would accuse them of doing it in bad faith to hurt the share price and make the acquisition cheaper.
Wow, has MS gotten that profitable or has Acti/Blizz been doing that badly to be considered a „good deal“?
Tho, it certainly fits what MS has been going for with its gaming division; Game pass ultimate has a weird lack of „third party aaa” titles in certain genres.
For example EA Play is included in game pass ultimate, but by now all the new EA stuff is locked behind “EA Play pro”.
Having the whole Acti/Blizz lineup in there would be quite the offering. Particularly all the Call of Duties were never really sold in a “get all of them!” way. Now all of them might end up for “free” on game pass.
Nadella transformed a company that was at risk of turning into the next IBM into the 2nd most valuable company in the world. Where have you been the past 9 years of his tenure?
Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position.
Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet:
> When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
It will be interesting to see in the medium-term if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. But for now it's wild to think about the fact that Microsoft owns the Call of Duty franchise.
I think there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers.
There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios. Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam. I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have some market access
You say that like games aren't already kind of absurdly cheap for how much work goes into them. People used to pay $60 of 1980s money for, frankly, pretty shit[0] NES games. That's ~$150 worth of money today. $30 games are downright cheap and I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices. People pay $30 for a decent meal at a restaurant FFS.
Which isn't to say that you should by a switch. If you don't think it's a good value then obviously you shouldn't. I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me.
[0] Not all of them were shit of course, but the catalogue is 90% shit and people did buy a lot of shit games.
Well, consider that you could buy any kind of game first hand for $60, then after finishing it, you could be able to sell if and get some money back.
Today you pay $30 (for some games, but a lot are still $60, $80, etc.) Plus the DLC, credits, extensions, registration to an account no ability to sell it or buy second hand.
Game industry got pretty bad, I've enjoyed it in the past, and I have the ability to just move on and ignore anything game related, what I am upset about is that today's kids are squeezed and coerced in order to play anything, and that is why I wish we had governments trying to put a stop to the current gaming companies greed
$60 was also worth quite a bit more in the heyday of GameStop et al.
What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires (physical media is pretty dead, and I say this having a paper library of around 500 books) and that games are ever-more-expensive to make.
For the preposterous number of person-hours that go into an AAA title, $100 isn't unrealistic. But there's price anchoring dating back to the nineties now, and that as much as anything is why games upsell the way they do. (The "complete edition" prices are probably more representative of what a sustainable price for a player really is.)
Or we can do microtransactions until our souls bleed and go back to single-use codes in the game case. That's a thing too.
> What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires
While it is hilarious that you imply that vendor lockin, half finished games, arbitrary difficulty curves meant to stimulate mtx and a lack of ownership is a "general consumer desire" I think it is more reasonable to say that the consumer has no choice. They (or we) clearly still desire to buy videogames, so folks end up buying what is essentially trash.
The dichotomy isn't "buy AAA games" or "don't buy games". It's never been a better time to buy indie games, many of which these days are super polished and rewarding experiences. But the thing is? If you want an AAA game with AAA affordances, the cost of production is going to have to come from somewhere. And--well--it certainly seems like a lot of the market wants those games and those affordances, so yeah, if the player is prioritizing AAA games, then yes, they're expensive, and yes, they're going to get more expensive, and you can either pay it at the front door or once you're inside.
You pay your money and you take your choice. I agree that it's silly, and that's why I don't buy those games. I buy and play a lot of games, but it's been at least five years since I bought a game (that didn't show up from Humble Choice or whatever and is languishing in my game keys spreadsheet) from Activision, EA, or Ubisoft.
I have gotten more enjoyment out of Starsector[0], a game that isn't even on Steam yet, than I've ever gotten out of any AAA game I've ever played. It cost me $15. (I have since bought it repeatedly for friends.)
For the amount of person hours having a game sold for $100 is a bit of nonsense, they sell in million worldwide and the people working on it are laid off as soon the production is over, so it's just shared holders and CEO pocketing blood, are we really still thinking that people doing the work are getting anything off the production
> I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices
> I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me.
That's because on this topic you are quick on making judgements on people and don't (want to?) realize their reasons for not buying a switch can be valid and these reasons are not attack or counter arguments to the reasons for why you would buy switch games.
I am not an entitled gamer.
edit: and FWIW I was checking the switch page for Disco Elysium and I see that the price tag is the same as Gog's (39.99) but now I don't care anymore about discussing this topic here and now. Nintendotax gone ? Just checked Life is stange:true colours, same price tags as steam.
I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
> Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet.
Not:
> Game prices on the switch is why it's not worth gave in to the temptation yet.
> I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
No, you built a straw man argument.
Do I go around asking for a refund because The Witness has been given for free and I paid for it in full upon release ? That would be entitlement. Not buying a switch because switch games are too expensive for me is not being entitled. I also think not buying a switch because I may think switch games are too expensive is not being entitled.
> [..] , which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
Yeah, way to go. First you suggest in a reply to me that people who think like you think I do are entitled and then you state your opinion is objective and then throw a blanket statement about something no one said and suggest this position is objectively ridiculous.
That may be true, but the switch exists in a market where games are extremely cheap. High quality free to play games, cheap indie games I play for weeks, steam sales, huge numbers of games given away by Epic Games, "free" games with prime gaming, and the insane value of Game Pass. It feels like every time I spend money on a game its free on the Epic Store or "free" on Game Pass within a few months. There's never been a cheaper time to be a PC gamer... assuming you already have a PC.
I still play $60 for games because it's not a big deal for me but it's weird when I already have so much entertainment available for almost nothing. Playnite says I have 1050 games available to play, about 50 are duplicates and about 350 are from Game pass. I've apparently spent less than $600 on steam and much less than that on all other stores. Seems like the market value of the average game is about $1. (Hands waving furiously)
A lot more than just inflation changed since the '80s. Off the top of my head: massively larger market, better tooling, better hardware, better distribution networks.
Gaming companies aren't entitled to my money. They're allowed to offer games for the prices they want, and the market is allowed to buy them or not.
If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though.
Besides, many of those $10 games that are $30 on the Switch are made by smaller teams or even solo creators. Just because some video game properties have grown into giant franchises with multimedia companies pouring tens and hundreds of millions dollars and armies of people into them, that doesn't mean the majority of video game titles around are like that.
Come to think of it, in the light of the countless recent stories of overwork and abuse in the games industry and the scandalous quality issues plaguing high-profile releases in recent years, I'm not even sure if we should be incentivizing games having a lot of work go into them.
How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? Expensive things don't become cheap just because they're cheaper than four decades ago nor because they happen to be created and marketed by large corporations with lots of employees.
> If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though.
That's a fair point. My first guess is lootboxes and microtransactions being used to make up the difference, as well as underpaying employees. For big studios it is common to lay off developers immediately after a big release.
Regardless, I don't think that same logic applies to smaller studios.
> How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway?
That isn't what I was saying, though I admit I didn't make it very clear. If you don't want to buy something because the cost isn't worth it to you, that's perfectly fair. What I am annoyed by and think is entitled is any kind of objective-sounding judgement that 'games are too expensive'.
there are some major differences that mean inflation isn't the best indication for price
the biggest is market size. in 1980, there were very few people buying games compared to today.
also, for non-aaa games, the difficulty of making a game has in many ways gone down significantly. NES era games were at the absolute limit of hardware capabilities, and required a ton of wizardry to fit within size constraints. now graphics expectations are higher, but modern computers are so much more powerful that you can afford a lot more sloppiness.
Consider the total hours games like BotW offer and divide that into the price. That might alter your feelings that game prices are too high. I know it did for me.
You do—so if I like a game enough, I'll pick it up elsewhere, too. But digital games as a whole get harder to play over time. I've moved my DSi games to my 3DS, and I've got a Wii with a whole bunch of titles.
The economics of game passes are like this with nearly all of them. The XBox game pass has several games (on both PC and XBox) where their price is multiples of the monthly price.
Forever seems like a stretch. When Switch is succeeded, how long before Nintendo shuts the Switch shop down? You can't legally move downloaded games between consoles.
This was a big issue with WiiWare when Nintendo shut down the Wii Shop. People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything.
Download is only one way to buy Switch games, and at least I'll still be able to use one console - compared to zero as soon as I stop paying my feudal obligations to Apple.
And almost every game available on cartridge has some kind of patch only downloadable from the store. Some don't even have all their data on the cartridge and need a download to function at all...
Also most indie games require more brainpower than what Apple Arcade offers. Apple wouldn't know a complex game if a pile of discs with them fell on their heads.
I will maintain servitude to Apple for the rest of my life because of iMessage: if I leave they can subtly “break” my access to messaging with people I care about (and have done so.)
> because of iMessage: if I leave they can subtly “break” my access to messaging with people I care about (and have done so.)
Even if you made sure to unregister your phone number and email addresses from iMessage first? You can do this while still using an iPhone to validate that it's worked before you give it up.
> Even if you made sure to unregister your phone number and email addresses from iMessage first? You can do this while still using an iPhone to validate that it's worked before you give it up.
You are right, of course. And you can also do it afterwards if you forgot. There is no nefarious plan to void your messages when you change phone.
The "lock-in" and the lack of ownership/copyright extension for media provided by their service is absolutely a problem, but it's not "servitude". There's a couple of other members of FAANG where the relationship with users is much more like servitude.
I wouldn't be too sure to be honest, only companies with a big game platorm can compete with Valve being able to subsidize these and sell them at cost or less, because most game purchases one them will be through steam.
Stadia also has a lot of indie games but thanks to their sales, you end up with a comparable price to Steam sales. Disco Elysium, for example, went on sale for US$18 vs. ~$23 on Switch. Steam's sale price was ~$20.
This is the sole reason why I don't play Switch games unless I can get them on sale, or they're exclusive like BotW.
I have a 14" gaming notebook (ASUS G14 2021) that's portable enough and offers decent battery life especially for lighter games with access to my Steam library offline, and plenty of key shops to find games for uber cheap when there's no demo available for me to vet the value of a title first.
You assume that the Steam users are willing to pay the same price as Switch users, but that's not necessarily the case. Volume matters as well, maybe the number of Steam users is way more than the number of Switch users so they can make up for the lower price by selling more.
Unfortunately, physical copies of games are not depreciating; BotW, despite being five years old, is still selling at full price.
Good for them though, I mean it's a great game, and it means the games don't depreciate much on the secondhand market either. Although I'm confident people don't want to sell physical Switch games, a lot of them have a lot of life in them and become prized possessions.
Go browse itch.io for some inspiration. There's thousands of indie games there. A lot are no more than student projects and demos, but some are really polished and inventive.
There's tycoon games and strategy too. Stardew Valley and Rimworld are at the top of their genres. And games like Dominions, Telltale games. Horror might be up there.
Do we count mods? DotA and CS would be indie if so, but are now quite commercial.
You're right that a lot of indie games are metroidvanias or roguelites. However, AAA games exist on an incredibly narrow scope these days too. You have shooters, sports, open-world action games, and that's basically it. Rarely do you see big studios deviate into unknown or experimental mechanics.
Indie studios have produced a lot of games with varied mechanics that are just a huge breath of fresh air for me, personally.
You'd never see a AAA studio making Factorio or Satisfactory, for instance. Probably unlikely to see them make a game like Darkest Dungeon, or Don't Starve, or Stardew Valley or Terraria or Starbound or.. the list goes on. You just might have to look a bit deeper to dig through the roguelikes and platformers.
This isn't true, there are plenty of trivial examples to counter this notion.
e.g. Annapurna Interactive has been publishing AAA-quality titles from indie devs for a long time. And most of those games don't fall into the roguelike or platformer vertical.
That's not true. Microprose is back and have a lot of indie developed titles coming out this year. They are almost singlehandedly bringing the wargaming genre back from the dead.
I wonder where do Paradox strategy games fall, Crusader Kings / Europa Universalis ones. They definitely don't look AAA, despite offering a very deep gameplay.
A little reductive I would say? I would add at least:
* Puzzle (The Witness, Baba is You, Antichamber, Manifold Garden, ...)
* Survival/open-world (Minecraft, Terraria, Don't Starve, Subnautica, The Long Dark, ...)
* Horror (Amnesia, Outlast, Layers of Fear, Five Nights at Freddy's ...)
* Management/simulation (Factorio, Stardew Valley, Kerbal Space Program, ...)
* Metroidvanias (Cave Story, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, ...)
* "Walking simulators" (The Stanley Parable, Gone Home, Firewatch, ...)
Some of these maybe you'd disagree with (Are Metroidvanias just platformers? Can Minecraft still be put on a list of indie games?), but I personally think it's a crime to omit at least puzzle games and survival games. The offerings from the AAA space for those is not very impressive compared to the indie space.
Roguelike just means you can beat it in one sitting now, which is a very good niche for indie games if you think about it. Slay The Spire, FTL, Rogue Legacy, and For the King are all "roguelike" but fill completely different niches in terms of actual gameplay and features and all are awesome.
I love indie games but I also wish there was a middle ground between the current generation of AAA titles (not typically my cup of tea) and the indie community
There does seem to be a void in between the two. It's so rare I come across one that it's a surprise. Hell Let Loose was one of those surprises for me. It's definitely in the space of "AA but not AAA" games.
The group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately.
Tencent and Microsoft have both spread a lot of money around. Perhaps for varying reasons, namely MS needs to make up for the lack of titles developed for the Xbox Series, and add titles to Game Pass to make it more a more attractive offering.
I can think of several recent releases without even searching: Melkhior's Mansion was released this week, Slipways earlier in the year, and Midnight Fight Express coming soon. I don't know if that's representative of indie games or not.
There's so many platforms to build for, and on some (xbox/ps5) a high(er) barrier to entry, vs. low on the PC, or mobile. I'm not surprised that there's much indie action on the xbox/ps5.
As the author of Slipways, it warms my heart to see it mentioned randomly in a HN comment!
As an indie game developer (hard to get more indie than me, I think, since I'm doing this mostly solo), I can attest that it's never been easier to get your game on Steam or a console platform. On Steam it's mostly a matter of a $100 fee and filling a form. Consoles are a bit harder, but still dramatically more open to indie titles than say a decade ago, and all of them are possible to get on even for small developers.
I also wouldn't say that "the group of indie dev studios is dwindling". It's just a matter of the old indie studios "growing up" to become bigger enterprises, but there is tons of other people replacing them on the lowest rung, with teams of several people and true labor of love projects.
Unfortunately, I'm not a gamer, and run a weird version of linux which I don't think you support anyway, but I have played Slipways (a friend purchased it) on the PC, and it's a great game!
> The group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately.
Have you looked at Steam recently? Indie studios are doing just fine, and new indie studios are popping up all the time. I'd argue the indie market is stronger than ever.
I assume by "truly indie" they mean "bootstrapped or invested by neutral/disinterested VCs" — as opposed to
1. invested in by one of the platform owners themselves, in exchange for a [temporary] exclusivity agreement, making them essentially a sharecropper on the platform; or
2. invested in almost exclusively by a single bigcorp publisher, making the studio essentially a secret marque of that publisher for projects they don't want associated with their regular brand image.
Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners, or by a bigcorp publisher.
Changing the definition still doesn't change how many indie studios are out there. There's been zero evidence here that there isn't a healthy indie market, but plenty that there is.
> Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners
My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements. And I have more access to such games than at any time in history.
These indie companies are no more independent (the meaning of the word "indie") than a person hawking MLM products is independent. They're effective employees of a bigcorp — with all the same danger of being "fired" by their publisher at any time for misbehavior.
> What evidence? My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements.
Ignore indie games that have been on Steam for years and years, or that only get published on Steam and no other platforms; these are the exceptions to the rule (despite this set containing some of the largest hits by sales volume.)
While there are studios that sell only on Steam and other low-barrier-to-entry channels, 99% of them don't last more than a year or two, because selling only on Steam is leaving almost all your money on the ground. There's a reason that many of these games don't get support updates any more and won't run on e.g. macOS or Linux after any major OS update, despite originally intending support for those platforms: the studio didn't survive.
And while there are indie studios that eventually take their console-exclusive game over to Steam, it's often still published by the publisher on Steam. Take a careful look at the Steam catalog page for the "publisher" field. If there is one? That's who's making the direct revenue on the game sales. Like the publisher of a book. The "author" — the studio — is only getting a commission.
There are a few indie studios who manage to "earn out" their deals with publishers, and take over their own Steam pages (though not usually their console marketing rights — the platform owners don't like dealing with the long tail of self-publishers, they much prefer well-known bigcorps as marketing partners.)
Here's just a small list of games I found in less than 5 minutes of looking.
- Five Nights at Freddy
- The Binding of Isaac
- Hollow Knight
- Carrion
- Loop Hero
- Factorio
- Phasmophobia
- Frostpunk
- Valheim
- Satisfactory
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Stardew Vallley
- RimWorld
- Terraria
- Dead Cells
- Cuphead
- Among Us
- Project Zomboid
What about profitable indie studios? Sure there’s a lot of games made by small companies, but how many are around for a 2nd game that isn’t just a shadow of their first game?
I don’t have any stats but would find that interesting, mainly as I’m not sure how much revenue indie studios have. Is the split like 10% get most of the money while the other 90% starve?
Dwindling as in Tencent showing up with a bag of cash and buying a board seat when a studio hits whatever financial metrics they are tracking.
FWIW, I have heard they are hands-off and offer resources, like great groups for closed alphas.
The only concern I have is that they can become more hands on and excersie control over creative decisions in the future.
Personally, I value good stories from mid sized indy studios. The dominance of 2 engines can make things feel a bit homogenized. Pair a great story with another engine, and my interest is piqued.
> The group of truly indie studios is dwindling unfortunately.
This is inaccurate.
I don't have the stats to back it up, but the power of Unity Engine and Unreal Engine have effectively created an indie game developer renaissance.
One of my favorite games at the moment, Hell Let Loose, is published by an indie studio that started in 2017 as a Kickstarter project. They launched their PC version last summer and successfully launched an Xbox port this past fall. It is objectively a better (but harder) game than COD WWII or Battlefield V, both of which are considered AAA titles and have had hundreds of millions put into them for development.
Combine that with the lower barrier to entry with the discoverability of games on Steam and Xbox marketplaces and you have a very hot market. Oh, and consumers play video games now more than ever.
Yes, the problem is that the reliance on these few engines is a worrying form of concentration in itself. Especially for the Unreal engine, which is used aggressively to push the Epic games store. How independent are they really when they're so dependent on a single software vendor?
And, to my eyes, Epic uses openly monopolistic practices: they drop the license fee for the engine if you use their game store.
I'm having the opposite experience. I dropped probably $400 on games over the holidays and found three games I wanted to play.
I used to make games, so I hated when people used GameStop because it avoided the developers getting any money. But now I'm thinking that GameStop would be great, because most all but three of the games I bought just suck.
These online-purchase-only systems frankly need a one-hour refund policy. So many games where the controls are just jank (like 100% janky). Like everyone looked at Celeste and thought "This game is good because it's hard" instead of "This game is good because it rewards skill". I'd rather play Celeste and Returnal than these other utter wastes of hard drive. I only made it through Unsighted because you can make yourself invulnerable: fun story, fun ideas, fun levels, jank combat.
The last three games I fell in love with; Hollow Knight, Ori, Souls Series, have me believing this. You can build amazing games with a smaller team these days which is incredibly inspiring.
>> There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now.
Yeah, but from TFA:
>> Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities.
I don't see a need for this and agree with the notion that companies should not buy companies. There are cases where it makes sense, but I think another mechanism needs to be created because buying and selling companies is often too much like buying and selling people in addition to being anti-competitive.
While I mostly agree with you, I think Microsoft is doing this to compete directly with Sony's plethora of studios to offer more AAA titles on Xbox and Windows exclusively — so from that light, it's not entirely a bad thing.
We already know that Bethesda is keeping their autonomy to make the same great games we love from them, and Starfield is a chance to prove it. The only downside being: Playstation owners losing out on playing what may end up being among the most popular titles in the next 5-10 years if Starfield and TES6 are a success.
If the competition exists for Sony already, why is it necessary for Microsoft to own that competition?
Activision Blizzard already competed with Sony, which is why people think the market is more healthy prior to this acquisition.
In your comment you point out that Bethesda still has their autonomy. So why is it good again for MS to be acquiring these studios? They continue to make the same product in more or less the same way, but now have to appease their MS gods, all while generating more profit for MS to the benefit of not really anyone, except MS.
Points taken! Which is why I mostly agree with the GP. I can't name a single acquisition that did more for the consumer than what was already on offer, so I am generally against them.
My last comments were more in the shoes of Microsoft.
Valid. I am torn between both because I like to see console makers competing and having a reason to innovate somewhere, but as a consumer, I want the ability to play games on any system the developer is willing to support, too.
You are not entitled to play games or buy platforms. It is a net negative for the gaming industry to be limited in their revenue streams. You cannot split the baby because some customers CHOSE to buy PS5 but the game THEY want to play is on Xbox. If they want to play it, buy an XBOX too. If that is too expensive, the gamer should increase their disposable income.
Apple is not obligated to invest into building Apple Music app on Android or Windows. Just because Apple tied Apple Music into their own ecosystem, doesn't mean you are owed anything.
It's hard to imagine they will be much worse than the holding company they bought it from. Microsoft have been a lot better custodians of Minecraft than most people thought they would be. Same with github or a number of other acquisitions.
But I agree the concentration is still a problem in itself, even if the owners are OK.
I'm hoping it just means Diablo 3 released sooner since Microsoft has a mountain of resources.
I'm curious how game development is under the large tech companies like Microsoft. Game development is notoriously recognized as a slave driving industry for the labor force. Massive tech companies, like Microsoft, aren't exactly known as places to slack in the software world, but they also don't seem to have as toxic of a labor culture as the gaming companies who pass mountains of costs to their labor to remain competitive (Amazon perhaps being the exception here).
(Itemization and damage looks very bad in Diablo 4 previews though - damage in hundreds of thousands and "strictly better" items instead of trade offs)
> Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth.
>Starcraft is not going to be re-born anytime soon
you don't need to make another Starcraft game. you can use that IPs to develop different kind of game like Warcraft is used to make Hearthstone the card game.
Starcraft was just a fantastic game - people have been playing it for decades. Not sure how financially successful it has been (fairly well I would imagine) but it has a legion fan base.
Why they never used Starcraft to compete in the same game-space as Eve Online or Star Citizen is beyond me... though, I think that's just wishful thinking on my part. Love the IP of one and the game play of the other =[
Well Microsoft just released Age of Empires 4, which turned out surprisingly well, best RTS since Starcraft 2. I'd say chances we're going to see anything SC3 or WC4 related only went up by this. Maybe there will even be a WoW2 finally.
About time other studios get a chance to work with Blizzards IPs, they did well creating all those beautiful universes, but they struggle so much making just one new game every few years.
Can we take a moment to appreciate the irony of decrying platform lock-in when talking about the company that successfully launched a new gaming console against... Nintendo and Sony?
The fact someone else did something is an absurd justification to do it as well. In a practical level, Xbox is much more locked in than Nintendo, as all Nintendo consoles have PC emulators for it and the devices can be jailbroken.
It's not absurd: it's literally proof of a viable and sustainable business model.
Consoles have always been packaged, standardized, and locked computers. That Nintendo is bad at security isn't proof of any great altruism. It just means they're not good at secure hardware design.
Except they weren't -- until Nintendo came along with their 10NES lockout chip.
Actually Texas Instruments had a go at it with their beige TI-99/4A, but by the time that came out most of the TI-99/4As that would ever be sold were already sold, without the lockout. But it was the NES that turned the locked box into a business model.
I've had fairly good experiences running Blizzard games under wine over the years. Diablo 3, StarCraft Remastered, and a few others tend to work pretty much perfectly. Based on the versions of Visual Studio and stuff that get pulled in when installing them, I have to wonder if the secret to making a game run well on Wine is just to stick with older versions of the Window-specific libraries rather than the cutting edge.
Yes. I mean the sub-headline is XboxGamePass is now 25M+ subscribers. Logical next step isn't even games: it's convergence.
Curious we don't see similar consolidation in the Japanese market: Square Enix, Konami, Capcom, Tecmo, Bandai Namco, From. Even Nintendo. All seem attractive targets, no?
They aren't really consolidated so much as they're interlocked. Many of the largest companies in Japan own stock in all of the other largest companies in Japan. It diversifies their holdings and insulates them from market fluctuations while maintaining their independence.
It's really a bit of everything. Some like Fuji, Hyundai, or Toyota, I believe have been historically diversifying across several different markets.
Sony did expand on some fronts via acquisitions, e.g. Sony Electronics acquiring Konica-Minolta, Sony Electronic Entertainment acquiring several studios, etc.
That's because the Japanese game companies are more or less in friendly coopetition with each other. Both Namco and Sega run game centers (arcades), which means they're buying each other's games to populate said centers (as well as other manufacturers' games). And then there's Smash Bros., in which many of Nintendo's competitors (including Microsoft -- twice) went to Nintendo and said, "hey, could you feature our characters too?" And then there's Mario & Sonic at the Olympics...
Seems somewhat imaginable, since they'll try to do that with Windows and Xbox obviously. At some point with enough games to support that, PlayStation owners will feel left out and Sony might follow. Who knows...
I think for gaming this is pretty negative that everything is consolidated under large developers. I also don't think that the atmosphere under Microsoft will be better than under Activision.
I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest.
> I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest
In what way is PC gaming attached to Microsoft? Microsoft Game Studios doesn't have a lot of market share in PC games besides Minecraft, and the industry is very diverse. Most games happen to run on Windows, but apart from DirectX they have resisted every attempt from Microsoft to use that in any way.
If PC gaming is attached to anyone it's Valve, but even that is slowly changing.
They really should, but is Activision-Blizzard that company? Of the 7 Activision releases in 2020 to now 4 are Call of Duty, a game that's much more popular on consoles than on PC. Blizzard is the PC side of the company, but they are mostly games that are slowly dying due to mismanagement. The IP is very valuable, but current PC sales alone wouldn't make Microsoft dominant by a long shot.
Microsoft are using their platform positions to sell games on Xbox and PC in one, which others can't compete with (because Xbox is a closed market), and their deep pockets to fund Xbox Pass mean it is a little combative rather than genuinely competitive.
> Microsoft Game Studios doesn't have a lot of market share in PC games besides Minecraft
You could see it coming that this is controversial.
1. Microsofts share in publishing video games isn't exactly what you'd call small. They acquired Zenimax Media [1] last year, which is kind of big. That said, Microsoft can't be seen as a dominator in the publishing market.
2. But the argument wasn't necessarily about who owns the most studios. Microsoft absolutely dominates in the platform market on PC. Games are developed for Windows. Period. Everything else is either niche or an extra.
I think my think my argument is mostly based on the precise wording. Make it slightly broader and it would no longer hold.
1) Microsoft holds a very respectable share of the video game market (especially if you ignore mobile). But their share of the PC game market specifically is much smaller.
2) Microsoft is the dominant platform of PC gaming without question. But that doesn't make the market attached to them. Being without alternative or having high switching costs is what makes you attached, not merely using it. Most games are inherently multi-platform, either because they are built in an engine that is or because they are also sold on other platforms (mostly consoles). Not having Linux, Mac or SteamOS builds is usually a business decision, not a technical one. You could argue that they are attached to Microsoft because that's where the consumers are, and that's true in a sense. But that limits what kind of benefit Microsoft can get out of the attachment and what kind of damage they can do - at most as much as it takes to get enough consumers to switch (dual boot, some SteamOS device, etc). In a world where games sell platforms the attachment isn't very strong
I agree with your view point - however it’s hard to see any other outcome for the AAA franchises. Player expectations of a modern title are increasing - as are the time, human, and fiscal capital required to ship a modern title - years of engineering, hundreds of people, hundreds of millions of dollars. The risks are huge - missing your date, or game experience can sink a company - consider what Cyberpunk almost did to Projekt CD RED - to ship they cut to the bone very late in the day. The economics of the AAA business is optimizing towards managing and distributing that risk thru supply-chain and scale. I don’t see a better way on this current trajectory.
Do players really prefer the current AAA space right now though? There are many indie games out there made by a small team (or even one person) that are very popular and successful (e.g. Stardew Valley, Outer Wilds). For me personally, I haven't really enjoyed a AAA game in years. I tend to stick to indie or more niche experiences. I think AAA studios might do well if they split up their massive teams to create many, more focused games instead of one big blockbuster that primarily serve as a vehicle for microtransactions.
I don't know what the 5th highest reviewed title of all time that was made available on a popular platform selling well tells me about the state of AAA as a whole to be honest. One data point, for a game considered a masterpiece of the last generation (so the decade), doesn't say a whole lot.
The Avengers was a large AAA game from the world's most popular media franchise and it recently tanked. "That should tell you everything you need to know..."
Because the Avengers game wasn't very good. On the other hand the recent Guardians of the Galaxy game sold much better and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews.
In general people don't care whether a game is a "AAA" or "indie" when they buy it, they look at reviews and whether their friends are playing it.
There are good AAA games and bad AAA games. The good ones do very well, the bad ones don't do as well. If we move the goalposts to say that the high-grossing/well-reviewed AAA games don't count then of course we're going to end up with a skewed picture of what the market looks like.
If you look at best-selling console games by year, [0, only goes up to 2019] you can see that the list since about 2001 is dominated by sports games and Call of Duty, with the odd exception (usually a Rockstar game).
While the gaming discourse has turned against these titles, they are consistently the most popular. If anything, I’m actually flabbergasted that Rockstar was able to turn a Wild West drama into the best selling game of 2018, as it feels so different (that is, less cartoonish) to anything else on the list.
The fact of the matter is that the people who talk about games make up a small portion of the total group of people who play games. AAA still exists because it still rakes in cash, year over year.
The success of Red Dead Redemption, and Rockstar in general, is proof that you gamers will appreciate more substantial than sports games (which barely update between editions, and sometimes actually have LESS content than previous editions), and shooters, which have rapidly turned into Skinner's Boxes themselves with all the unlockables and achievements (which hijack the whole point of a shooter from competition between individuals' skill, into a competition between the player and a list of arbitrary "achievements").
But clearly the AAA studios have the market figured out, it's just easier, less risky, and more profitable to make shallow "product" than a rewarding and interesting "game."
I guess my point, and my issue with this take, is that "you gamers" is kind of a useless identifier. Most people who play games are going to stick to the blockbusters, like most people who go to the movies stick to the blockbusters.
And the same complaints hold true in film, where people argue that studios are just taking the safer, more profitable path. But the people who make those complaints aren't the audience that the studios/publishers are targeting, and they are a minority in the larger market as a whole.
I mean, don't get me wrong, there are indie games or whatever that break out or break the mold; Stardew Valley has sold 15 million copies since it launched in early access in 2016, and though I think the CoD game from that year sold more, I guarantee you there are more people still playing SV than CoD: Infinite Warfare. But Activision made their buck and moved on, and that strategy continues to work for them.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the consumer. I'm just saying that AAA studios have "the market" figured out. They know how to, forgive the use of the phrase, "game the system," to make profit at the expense of quality. They didn't invent it and they sure as hell won't be the last to use it, but they certainly got good at it.
I'm just saying that there is definitely an appetite among the general game consumer for a more complex and cerebral type of game! And that it's sad to see such few of those titles come from the big studios (while at the same time they nickel-and-dime everyone with their dlc's and other schemes).
>Player expectations of a modern title are increasing
Unfortunately this is not true. Modern AAA franchises do not innovate. They are just shinier. You can find the same systems, and often more complex or creative ones, in games from the nineties and 2000's as you can today. Modern gamers either become jaded, seek out indie games, or, more often, simply buy what is offered.
Remember when the big question used to be "are video games art? CAN they ever be art?" I remember publications like PC Gamer spending a lot of time and energy wrestling with these questions. It wasn't lip service; it was a real goal that game creators at the time pushed towards, because gaming was trying to find acceptance and respect alongside other forms of media. I think that has mostly been lost, now. There is and will always be indie creators pushing their own creations that are inspired, but the AAA market is totally lost, imo, if you are interested in games as more than just a mindless bit of fun. That overarching sense of progressing towards something that could be considered true "art", is gone, for the time being.
edit: didn't mean to sound like I wasn't giving credit to all the fine indie games and game creators out there. There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
AAA games are about art as much as big budget films are… which is to say: not a lot. You’re never going to see as much risk taken when each game costs hundreds of millions of dollars. There are however tons of “mid tier” studio, what some might call “triple I” big indie studios that put out all kinds of innovative games.
Even Minecraft and Fortnite, two of the most popular games in the world, are systemically quite interesting compared to games 20 years ago. (yes really, Fortnite is much more interesting than you might think looking at it superficially)
Defining “art” when it comes to games is of course subjective. Some would say The Witness is much closer to art than The Last of Us 2, while others would say the opposite… but does it matter? Either way they’re both fantastic games. The medium is still being pushed forward, you just have to know where to look.
Like I said, there will always be innovative indie games. But the AAA studios used to be important in driving artistic and systemic innovation in games, because they had the most money and visibility.
Games like: Elite 2: Frontier, Star Control 2, Heroes of Might and Magic, KOTOR 1 and 2, all had strong writing, narrative, complex and difficult systems to manage, and were innovative in their time. And none were "indie" games (though at the time, some of these games could be made by 1 or 2 people). This is a real difference. Just look at the difference in Blizzard. Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo 1 & 2 made them hugely influential and successful because of their commitment to quality. Now, they're a joke. But somehow, still one of the biggest gaming companies in the world!
It's not about defining art. It's about a push to create games that can stand up to works of literature and cinema which are considered to be important artistic achievements. I'm happy to hear that there are titles out their which are striving for that, but AAA studios aren't doing that. In fact they actively push new titles as being cutting edge while they retain or dumb down systems that were created decades ago.
Disagree hard on Fortnite. It is very shallow. The building system seems interesting but is superficial. Yes it's integral to winning the match, but its not very strategic...just like Fortnite's shooting and physics are quite cartoony and not very tactical. It is a VERY poor "shooter," but a fun "battle royale game." There is a difference these days.
Minecraft was not a AAA game, it was just purchased by a AAA studio.
Again, I'm not saying that there aren't any games that are artistic or interesting. In fact that's the opposite of what I said in my original post! I'm saying that "The Industry" (which will ALWAYS have the most market share, visibility, and resources) is not creating those games. They are not interested. And that is a sad change from what used to be.
My point was that the kind of budgets of AAA games have now completely dwarf the “AAA” games from 20 years ago. There are still innovative games being made with the equivalent budgets and team sizes of those older games (2-50 people, $10 million or less).
On top of that, there are still massive budget AAA games that are willing to take risks for artistic integrity. Obvious examples of this are things like Death Stranding or The Last of Us 2.
Blizzard’s quality hasn’t actually fallen. They’ve clearly had some internal culture issues but their games have always been stellar. They just operate on glacial timescales which everyone seems to forget. Their last release was in 2016, which was Overwatch, a fantastic game.
And re: Fortnite, if you don’t think the building is strategic, you need to watch some high end competitive matches. It’s incredibly tactical. Each player acts like a real time map designer trying to give themselves the biggest positional advantage (while balancing resource usage etc). I would argue that it uses the full 3-dimensions more than any other competitive game out there.
> Modern AAA franchises do not innovate. They are just shinier.
> There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
I guess that's my point and I didn't write it very well. AAA publishing/production has become a low-risk money-machine that feeds a very large audience occasionally surprising but increasingly bland content, while making small formulaic incremental changes year-on-year e.g. next-gen textures, bigger maps, more multiplayer servers and modes. Unfortunately a large proportion of players are happy with just that model as evidenced by the revenue derived from it.
One thing we can say fairly certainly is Bobby Kotick's days are numbered. Everything I've read about the guy indicates to me that he won't do well in the Microsoft corporate culture.
It’s annoying that MS will probably pull the same crap they did when they purchased Bethesda a couple of years ago: we won’t see releases of most Activision/Blizzard games on Sony consoles going forward.
This exclusivity game has to stop. I understand MS’s motivations — they want people to buy their console, after all. But it’s awful that you can make an educated console decision, and then two years later have a good chunk of games stolen from you because of a merger.
I concur that I’d really like to see Linux take the PC gaming space over. Personally I feel that we should focus on indie games and low-level platform compatibilty — if enough users switch to Linux, AAA studios will have to follow. Except the MS-owned studios who have a standing order to ignore Linux, of course…
I'm really excited for the Steam deck sometime this year, especially given GPU prices are what they are. Interestingly, Valve's work on Proton/Wine has created a situation where smaller developers are almost less likely to target Linux first class, as the game can just run on the compatability layer and save the dev the work of obscure Linux issues that effect 1% of players.
The issue is a bit more than that. To make gamers and normal users switch to linux we need to make more GUI apps for linux and increase the accessability of linux GUI / DE.
Just watch the LTT videos about gaming on Linux. Linux is a Cluster** of an OS to troubleshoot and configure.
I'm a dev myself I love my Arch and everything but this OS is NOT meant for normal people.
Its 2022, people don't want to fiddle around with a terminal.
Until Linux and its users don't fix the core problem of linux and thats usability, I don't see people switching to it.
> Its 2022, people don't want to fiddle around with a terminal.
Is this a good thing though?
Computer illiteracy seems to be at a new high-water mark with the upcoming generation. They generally know how to punch some buttons to make a few things work, but nothing more.
If anything, I think we should be teaching the basics of the UNIX command line starting around 5th or 6th grade. Get those kids playing around and learning a bit more about their systems. Maybe teach a few little python or Javascript one-liners to automate some stuff. Not everyone will pick everything up, but a lot of overlooked kids would find a new skill that will help them no matter which direction their lives take them.
I love the terminal and everything but we should not teach people how to use it. The terminal is not the most user friendly thing out there is it? (maybe its harsh saying "should not teach" but lets say make them aware there is a terminal but there should be alterantives)
I would not get rid of it.. ever, but I would love to see alternatives to it. People are too fixated on working from the terminal and using the terminal that they don't see that its literally the thing that gate keeps people away from trying Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows or Macs are better, I do have a windows machine where I game and do ocasionally some work, but they are miles better when compared to Linux and its ecosystem.
Have you ever tried running an old App on linux compared to windows lets say? Windows compatibility is unmatched. I can effortlessly run old programs and games.
If a linux project is abandoned for a few years, good luck making it run. (and I know you can always recompile etc, but thats besides the point, no "normal" user will compile an app)
Which is not the argument that you originally posted.
You repeated an old cliche(which is false) and now you moved goalposts.
PS: I've tried to run multiple Windows apps that wouldn't run on Windows 11. I have an older In System Programming software, that I have to run in a virtualized Windows XP. So...
I don't really share your impression that everything is consolidated under large developers. Most of the games I've bought over the last few years have all been from relatively small studios (as far as I know anyway, it can be hard to tell).
Games are software. Changing the upper management/ownership isn't going to change deliverables. If anything, it could delay releases even further out with new overlords. Certainly they can clean house of the former companies HR department as well as any senior leaders that did nothing with previous issues.
It will take a long time before anything material comes from this from a games perspective. I would assume legal agreements are in place for cash-cow games like Call Of Duty on other platforms so that should alleviate any anti-competitive investigation.
Think of what you acquire when you acquire a company. You acquire intellectual property - products & ideas, you acquire people - future ideas, you acquire customer base - players. If you behead the company you certainly will lose critical people with it risking the products and customer base too. This isn’t Microsoft’s first acquisition, they’ll manage realignment of the new organization differently than just wholesale ejections. I’m sure Bobby’s new schedule has time for rest while he vests.
The video game development industry has a lot of financial similarities to pharmaceutical development.
As a major, why should I take the (large) risk to develop novel product? When I can outsource that function to a large number of smaller companies, who either go bankrupt or produce something of value, which I can then afford to pay a premium to acquire, after its value is known? I.e. if I can substitute money for risk, why wouldn't I?
I've never overseen a merger before, let alone one of this scale, so pardon my blatant speculation... but will that really be such an issue?
It seems to me that the mismanagement of Acti/Blizz is a product of a corrupt corporate apparatus. From the inside of Acti/Blizz, the problem is basically intractible, but I don't think that really applies the same way once you install higher rungs of authority. MS is no stranger to acquisitions, either, so it's not as though they will be asleep at the wheel during this transition.
The press release says they're keeping Kotick for the duration of the transition, then everyone will report to Phil Spencer. Seems likely that Kotick will be gone soon(ish)
It may well be that he has a job in name in the new structure but not actually a role and after some discreet period he will be put out to pasture. Kind of sucks if you wanted him to receive some sort of cathartic day of reckoning but maybe a pragmatic solution.
> [...] if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point.
I certainly think this should happen.
The trillion dollar giants should not span multiple industries. They have absurd monopoly power and can make growing your own niche impossible.
Why does a cloud computing / operating system vendor / hardware manufacturer / business software / developer tooling company also own the third biggest gaming outfit?
Why, for that matter, are Amazon and Apple also movie studios (and soon to be game studios)?
This is ridiculous. These companies never have to compete with you. It's easy for them to funnel money into any effort and clone your product. You can struggle to grow revenue and they can simply allocate an engineering team and marketing budget.
You'll probably also have to buy your competitor's products or pay their taxes at some point.
What's funny is that when EPB of Chattanooga decided they wanted a Fiber Network to build their smart power grid around, Comcast said no.
So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies completely seperate in order to operate; otherwise, they would have too much of a competitive advantage over Comcast.
For the customer, it's just EPB, but for legalize and accountants, it's two completely separate companies, and money isn't allowed to go from the power division to the internet division and vice versa.
Imagine if these conglomerates had to do similar type of accounting. I don't know if that would be a positive for the customer/consumer, but it's an interesting thought exercise. Amazon might even consider shutting down quite a bit of e-commerce if they couldn't subsidize it with AWS...
Are you saying it's a good thing that Comcast was able to break up an upstart competitor? I'm not sure a world where that's easier would have fewer monopolies to today. Even in your example the large and established company was suing the upstart.
I do think advanced scrutiny of government owned companies is a good thing. I also think allowing Comcast to continue to compete with EPB was also a good thing.
I don't think Comcast is in a position to claim victimhood, nor is EPB. However, I would be interested in seeing this type of accounting being enforced for companies that receive grants and significant tax breaks/advantages and have localized enforced monopolies, such as Comcast and several other large companies.
I'm honestly taken aback by how middle of the road you are about that situation.
In what world is it a good thing that instead of accepting an offer to provide a needed service that you're in the business of, you refuse the offer and sue/lobby the requester into submission out of spite.
I didnt say I liked that Comcast was allowed to lobby to block EPB. But EPB won and they also won customer appeal.
If you read what I said, Comcast, having received billions from the government to build fiber optic networks that they never built, should be under advanced scrutiny, perhaps forced to keep their internet providing monies separate from their TV cable system monies.
Feudalism is an entirely different beast and either didn't exist or had minor global presence throughout the whole period you listed. Even listing the ancient Achaemenid Empire for example would make more sense in this context.
How would you describe the post-Carolingian economic organization of Europe?
What I was casting about for was the earliest example of innovation-suppressing economic subordination by force, over a wide area.
The Achaemenid (or later Abbasid) seem have featured more individual freedom, with regards to innovation, and less maximally-taxing policy to redirect economic output to ostensible land owners.
If your contention is that feudalism is an inaccurate lense through which to view medieval Europe, then okay.
But the taxing and redirection of excess economic output, accomplished through ownership and lending of land, leading to an underperforming history of innovation, seems borne out by the history of Europe, regardless of the intricacies or framework through which it's viewed.
And that seems pretty on point for exactly what everyone is decrying with regards to consolidation into conglomerates in the tech sector.
Very impressive indeed. He was backed by a multibillion dollar behemoth and, against all odds, and despite the commercial failure of the Xbox One (something that would’ve bankrupted any other company), he managed to keep the company afloat long enough to launch another product.
Spending ~$70bn to acquire another company is also impressive. Sure, Microsoft has limitless resources, and using acquisitions to hurt the competition is something they love to do, but still.. He did it. This is his win.
No chance. COD has consistently been a huge money maker on PS and Vanguard was #1 last year. They would lose out on way too much revenue, not to mention that massive negative sentiment that would bring towards Xbox and big game / console manufacturers. I think certain games like Halo and maybe some Bethesda will stay (ones that have previously been exclusive). But acquiring a AAA company and then cutting off half of your customer base seems like a big mistep.
In addition, I believe they have already announced they plan to continue support for other consoles/systems, and they definitely announced they support a PS "gamepass". Wouldn't be surprised if ABK would be included in a PS gamepass (Microsoft ultimately makes money from that).
I think there is some chance that future CoD will not be on PlayStation. They might even be used as a bargaining chip to get game pass on PlayStation. I could see it as, “if you let us put game pass on PlayStation we will sell Microsoft games on your storefront, including Cod. If not, no CoD.”
This paints Sony as the unwilling party. Microsoft can say, “we would love to have CoD on PlayStation.”
Why else buy them? Most Blizzard games are PC first anyway.
Sony (the studio) is an "arms dealer" and works with many different streamers. No reason they can't do the same on the gaming side and release, say, Spider-man, on Gamepass or Stadia after sales on their own consoles slow down.
I don't think Sony has anything against GamePass on PlayStation as long as Microsoft pays its revenue share. After all, there's EA pass on PlayStation.
What are you talking about? That article literally says they're focused on delivering games exclusively to platforms that support GamePass. The next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games will not be on Playstation.
Bethesda is AAA, and we've already seen that Microsoft is willing to sacrifice revenue short term, by dropping the PS5 version fo Starfield, in order to drive long term GamePass subscription and revenue. There is no point in taking the risk of making a huge acquisition just to share the games with your #1 competitor.
I'd like to see this acquisition blocked, it will be bad for gaming long term to have so much control with one company.
Console exclusivity is no longer the driving force for revenue, that's GamePass.
Selling full versions everywhere else is good business, we saw that from both Microsoft and Sony making more PC ports - and for Xbox it is yet another driver into their subscription model.
Until GamePass is on Playstation, putting Microsoft games on Playstation doesn't drive subscription revenue. We already see future Bethesda titles being withdrawn from PS5, I don't see why this would be different.
There's a difference between "native" MS studios from before the current aquisition wave and recent acquisitions made to bolster GamePass. Last I checked Deathloop did release on Playstation, at least.
> Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position
You forgot to mention he started with billions of dollars backing him up. It was not like a small startup or something.
Not really. It was clear that there was space for another large player in the console market. Sega was done or dying, Sony and Nintendo couldn't keep the entire playerbases to themselves (and PC and Mac are barely worth mentioning im sorry to say).
I'd say Sega's floundering indicated the opposite, despite a huge portion of that being own goals. I don't see any fundamental reason the market couldn't have been a duopoly.
And, to the GP point of crediting Spencer, there weren't even many synergies to exploit with a Microsoft console in the first XBox generation. It certainly didn't "integrate" with Windows in any way that made you more likely to buy it over alternative consoles.
AFAICT (as someone who doesn't spend much time console gaming now), its success was essentially built on the back of (1) access to capital, (2) savvy exclusives, (3) intelligent acquisitions, (4) avoiding missteps in hardware refreshes, and in later generations (5) strength of social platform. So, props where props are due, because 4/5 of those are skill. Especially while no doubt having to fight an internal battle against all the other Microsoft political power centers.
IMO, and dismiss this as just gut feeling if you want, but it was just a matter of time before there was a 3rd big player. Console gaming was getting too big, too fast for there to be just 2 options for the market. Someone was going to come along and do it better than Sega.
Now, all credit to the bigwigs for having the business savvy to pull it off. But with the size and scale of console gaming, 2 consoles was just not going to cut it. (PC gaming was finished as a true competitor due to cost differences).
My read is that it was really Nintendo's failure to broaden their market that opened up the space. Cart vs CD was a understandable debate when the N64 was being designed. But the GameCube vs PS2 was just... ugh. And Sony has always had arrogance in spades when they get a lead.
I guess, in retrospect, Microsoft's fundamental synergy was "developers, developers, developers!" And realizing trading more powerful commodity PC hardware for decreased programming difficulty was a good deal. There were a large number of developers, or future developers, dissatisfied with catering to {insert Nintendo or Sony weird architecture hoops du jour}.
That's a good point. The Gamecube was definitely underwhelming in it's library of games and frustrated a lot of consumers. I think the point I'm trying to make is that it was basically inevitable that there would be a new major console. The market was too big. I'm sure there was also a chance that this wouldn't happen, and Sega/Sony/Nintendo kept on ruling the market. But it just takes one misstep. And there were two (Dreamcast and Gamecube) right as gaming was really starting to explode into its present-day extent.
I'm not trying to argue about the specifics about what happened, but just in general terms, there was always going to be room for a competitor in a space that big, that was changing that rapidly. Imho.
Makes sense! Between chance of failure & rate of change, the odds looked pretty good.
I'm more flummoxed by the fact that a fundamentally social-native offering didn't disrupt the existing ecosystem, in the 2000 timeframe.
We had chat. We had basic web. Keyboards weren't that expensive, were they? Seems a killer feature for kids.
Not straight "the Web on your console", but something more like AOL, Prodigy, and the late 90s portals.
My only explanation is that the 3 big platform companies were still thinking in packaged software/games, sold retail, terms. Hence XBox Live, when it emerged, was essentially a way to get more value (multiplayer) out of the packaged software you bought.
I feel like the "at Microsoft" already implies billions of funding. However, teams within big companies are not immune to reduced funding and cancelling if their strategy does not work.
As a longtime Blizzard fan and a former Microsoft employee, maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, but there's really only one thing I care about:
Will they finally start getting the fucking games right again?
Old Blizzard is dead and has been for almost a decade--the name's the same but their job now is not to make great games that push the envelope in game design but rather to manage cash-printing franchises. It's hard not to think this when so many of the people behind the original groundbreaking games (StarCraft, WC3, D2) have left the company and in some cases disavowed it.
Be happy that old Blizzard happened, I say, and look on with eagerness to new indie studios, many of which are being run by the same Blizzard vets.
If they can keep the Warcraft and Diablo balls rolling, with competent releases every so often, I’m fine with it. That way we have the best of both worlds: developing franchises, and the indies.
Hopefully first they will fire everyone responsible for cultivating a toxic culture culminating in sexually harassing a women to suicide and having a "Cosby" room at events. Don't care how good of games they are when thats the company behind them.
Phil Spencer is my favorite executive. His work since he had taken over has been splendid and I like his calm manner of discussing competition. He doesn’t make it into war. He seems like a genuinely nice guy and I am happy to see him succeed.
> spin off gaming into an independent company at some point
Unlikely without regulatory intervention. The added value for MS shareholders here is that MS has now more leverage to gently heard gamers towards their platforms.
> Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox"
According to Wikipedia[0]:
> Spencer served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft's European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008
He came to be in charge of Xbox via his experience managing their internal studios. How's Lionhead doing these days btw?
Suddenly, the reason for the recent employee purge seems more clear. They never fired anybody for bad behavior before, and now, just soon to be aquired, they do.
> A summary of those personnel actions was scheduled to be released by Activision before the winter holidays, but Chief Executive Bobby Kotick held it back, telling some people it could make the company’s workplace problems seem bigger than is already known, the people familiar with the situation said.
So now I'm boycotting Microsoft products? What a weird purchase to make. Did they not know this company is the current star of the gaming industry's long-standing workplace harassment issues?
IMHO they new and it probably drove the acquisition. Kotick gets to cash-in an insane amount of money and retire in 6 months - 2 years, MS gets the biggest independent game company out there and sends Sony a(nother) message they won't forget.
"Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth."
If they fire him after taking over can't they give him less in severance for the many reasons why he is hated?
However, they could also be withholding that until next week so they can get more news out of this acquisition, saying that he (and hopefully a lot of management) is stepping down would make a lot of news on its own, doing it now would muddle it.
I have been boycotting Microsoft since the Halloween documents, and now I have to uninstall Hearthstone from my computer.
Joking aside (I got over my Microsoft hatred when they started to finally embrace Linux and FOSS, YMMV (though I was salty about Nokia ditching Maemo!)), I have a deja vu:
Microsoft + Elop -> Nokia + Elop -> Nokia + Elop = Microsoft.
Sure, I don't mention Kotick. I don't give a shit about Activision's IP, so no problem for me there. Its Blizzard's IP which I like, or perhaps rather, liked. Cause its gone downhill.. ehh.. 'somewhat'.
I don't think so. Microsoft development is too entrenched to pull off something that requires so much synergy. Currently I'd say Fortnite and Roblox are serious metaverse contenders, but one that takes the cake will probably be some new viral product made by fresh blood. Microsoft might buy them, though.
If VR/AR is believed to be the forefront of the Metaverse than Microsoft is in the best position to do so with Work into HoloLens (AR) + kinect , numerous IP’s to use to build meta worlds, and the capital to burn.
What’s left to really show they’re going this direction is to release a VR that works on Xbox.
If this type of deal ( vertical consolidation through acquisition of competitors, and then removing those former competitors' content from competing platforms) isn't illegal, antitrust laws need to be adapted so it becomes so. It's impossible to deny it's purely in detriment to the market, competitors, and consumers.
Anti-Trust is quite openly defined. The courts in the 70s tried to establish a consistent way to judge it. The basically defined it as consumer can be forced to pay higher prices. You can read about Judge Richard Posner.
Either there would need to be some revolution with the legal profession, or congress would have to pass some new law.
What the judges realized is that by an more open definition pretty much any company and any merger could be said to be against anti-trust.
So if you want such a law, you need to actually get some exact definition of how every is judged that can be consistently legally applied.
In our legal system, actions are legal unless there is a law making them illegal.
If you are referring to anti-trust laws preventing this, then MS would need to be buying a huge number of companies to monopolize the gaming market, not just Activision, in order to be in violation of this law.
But they span ten or so different industries with a $2T market cap, and it's full of unhealthy monopolistic synergies. They can wield this power to force deals and push out competitors across their multiple business units.
They can "ask" gaming companies to use Azure if they want to run on Windows or Xbox. They can ignore Mac and PlayStation as platforms. They can bundle software licenses, payment gateways, and design hardware that only works in one ecosystem.
This is the modern monopoly. Good luck competing with it or avoiding their platform fees as you try to grow your revenue. You'll undoubtably wind up feeding your direct competition somehow or another.
I guess since there are so many competitors in the gaming market, the US government doesn't care. Not like this acquisition with make Microsoft have a majority share in the entire gaming industry.
Even after this purchase, Microsoft's gaming division is still smaller than Sony by revenue..
There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even.
They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.
The gaming industry has been in consolidation mode for years, mostly due to the up-front investment required to produce AAA games. All the large players are buying the smaller ones, it's not just Microsoft.
And I guess you can question my use of the subjective word "lots", my fault. I still think there are _enough_ large publishers around in the gaming industry that you can't really start throwing around terms like "monopoly" or "anti-trust" etc...
I was mostly just pointing out that the original comment was factually inaccurate by saying MS were buying up "all their competitors".
I'm not trying to rationalize or "jump through hoops" here. We're all just debating and guessing, having a conversation..
If you somehow accidentally assigned me to the opposite 'side' from the one you appear to be on, let me gently correct you.. I don't care enough about this to be picking sides.
Because the federal government doesn't stop them, quite plainly. They fear it would stifle innovation and competition. It's the same reason why egregious white collar crimes rarely get punishments. I wish I was making this up.
This deal has to be approved by a lot of regulators before it will go through. AB is a global company. MS thinks it will take at least 12 to 18 month before the deal will happen. Or not, since regulators are a bit iffy with big-tech these days.
But overall even though it's a big acquisition both together will still remain one amongst a few big gaming companies.
I wonder if this will trigger any antitrust lawsuits. I know Microsoft isn't that of the 90's but it seems like the political situation is ripe for politicians to go after "big tech" and this is a pretty major acquisition that will help Xbox be the dominant player in terms of content.
I know there are but I've been doing research on a ton of gov officials (starting a new gig in DC in tech policy) and wow, so many of them are taking a hardline stance on anything "big tech" now, so the political calculus may have changed since previous acquisitions went through.
Ironically, I made that some years after a serious libertarian phase and the "Un" is supposed to be the operative part of that as while I am a big fan of individuality, hard work, and limited (albeit ideally very effective) government I very much appreciate now the importance of other parts of society and that life is far more complex than many libertarians (and even myself still) would like it to be and requires a lot of nuance
Anti-Trust is not magic, its no longer a tool politicans can wield like a club against things they don't like. The courts have a definition and you actually have to prove abuse for those law-suits to do anything. Doing so if you can do it at all takes decades.
Unless politicians make major changes to the anti-trust law its unlikely to be effective. And doing so would require major action in congress.
The president could use non anti-trust actions as well of course. But rather unlikely.
Sure, but sometimes the threat of doing something and having an acquisition mired in a lawsuit or the Prez using the bully pulpit against your co can be a serious deterrent from engaging in an acquisition as well.
You don't need Congressional action - the laws never changed, the definition of the courts did. Biden is appointing federal judges faster than even Trump did, so the opinion of the courts may be shifting very quickly.
the article say Microsoft will be the third largest gaming company behind Tenecent and Sony. how antitrust going to trigger if Microsoft doesn't have the entire market. if antitrust didn't take down Apple just force Apple to allows third party payment option. i don't see how this will trigger antitrust
Neither Tencent nor Sony are based in the US (although Sony does have a US subsidiary). AT&T and T-Mobile together wouldn't have been the whole cell phone market either, although consolidation in physical-presence utilities are seen somewhat differently from more easily distributed products.
> Neither Tencent nor Sony are based in the US (although Sony does have a US subsidiary)
Sony Interactive Entertainment actually relocated to California a few years ago and literally everything PlayStation is under them so I'd probably call them a US company at this point.
It's still only a part of the larger Sony, though, with other subsidiaries doing completely other things. They're not leveraging TVs from a US company into the Sony Pictures studios into game development into game publishing into tying the games to the PS5. Microsoft is all one company with divisions working more closely, in theory anyway, than Sony's subsidiary companies.
If moderate democratic senators could be bought with handouts to toe the party line (anyone remember those times?), perhaps closely examining mergers like this would be a higher priority. There are bills moving through congress though, and eventually with more authority, perhaps the FTC could make meaningful market changes. Like: making MS offer games on other platforms, or at-least not actively stopping them from running by offering good anti-cheat support on all platforms.
> Vertical integration can be a win for consumers.
I'm not convinced.
> Also, a law like that (and any law infringing a free market)
You don't have a market without competition, which is what acquisitions accomplish. There is no such thing as a free market, by the way, that's a fantasy. There have always been laws governing markets.
> disincentivizes growth
Yes, that's exactly what I want to accomplish. These companies are too big & powerful.
> and innovation.
Huge companies use acquisitions to squash innovation.
So you think that cars built by 1 company providing engines and then another company sells you the cabin to put on top?
Should rocket companies not be able to build and launch rockets, or their own sats? Should we prevent Tesla from making batteries? Should Apple or Oxide (if you want a startup) be prevented from developing software and hardware together? What is that other then vertical integration.
Vertical integration is everything, being against vertical integration means that basically every company should only ever be allowed to control a single step in a production process. And its hard even define 'a step' even means, as even things like making steel requires many steps.
If you want things, at least actually figure out what you want because I don't think that is it.
Example of good vertical integration: Apple M1/AirPods/iPhone/Apple Music. That's a very convenient ecosystem for users, and it allows Apple to reduce manufacturing cost. We both agree there should be strong competitors to Apple, for the lower manufacturing costs to propagate to consumers as well.
>Yes, that's exactly what I want to accomplish. These companies are too big & powerful.
Economic growth is a consequence of gains in productivity. Therefore, we should champion economic growth because it allows us to do more during a day.
>Huge companies use acquisitions to squash innovation.
Another idea: people set up really innovate companies because they hope to be acquired by a bigger company. In other words – big companies enable an incentive structure favouring innovation. In general, VC:s (which drive most innovation today) hope to exit via an IPO – but selling to a big tech-company is a safety cushion. If we remove the safety cushion – the VC market will be more risk averse and less willing to spend on innovative, but unproven, ideas.
> Example of good vertical integration: Apple M1/AirPods/iPhone/Apple Music. That's a very convenient ecosystem for users, and it allows Apple to reduce manufacturing cost. We both agree there should be strong competitors to Apple, for the lower manufacturing costs to propagate to consumers as well.
I agree this is a very good thing but I think we'd both agree that Apple buying Arm would probably be a very bad thing in the medium-long run. I don't know what the solution is but as a consumer, I'd like companies to collaborate and thrive in a single big ecosystem vs having one big company. For example, Activision games can still be on Game Pass without Microsoft completely owning them and as an end user, I think that is more balanced.
Then it's for good reason Business laws are not drafted and implemented by people like you. Arbitrary and narrow rule of thumb does not make a legislative bill in any functioning modern society.
100% agreed!! But, if someone was a politician and looking for my vote, saying words like "break up big companies" would be a pretty appealing prospect to me.
I think if one of the tech giants of the world could create an AGI-ish, they should have no problem becoming a single worldwide monopoly in a couple of years...
Don't get hung up on "monopoly". Their games are only available on their own vertically integrated platforms. They're abusing their dominant market position and should be slapped hard ( full break up and multi billion fines).
Their games are available on PC, sold on Steam, and can run on Linux via Steam Proton. Just because they aren't available on one console doesn't make it that bad.
They can't run on PlayStation, they can't run on macOS, on Linux is thanks to a compatibility layer they have no relation to ( it's not their desire for the games to run there). Furthermore the games aren't available in any of the cloud gaming platforms bar their own ( Xcloud gaming? Xbox Cloud gaming? Who knows, Microsoft probably don't). They're artificially limiting competitors to the detriment of consumers.
“Artificially limiting” by choosing not to port games to those platforms? Would you say the same of studios who don’t port games to PC? Do you believe 98% of the industry is “artificially limiting competitors to the detriment of consumers” by not porting to macOS or Linux?
> it's not their desire for the games to run there
And yet they can prevent their games from running on Proton like some devs have done by anti-cheat measures. IIRC Overwatch refuses to run on Linux and risks a ban because of the Vulkan translation layer.
I agree in theory, but having exclusives is a requirement to compete with Sony and Nintendo, two companies that are somewhat outside the reach of US regulators. How to handle competition against foreign pseudo-monopolies isn’t an easy question.
I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.
I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens.
I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the market, and it was wild to me how that was allowed to happen.
That failed merger's poison pill is the reason T-Mobile is the juggernaut it is today. The cash T-Mobile received allowed them to upgrade their network, and customers could roam free on AT&T's 1700MHz frequency.
AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.
> AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.
I think that assessment was obvious to everyone at the time. The question is whether buying out competitors is good for the public.
Of course, the cash was a penalty for not being able to pull off the merger; if the cash was critical for T-Mobile to become the threat it has been, the outcome is ironic.
I don't know what the breakup cash might have amounted to, but the AT&T roaming agreement was for 7 years, and it's only recently with n41/n71 that T-Mobile has done any better.
The equivalent for this merger would be something like Minecraft and Bethesda games on the A-B launcher for 7 years. Huge giveaway by AT&T I think, as foolish as it might have been for them to think the merger would actually go through; having at-least 4 major carriers was policy at the time and still is (Dish's spectrum hoarding notwithstanding).
I imagine that if Facebook tried to buy Whatsapp or Instagram toady, they would be facing a different kind of a regulatory environment. It feels like the world has only recently awakened to how Facebook just tries to buy out their competition.
They blocked Comcast from merging with Time Warner Cable. By “they” I’m referring to AT&T and Verizon (the two biggest telecom providers in the US), who were afraid of a third telecom provider establishing a national footprint and potentially challenging them across wireless and wireline. By preventing the merger through their immense political connections, they keep both Comcast and TWC as regional players who are much easier to monopolize.
So even the antitrust that goes through usually only goes through because powerful (often monopolistic) forces want to block a merger, not because it’s what’s objectively best for competition.
In the EU, Siemens and Alstom weren't allowed to merge their train divisions without significant divestment. Same for Daewoo and Hyundai shipbuilding just last week.
I think this is a huge source of a lot of the wealth inequality and just general dystopia we find ourselves living in. We need some sort of commoner lobbyist organization we can all be part of, the voting doesn't seem to be working very well. You have to literally pay the politicians.
> I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.
Just today, the DOJ and FTC announced plans to toughen up on mergers and acquisitions.
>The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division kicked off a process to rewrite merger guidelines for businesses on Tuesday, signaling a tougher stance toward large deals.
I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here?
If Microsoft starts subsidizing Game Pass games from their other businesses (like Amazon, Google and Apple do for their other services), it'll make the business model of actually selling games unviable by pure race to the bottom. As a result, you'll lose independent development and market diversity because everyone will need to beg Microsoft (and maybe Sony and Apple as other megacorps) for money scraps.
This is very similar what actually happened in mobile games market - a race to the bottom that only left a few winners filled with exploitative anti-patterns that feed on peoples addiction to recoup their costs instead of selling the product.
It'll of course be amazing for users - games will be cheap! And free! Just like views on YouTube are, where creators are getting more and more burned out fighting against the algorithm which decides how much they deserve to be paid.
I don't think it'll be amazing for users. The mobile market is just awful. It's almost impossible to find any good games that don't use these exploitative methods.
Yeah, I should really add "At least in the beginning" part - those systems are very great at the start as they try to siphon as much use as possible and trap them into the walled garden.
There's a large crowd of people who'd rather buy to own games even if they're on Game Pass, even after the entire Bethesda catalog was added. I'm personally one of them, if I like/want a game a lot, I prefer buying it on Steam so I'll always be able to replay it. (I've even bought some games I discovered on Game Pass)
Also -- EA (EA Play), Ubisoft (Uplay Plus), and Sony (PS Now) already went the way of subscription gaming. EA Play is included in Xbox/PC Game Pass, and PS Now isn't just Sony's catalog, either.
>There's a large crowd of people who'd rather buy to own games even if they're on Game Pass
Judging by the reactions I've seen to this acquisition around the internet, this crowd is really not that large.
The average consumer of today does not care in the slightest about owning things, they only care about being able to enjoy whatever the current flavor of the week AAA tripe is for now before the next flavor of the week comes along to replace it. When they're done with a game, they don't care about having it anymore.
Most DLCs are not part of Game Pass, so if you really enjoy a particular game you can still purchase the DLC (at a discount), even without owning the base game. Of course this only makes sense for as long you are a Game Pass Subscriber. You would unfortunately need to purchase the base game from the Xbox / Microsoft Store before you can play your previously purchased DLC.
It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.
Don't blame mobile games - they got those exploitative ideas from PC market.
The upside of a PC market, is the lack of a centralized authority to tell you what games are good - a.k.a the app stores. (App stores are horrible for games or any creative content discovery, as they use purely utilitarian categorization) That doesn't mean that PC, or web, games are any less exploitative than mobile counterparts. (remember mafia wars or farmville?)
> It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.
Is it? Undoubtedly there's exploitative crap on PC, but there are countless great titles -- indie and otherwise -- released every year that you can pay money to own. On my iPhone I can hardly even find games to pay a fair price once to own anymore; it's almost entirely exploitative crap.
I used to buy games all the time on my iPhone; were it not for Apple Arcade I'd've hardly played anything in years.
Yes, commercial games have been a race to the bottom for a long time.
In spaces where casual gaming dominates - exploitative games are top of the "charts".
I'm not an enthusiast gamer - I don't have time to search for indie games. What I see is primarily exploitative games, which turned me off gaming.
If you even read about gaming industry or new games - you're not the majority , that drives casual games to the top of the charts in primary app stores.
Still not sure I buy it. Where are these spaces where exploitative games are top of the charts? It's not in the major PC game storefronts, for example (at least not in my experience). Steam is very good at recommending decent non-exploitative games to me right on its landing page. Same with Epic; even its prominent free games are generally non-exploitative. Game Pass is popular and also recommends a mix of very good games without having to search.
Regardless, my point isn't that there aren't spaces where exploitative games predominate. My point is that so many actual good games exist that aren't the slightest bit difficult to find, whereas my experience on the iPhone has been almost uniformly negative the past few years. On average, people just aren't willing to lay out ten, fifteen bucks for a game on mobile, so the race to the bottom is real.
Do you have to be an enthusiast gamer to find good PC games? Just google "best PC games", the first hit is a decent list from PC gamer. Takes all of 60 seconds to search and skim the list. If you don't have time for that, then you don't have time to be gaming at all. If I google "best iOS games" I see a mix of exploitative crap and games that are years and years old by now. (A list of "best iOS games 2021" that includes Bastion -- a game I was playing on my phone ten years ago -- is criminal.)
I used to hold the same opinion as you, and for the most part I still do. But I think the subscription model is a solution to the race to the bottom, because it creates an artificial level of quality assurance.
Take PlayPass, for instance: the play store is a landfill of endless trash, but PlayPass adds both a level of curation and it unlocks all the microtransactions.
So for a low yearly fee you get access to the best Play Store games, never pay for microtransactions, and don't need to go digging to find gems in the garbage heap.
I dunno, I tried Apple Arcade, and the games on there are decent, but I really didn't feel like I was getting my $5/month's worth
Any random $20 Switch title from the Shovelware Shelf at your local retailer is so much more polished and fun than even the best phone games, it's insane
I have no idea what's on Apple Arcade, but on Play Pass I've been playing the Kingdom Rush games, the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, and a tonne of critically-acclaimed indie titles.
> Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land.
This seems to put the writing on the wall for the Steam Deck though, right? How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog?
I preordered the Steam Deck and plan to follow through with the purchase, but things look pretty dismal for Valve at this juncture. It seems like they're five years too late to the party with the Deck, and they now have no leverage to push MS to interoperate.
Why wouldn't it be able to? With the Proton compatibility layer almost all Windows-only games should run on it. And worst case scenario, one can dual boit Windows if Microsoft decide to be really aggressive vis à vis regulators and block their games from running on Proton.
Can is a bit abstract. I've found it works really poorly in the browser ( just getting to the correct page that actually shows you the list of games available is a pain and requires multiple hops).
For what it's worth, I used xcloud for the first time on iOS this morning, where it runs entirely in the browser. It actually wasn't bad! I had to close out the browser entirely and reopen it to fix issues with the streaming, but once I did that it was much smoother than I anticipated, and jumping into a game was quick.
It was absolutely unplayable without a controller, mind you, but it worked.
> Why wouldn't it be able to? With the Proton compatibility layer almost all Windows-only games should run on it. And worst case scenario, one can dual boit Windows if Microsoft decide to be really aggressive vis à vis regulators and block their games from running on Proton.
MS now has a truly huge library, and Valve extracting a portion of every sale on Steam isn't something that's likely to make them happy. They now have so many games that they can use DRM to force users into their own ecosystem (i.e. Windows 11/XBox) to play them.
You could say, correctly, that MS's previous storefronts have not been a great success, but with such a huge catalogue they can just pull the users wherever they want them. There's no incentive for them to allow a competitor to run their games.
Proton is only a solution for as long as MS allows it, and I don't see any incentive for them to do so at this point.
Maybe things move slowly and the Steam Deck itself can still deliver these titles before this happens, but the Valve "ecosystem" as such seems to have really poor prospects.
> How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog?
So far, it seems MS is quite happy to put its games on Steam as an additional revenue source. Looking now, Xbox Game Studios has 49 games on steam, including its latest and biggest offerings, such as Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5[0].
But doesn't this acquisition put MS in a much stronger position, and isn't the Deck a direct competitor to MS hardware? MS now has a massive game catalog and I can't see any reason they would want to allow Valve to access it on their own console. Maybe MS will tolerate Steam near term, but you can't tell me that MS enjoys letting Valve take a cut of every sale, and with so many huge titles they can absolutely force users into whatever store they want (and limit them to whatever platform they want).
I don't know why anybody would give Microsoft of all companies the benefit of the doubt on this front.
I don't know. If they were so bent out of shape that Valve takes a cut of every sale, they could have stopped at any point before now. If anything would force people to use Microsoft's storefront it would have been a new well-reviewed Halo game, but nope, there it is for sale on Steam. And that makes sense to me -- withdrawing from the predominant PC storefront would be a gamble that might not pay off, as anyone who doesn't wish to buy direct from Microsoft is a loss of $60*0.7 = $42 that they could've won buy selling on Steam.
Maybe the calculus changes as they eat up publishers and grow their catalog, but traditionally Microsoft's storefronts haven't done particularly well.
Right, but big developers have also been getting away with producing crappy AAA titles. They always have tried to push unfinished games to the market, but it has become more widespread in the last years. Now, with less competition, things might actually get worse.
Indeed the Steam Deck is very exciting because what we've seen is that the mobile space is where Linux has been able to defeat Microsoft in end user adoption.
As some other folks have pointed out, the existence of WINE and other compat layers is actually hindering gaming on Linux, by disincentivizing game devs to make games directly for linux. A huge hit with the Steam Deck could actually start bringing more games directly to Linux.
> Indeed the Steam Deck is very exciting because what we've seen is that the mobile space is where Linux has been able to defeat Microsoft in end user adoption.
That's a very generous definition of "Linux".
Android won, not Linux.
What's the GUI toolkit? Android's one. Audio? Same. Notifications? Android. Etc, etc.
There's a reason many people are scared of Fuchsia, it's not inconceivable that Google at some point just pulls the plug on Linux and replaces it wholesale with Fuchsia as the base for Android.
Linux on mobile failed utterly, from Maemo to Meego to Ubuntu Mobile to all other attempts.
On gaming side the Microsoft from big players actually producing games seem the least bad option. Lot less bullshit in general than likes of Ubisoft and EA or Activision.
There's a difference though. Tencent doesn't dictate its studios how to conduct business. Microsoft on the other hand made Bethesda leave PlayStation, which negatively impacts their revenue, but plays into the hand of Microsoft.
> Tencent doesn't dictate its studios how to conduct business.
Isn't that exactly what Tencent are well known for doing?[1]
> According to the designer, Riot managers had provided a PowerPoint presentation that she assumed Tencent had made for them, although she didn’t know for sure.
> The deal still leaves Riot with a largely independent remit, however, with CEO Brandon Beck telling press that Tencent see Riot more as investment partners than as a fully-owned subsidiary.
> "Riot is going to remain completely independent. There are no redundancies, no layoffs, no synergy fishing, no leadership change," Beck told Gamasutra. "Nothing is going to change other than they're dramatically increasing their holding in the company. They see this more as an investment in a partner.
Game Pass has major issues still. No integrated backup mechanism; only 3 changes to your home PC per year... Imagine reinstalling more than 3 times to find out that you can no longer play offline; absolutely horrible download speeds... Compared to Steam which maxes out bandwidth; and the interface for Xbox Game Pass on PC is terrible.
> absolutely horrible download speeds... Compared to Steam which maxes out bandwidth
Yeah, I've noticed that. I don't know why they do that, it's annoying. If I can download a game in a half hour I'd like it in a half hour, not next Tuesday, please.
Valve's CDN (In my recent case, Akamai or Limelight) achieves fastest download speed I've ever used. I wonder why they do aggressively, and other don't.
Blizzard had a very big and dedicated fan base, the launch of a Blizzard game used to be one of the biggest gaming events of a year, their IPs are (were) loved by huge numbers. Current management did squander most of that good will in the last few years (mainly optimizing their new games for addictiveness instead of designing for fun), but I don't think it is too late, if under new management Blizzard pulls a 180 and goes back to make good games with the old IPs, fans will come back in droves.
Right but if nothing about what made it good from the start is left what advantage would they have compared to any other assembled team? Games get replaced by the next new great thing at a rapid pace, there's no moat. So really don't get the idea of paying premium for a studio that Used to make great games.
> other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass
I haven't really ever used it. I used to buy everything Blizzard made (OK that's an exaggeration, but I was all about WarCraft/StarCraft/Diablo...). Before Steam, I bought lots of games on disk. Now I buy most things on Steam. And I haven't bought anything Blizzard since Diablo III.
Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?
(I'm just one person, but among the people I know that play PC games, I don't hear about Game Pass much. One person mentioned he's on a 14 day $1 trial - that was the extent of it.)
> Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?
Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam (and/or only buy them on deep, deep sale. Which doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way).
So imagine deciding to spend $10 on that game, then realizing it's on GamePass. You now can choose wither to spend that same $10 to have access to 150+ games (including that one that's on sale), or just that game.
Sure, that $10 gets you only 1 month, but will you buy a different $10 game next month? Will you play this game for more than a month?
Pretty soon the GamePass ROI becomes difficult to ignore. (This coming from someone that doesn't have GamePass but is very impressed by the business model and value proposition around it).
I'd still rather own my games than rent it out, especially since I know that there's also a constant stream of games leaving Game Pass.
This month, Game Pass subscribers will lose access to Cyber Shadow (launched January 2021), Nowhere Prophet (launched July 2020), Prison Architect (launched January 2021) and Xeno Crisis (launched August 2020).
I'm also having trouble believing that Game Pass will remain $10 for long. At some point Microsoft will want to start recouping its investments and it's gonna start hiking prices. I personally got pretty tired of the constant Netflix price updates and I'd rather not do the same to my video game collection. I didn't actually have a gaming PC between January 2014 and March 2021, and it was actually pretty nice to install Steam and see all of the games that I bought between 2006 and 2014 still waiting for me in my library.
The big difference with Game Pass is that the $10 gets me all those games just for that month, whereas my Steam library is full of games I've bought over the years, usually for <$10/each. If I were to have paid $10/mo over the same period of time, I would have paid significantly more -- and I'd have to keep paying it in order to play those games.
I subscribe to Game Pass occasionally and it sucks every time to lose access to all the games I'm playing. It becomes a balancing act of "I can buy this game for $30 or I can play it (and others) for 3 months at the same price... but what if I want to play it again in the future?" Like most rental models, most times it's easier and cheaper to just buy the game upfront if you can afford it, especially when it's on sale, which is easy to predict (and be notified of) on stores like Steam.
>> and I'd have to keep paying it in order to play those games.
But how long do you play these games for, and how often do you replay them? There are definitely games I replay a lot (Resident Evil games, for one) but there are many where I'm done after one playthrough. I'm totally okay "renting" it and moving on with Game Pass for a lot of titles.
This might be specific to my tastes, but most of the games I play don't really have an "end" to playthroughs (and for the ones that do, it's very rare that I dedicate the time to play it start to finish without taking breaks to play other games, which usually drags playthroughs on for much longer than less casual players). And sometimes I just come back to old games years later for nostalgia.
Some of my most-played on Game Pass are Crusader Kings 3, ARK, Dragon Age, My Time at Portia, and No Man's Sky, which are basically what I go back to every time I resubscribe. But after getting up near a dozen months subscribed at $10/mo, I'm now really wishing I would have just dished out the cash earlier to buy the games instead, especially if I want to keep playing them over time. I'm very much in a sunk cost mindset though: "I've already paid to play the game so much, surely this month is the month I'll 'finish' it and get to stop paying, right? Therefore, I shouldn't pay full price to own it when I can just pay the $10..."
It's very much a digital Blockbuster all over again. There, too, I spent many more hundreds of dollars on repeatedly renting games that I should have just bought. But, like Blockbuster, Game Pass is really good for discovering new games because it's such a low cost to try anything in the library once.
The nice thing about Game Pass is that after a game has been on the service for a number of months, you get a 20% discount if you choose to buy it. It's useful for instances where a game you want to keep playing is about to leave the service, or you want to get off the subscription plan.
look at this way: a business makes a change (in this case buying vs subscription). do they do it in their own interest or yours?
super simple stuff.
steam presented a bit of an issue about owning what you pay for. because, if their service is down, you can't access your "assets". some people called it a type of subscription model.
with this shift in the industry, outright paying a subscription for temporary access, we move even further away from owning what we pay for.
imagine never buying a house but always renting. why be against it? who is that business model good for? what kind of world are we voting for when we buy into these types of businesses?
in the long term, a subscription model puts us, the customers, at a loss. and a successful business plans for long term.
There's a very long tail of interesting games, 150 games at a time just doesn't cut it. When the urge to replay an old favorite comes along, I'm incredibly uninterested in doing the equivalent of checking Netflix to see if it's still in the library. They'd have to have coverage at Spotify levels to make that start to seem interesting.
I don't have GamePass but do find it intriguing. The value prop is completely on the other end. It's not wondering if you can play (or replay) some older game that you want in particular. It's when a new game comes out or you are in the mood for something you haven't played before, you can go to the page and find something to at least try for zero marginal cost. If you play or are interested in a broad swath of games, eliminating that initial hump of whether you want to invest money into it is a different ball game.
It's really is literally just Netflix of games. Not great at all when you want to watch Movie X, better if you want to just watch some movie, and the only way when you want their in house productions which in theory are striving to be high quality. GamePass isn't to that final level of exclusivity yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some game goes "Only on GamePass" in the nearish future.
It's also similar to Netflix in that if your usecase was the old "Just streaming The Office only" you could probably just purchase it. A mono game player would definitely be better served just buying the title they want for $60 rather than a monthly fee, but it starts to get more attractive at just a few games per year.
I paid $20 for Valheim and played that for about 6 months.
Got Conan Exiles for $12 and played it for 3 months.
If you really like playing a wide variety of games, and like to rent them, then a $10/mo deal is excellent. I like to buy inexpensive games and play them for a long time. Should I even mention the 15 years I got out of StarCraft?
I'll go in waves, playing one game like crazy for a couple months, and then maybe not playing anything for a few. I like going back to the games I already know I enjoy and playing them some more, so I don't want to rent them.
I think a very reliable method here would be to use Gamepass for trying games out and see what the landscape looks like without having to scout around much and also not paying just to try things. We used to do this with demos but they became very impopular and really, if you can play a full game instead of a demo, isn't that better?
So you get access to these games to try them, and if you really, really like them, you can buy them when they go on sale for cheap on Steam.
I don't use Gamepass because it somehow has eluded me, but it seems like a good deal even if I tend to buy games for cheap on Steam.
the cheapskate consumer really doesn't have much power here, though. Not many people will develop primarily for xbox if all they can hope is to have gamepass level money. Thats why despite it, Xbox is still very much a 3rd in the console wars, and microsoft has to resort to buying popular IPs to have a chance.
I would look at consoles first. Why would someone buy a Playstation, when you can now buy an Xbox + GamePass and get access to a large chunk of the biggest games?
You know that ever growing library of unplayed games that all steam users have? Game Pass is that, but instead of paying for games individually you pay a low fixed rate, and it includes many hot new releases that are still full price elsewhere.
> Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?
I paid like $5/mo for 1 year of the Ultimate version, I can play games on both Xbox and PC and carry over progress for most of them. It's great. Steam doesn't have anything like that, so not sure there's any comparison to do.
For the gaming industry, this seems to push Microsoft into 3rd place (by size) behind Sony and Tencent. So hardly a monopoly and akin to T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint a few years ago. It makes Microsoft much more competitive against Sony and even Nintendo since it'll likely bolster their 1P offerings in the future.
But if Microsoft uses their ownership to favor their own game subscription services (aka GamePass) as well as platforms (aka Windows 11, Xbox console), then certainly that'll be monopolistic behavior. Interesting to note that they're probably #1-#2 in either of those sub-industries. It's possible to end up with an "Internet Explorer-esque" antitrust scenario if Microsoft removes or heavily discourages Activision and Bethesda from making their titles cross-platform.
It should be worth noting that T-mobile + Sprint succeeded on the third try after the first two were more or less blocked by regulators in the same decade (it didn't actually get all the way to them, but they signaled there was no way they would approved.)
The only reason it got approved the third time was that regulators were convinced that either way, the US would only have three mobile operators because it did not look like Sprint could be a going concern.
When they bought Bethesda last year they announced that Elder Scrolls 6 would no longer be a multi platform title, it would be a Microsoft exclusive. I wouldn't be surprised if they would try to take something like the Call of Duty franchise and make it Xbox/Windows only.
They don't even need to do that. They can keep releasing CoD on Playstation, but if they add it to Gamepass, that increases the value of Gamepass so significantly that it could tilt the console market toward Microsoft.
This is exactly the play I think will happen. I can also see them including for example a WoW subscription and maybe a monthly hearthstone pack or gems as part of Gamepass.
Ah, come on. That’s what any reasonably similar sized company does all the time. It’s what shareholders demand (not that i think that makes it any better). But always singling out Microsoft for a decades-old stereotype is just getting old.
I think this was unneeded. Nobody singled out Microsoft, it's just that the discussion is about Microsoft, which happens to still practice this strategy. I think nobody would argue against the strategy being practiced by other corporations too.
Nintendo and Sony are small potatoes compared to MSFT in 2022. 70B and 150B market cap against a 2.27T one. Japanese tech companies are happy to stay in their niche. But now Microsoft has an incomprehensible advantage in available capital. Apart from the Japanese government blocking the sale they could just buy them
Whoah, why is Sony group valued so low? They do a lot of things... Their P/E is half of Microsoft. But they're bleeding money, so something is amiss there.
You’re not wrong, but Microsoft has also never successfully out sold their consoles (well...except wii-u, but that’s not much of an achievement). That might change now of course, but it’s not like they are solidly number one. They’re actually last of the big three.
People also forget Microsoft’s Xbox sales are 3rd place - I.e. last - behind PlayStation and switch. The 360 is the only console they’ve sold that outsold a PlayStation, but technically that flipped at the very end of the console’s lifespan. It’s not like they dominate the market (yet).
Now if they buy Sony or Nintendo then I’ll actually be concerned. But for now they’re hardly controlled opposition or anything lol
It's only an issue if this negatively. affects the competitive market. And since games are a creative market - there's hardly any reason to fear that Microsoft can restrict access to new players.
This is not like a utility, that could technically force something on you. One company can buy all of game developers/publishers and still not make a dent in competitiveness of the games market.
Kids' PCs are windows. Microsoft has Game Store installed by default. Pop ups about the latest Fortnite NextGen, installed by default. More addictive than gambling but hella legal.
Easy scenario, no regulations. Market is heavily skewed and MS has a big win in the gambling for kids industry.
I'm already wondering why these trillion dollar companies are allowed to make pretty much any acquisitions at all, let alone ones pretty clearly aimed at vertical integration.
It makes sense they’d acquire Activision now, especially after Intel and AMD are bootlicking them and implementing Pluton. Essentially any new or even existing titles will not be able to be pirated with Pluton enabled.
So, more proprietary hardware which now only MS controls, only they can update and audit. According to security researchers, is not physical tamper proof. Tackles niche security issue while the number one vector of attack, comprising 80% of them, is social engineering and not kernel modifications. And, according to you, eliminate piracy which not only doesn't hurt the gaming industry but has also become redundant with multiplayer only titles dominating said industry.
Nah, it's just a play to gain more monopoly into PCs and what runs on them. Today, it's a nightmare to get something signed for MS. God forbid you need to sign drivers. With them moving the goal post every now and then, broken APIs, broken SDKs and support SLA of infinity, pluton is a forced dependency.
Pluton is a pure business move with zero customer value. The greatest threat, last year, in security was supply chain attacks. And this tries to "solve" kernel modifications? End users have nothing to gain.
Yep you’re correct, it reminds me of old Microsoft doing sneaky things to attain monopoly status and kill competition. Hopefully ARM will not implement Pluton but I have a suspicion they will too if nvidia acquisition fails
my question is whether Microsoft was fanning the flames of all the controversy surrounding Activision recently and how much that dropped the acquisition price.
Not that regulators might care but game software shapes how young people conceive of software and IP issues. A company notorious for manipulating IP buying out a massive game company means entire generations of children and families will be exposed to this software as a service model of IP consumption.
Sure but I'm really pointing out that children play games and that's a prime age to manipulate people's political expectations of the world. Like what toys and cartoons do. In contrast to the workplace software of Google or whatever subscription young people today might be willing to pay to use Apple's hardware.
It's still a market that affects a lot of people's lives. I think it's good for them to stop these huge mergers. Let the small to midsize companies fight it out, but we've had enough of these huge and getting huger tech companies strangling out competition and innovation.
So was all the bad press Activision got recently in spite of, or driven by, acquisition plans? What better way to put pressure on a company to give up its independence than public shame and infamy?
Prolly knocked a few bucks off the price at least.
I don't think creating new IP correlates that much with profitability these days. Taking a look at box offices, TV, and gaming as well shows that existing IP is plenty profitable on its own.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 411 ms ] threadEDIT: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. [...] he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture."
Shame on you, Microsoft.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-videogames-bobby-kot... — mirror at https://archive.fo/fzdAv
And if you're completely out of the loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Department_of_Fair_...
For example, Activision had a successful franchise Call of Duty that did releases every 2 years or so. Kotick’s insight was that they could release one every year and basically print money. He was right. He then used that money to acquire Blizzard, a company that had many beloved franchises. He then applied those same principles to the running of Blizzard, to the point where the company releases half baked, buggy, awful excuses for games. An example of this is Warcraft III Reforged. They did it because re-releases of old games are a reliable way to monetise nostalgia.
And that’s just the somewhat justifiable part. Because making money is good, right? Shareholders love that shit.
What’s less defensible is the toxic work culture that was fostered under him, where sexual harassment was endemic. Of course he never saw the fallout of that. They fired some patsies and called it a day.
To be fair though, they put two studios on it, which is very unlike other annual games, and a much better approach for WLB and avoiding (some) crunch.
> The goal that I had (...) was to take all the fun out of making video games.
> The executive said that he has tried to instill into the company culture "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" of the global economic downturn
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-games-to-bypass...
To be honest, I think Microsoft and Activision deserve each other.
I love it! Political Opinions as a Game!
One could argue that Microsoft would have paid more, and I’m sure some enterprising lawyers will get paid by tricking some shareholders into suing over that, but that’s like arguing with the waves about when high tide is.
For games to be successful today, they need popularity. Twitch streamers need to play it. Youtubers need to make "how-tos", and word of mouth is king. Activision drove the final nail in their coffin with the PR nightmare this year. No amount of necromancy (Warcraft Reforged, Classic WoW, Diablo 2) can save the company long term.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/microsoft-bi...
> Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
So no, they aren't keeping him around. Good call.
So if Microsoft buys out and fires Kotick, he'd walk away with like 678 million dollars. It's pretty weird that there are people who are happy about this proposition and are not named "Robert Kotick".
They wouldn't muddy their happy upbeat acquisition announcement by mentioning they're pushing him out, though.
So it's wrong to draw any conclusions yet.
For a moment, I was truly hopeful that we might see some reinvigoration for blundered projects like the Warcraft III reforged.
Perhaps even some hope that Microsoft might breathe new life into Starcraft II, which still stands as an incredible game.
/sigh
Unfortunately even under new management I don't see Starcraft getting much love, the focus is now on cross-platform games and RTS games are PC only (which is a small niche compared to the overall market).
I mean now that MS owns them maybe they can pull a Win11 :p
The game never really felt that great after Ben Brode left. Battlegrounds was pretty OK though.
There has been more activity than normal on the core game mode and Battlegrounds, although mostly focused on content (whether actual cards or cosmetics) than actual technology changes or new features.
Anyway, I think this acquisition will actually stop the bleeding snd create some stability
Realistically, there's a high chance that within a few months of the acquisition being completed he'll be expected to leave quietly.
Hopefully woke culture will take more of a toll on US tech and we will see more US companies opening up in Europe. The US tech centralization is bad for the world (and US consumers).
Sometimes it seems we hold those working the drive-thru window at a fast food place to a higher standard than major CEOs.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-videogames-bobby-kot...
Don't think Microsoft is any better than Activision, although most software developers aren't really famous for being outgoing womanizers.
Smaller M&A where it's easier to swap the leader (like a startup - which most of us are used to) is MUCH easier/cheaper/faster than swapping out an established CEO of a public company.
They'll do it because he's a liability and they want to make a statement to the new company - but it'll be slow.
So that might be part of it.
https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1407658278893592579
Larger install base I guess. I’d been waiting for the Mac version for years and am surprised it never came.
It's well known that in the wake of the huge success of WoW they had to completely re-organize the company in order to be able to properly support a game with an active audience of that size. Their size, their structure, their culture, everything changed.
[0] https://theandrewbailey.com/article/180/Diablo
SC 2 recently went free-to-play. If the rest of their catalog is added to Game Pass, that will be something. Blizzard games have been stubbornly expensive years after release. I wonder what this means for Battle.net?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-buy-activision-bliz...
> The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft’s Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass [MS PR]
In case anyone still doubts that Microsoft is all-in on Game Pass.
As somebody who just got game pass, I feel kinda cheated for what I get; All the games offered there are the “f2p” versions, even MS first party titles like Halo only offer the “default” versions to play “for free” when paying a monthly subscription.
It’s like those free versions Epic hands out; They are playable, but they usually lack any and all of the “extra DLC content” that too often are needed to make a game actually fully fleshed out.
There are some exceptions, like Destiny 2 I believe, where the meaningful DLC is excluded, but that is not the rule. Game Pass is an incredible deal.
You’re getting the “standard” edition of the game. Sure, you’re not getting the expansion packs or other cosmetics, but neither is any other person that doesn’t buy the deluxe editions.
No, what they usually give you is actual customization options because in the full-priced standard edition those do not exist anymore.
As character customization has by now been apparently redefined as being wholesale "cosmetic" and thus locked behind an deluxe version up sale, MTX spending and FOMO season pass grinding.
It's a sorry state for AAA and increasingly even mid-tier developed games.
Often enough it directly affects gameplay, instead of playing with/against individual other people, which in many games used to be recognizable by their character customization choices, too often multiplayer now ends up looking like the clone wars.
As the only people that stick out with their customization are those that spend money on having any choice other but the one default choice.
Now pretty much all of that is either locked behind "Deluxe edition", MTX or dozens of levels of season pass for a single item.
Which is particularly cynical considering how they advertised this Halo as the "most customizable ever, no two Spartans will look alike!" [0], when the only way not to look alike is to spend at least 10 bucks for a new armor core.
Want that new armor core in a different color? Enjoy spending another 8 bucks [1] because color schemes are now armor core specific.
This is objectively worse than what people used to get when they bought the "standard" version, as effectively all meaningful multiplayer customization is now paywalled behind a ton of MTX and not just the "nice extras".
Halo isn't the only offender on that front, pretty much all the games that nowadays get released with a "standard" 50-60 bucks version, and then a 100+ bucks deluxe version follow this very same MO. Which would be okay if those "deluxe version" actually offered the full package, but they don't, what they offer is the same extend of customization options that used to be included with games out of the box, while getting "everything" has by now come an exercise of unlimited spending [2] because creating unlimited new color swaps, with every new "season", is the new most profitable business model, not releasing a fully functional and fleshed out game out of the box, that's by now the absolute rare exception in the "AAA" sector.
This is also exactly what many people have been warning about where MTX will ultimately takes us for literally decades, game pass is the ultimate manifestation of it; You subscribe to "games as a service" with a monthly fee, then you are supposed to spend money on those rented games to upgrade them to proper fully fleshed out versions, and then you are locked into the subscription because not paying for it now also means losing access to all the content for the games you purchased on-top of your subscriptions.
Anybody who looks at this and goes; "This is great for consumers!" must not be a consumer and must have completely missed all the relevant discourse about these developments during the last decades.
[0] https://gamerant.com/halo-infinite-armor-customization-milli...
[1] https://gamerant.com/halo-infinite-charges-8-color-blue/
[2] https://www.gamingbible.co.uk/news/xbox-halo-infinite-shop-c...
So to answer him, yes, you want to play dress up. Everything you’re complaining about is entirely cosmetic.
Disregarding that as "you only want to play dress-up" is not only unbelievably reductive, it's also a very lazy way to just hand-wave away a very real issue.
The same way you could disregard the vast majority of features from any game except core-gameplay features; "You want to color your car in your racing game? How silly, you only want to play dress up!"
I guess it's just naïve of me want to play things in games?
Maybe if you started with Halo 2. Halo 1 lan parties and Xbox connect you had a choice of maybe 10 colors. It was about the shooty-shooty. And maybe that's why I like infinite, I get pretty darn good shooty-shooty.
I agree to an extent that the customization system is a little broken though. Team games should force red or blue coloring, half the time I can't tell who is or isn't on my team. "Outlines" aren't enough. All so people feel that their $50 armor purchase isn't hidden.
I "started" with Quake, but that's besides the point.
> Halo 1 lan parties and Xbox connect you had a choice of maybe 10 colors.
At PC lan parties people had a choice between a myriad of custom skins particularly with GoldScr mods, all for free.
> It was about the shooty-shooty.
It was also about the community, particularly at a lan party, and part of a community is also being able to individualize your avatar.
This used to be very well understood for the longest time, and now it's suddenly considered "playing dress up" because billions dollar heavy AAA publishers, and developers can't be arsed anymore to put in any meaningful player customization that isn't monetized and FOMO'ed to hell.
> All so people feel that their $50 armor purchase isn't hidden.
Would you disagree that previous Halo games, short of going back over a decade, offered more, and particularly more meaningful, multiplayer customization options out of the box?
> Team games should force red or blue coloring, half the time I can't tell who is or isn't on my team. "Outlines" aren't enough.
They are enforced to such a degree that picking any blue color skin already gives you a slight advantage as enemies will always be colored red and allies always be colored blue.
Which is btw a very separate issue from armor types customization, people having different armor types makes it much more likely for you to recognize enemies from friends as 90% of people wouldn't sport the exactly same armor style that's completely indistinguishable.
It gives the whole affair a real "clone wars" vibe where you ain't fighting individuals, but yet another of the same model, something that wouldn't have been acceptable in single-player FPS games or multiplayer mods, like CS, decades ago.
But it's fascinating how your difficulties of differentiating players and teams trace directly back to the lack of non-monetized character customization, and that just passes right by you like a non-issue.
Maybe you enjoy fighting in the clone wars, I think it's greedy design and not conductive to good gameplay.
20 years ago non-commercialized mods got this right, I really don't see why wanting it to get right in massive AAA titles, with a pretty rich and established history in exactly that, is suddenly such a controversial opinion, on HN out of all places.
On one hand I get called out for wanting more than only the purest "core-functionality" ("You can shoot people, what more do you want?"), on the other hand people disagree with the notion of how these "low-content" version are very much "f2p" versions, as a lot of content that used to come out of the box is now relegated and hand-waved away as "playing dress up".
For all the flak ActiBlizzard deserves for this situation, I'd be happier if it were illegal for Microsoft to publicly give them shit about while already in talks to buy. There's just way too many ways to abuse that for leverage.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/18/22789881/microsoft-xbox-...
https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/01/11/phil-spencer-discuss...
It's self-serving, but more effective, as it actually got Blizzard to do another round of cleaning house.
Tho, it certainly fits what MS has been going for with its gaming division; Game pass ultimate has a weird lack of „third party aaa” titles in certain genres.
For example EA Play is included in game pass ultimate, but by now all the new EA stuff is locked behind “EA Play pro”.
Having the whole Acti/Blizz lineup in there would be quite the offering. Particularly all the Call of Duties were never really sold in a “get all of them!” way. Now all of them might end up for “free” on game pass.
Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet:
> When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
It will be interesting to see in the medium-term if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. But for now it's wild to think about the fact that Microsoft owns the Call of Duty franchise.
Congrats to Phil on his resume bump I guess.
Though there is the switch tax where games that are 10$ on steam are 30 on switch.
Which isn't to say that you should by a switch. If you don't think it's a good value then obviously you shouldn't. I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me.
[0] Not all of them were shit of course, but the catalogue is 90% shit and people did buy a lot of shit games.
Today you pay $30 (for some games, but a lot are still $60, $80, etc.) Plus the DLC, credits, extensions, registration to an account no ability to sell it or buy second hand.
Game industry got pretty bad, I've enjoyed it in the past, and I have the ability to just move on and ignore anything game related, what I am upset about is that today's kids are squeezed and coerced in order to play anything, and that is why I wish we had governments trying to put a stop to the current gaming companies greed
What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires (physical media is pretty dead, and I say this having a paper library of around 500 books) and that games are ever-more-expensive to make.
For the preposterous number of person-hours that go into an AAA title, $100 isn't unrealistic. But there's price anchoring dating back to the nineties now, and that as much as anything is why games upsell the way they do. (The "complete edition" prices are probably more representative of what a sustainable price for a player really is.)
Or we can do microtransactions until our souls bleed and go back to single-use codes in the game case. That's a thing too.
While it is hilarious that you imply that vendor lockin, half finished games, arbitrary difficulty curves meant to stimulate mtx and a lack of ownership is a "general consumer desire" I think it is more reasonable to say that the consumer has no choice. They (or we) clearly still desire to buy videogames, so folks end up buying what is essentially trash.
You pay your money and you take your choice. I agree that it's silly, and that's why I don't buy those games. I buy and play a lot of games, but it's been at least five years since I bought a game (that didn't show up from Humble Choice or whatever and is languishing in my game keys spreadsheet) from Activision, EA, or Ubisoft.
I have gotten more enjoyment out of Starsector[0], a game that isn't even on Steam yet, than I've ever gotten out of any AAA game I've ever played. It cost me $15. (I have since bought it repeatedly for friends.)
[0] - https://fractalsoftworks.com
> I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me.
That's because on this topic you are quick on making judgements on people and don't (want to?) realize their reasons for not buying a switch can be valid and these reasons are not attack or counter arguments to the reasons for why you would buy switch games.
I am not an entitled gamer.
edit: and FWIW I was checking the switch page for Disco Elysium and I see that the price tag is the same as Gog's (39.99) but now I don't care anymore about discussing this topic here and now. Nintendotax gone ? Just checked Life is stange:true colours, same price tags as steam.
> Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet.
Not:
> Game prices on the switch is why it's not worth gave in to the temptation yet.
> I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
No, you built a straw man argument.
Do I go around asking for a refund because The Witness has been given for free and I paid for it in full upon release ? That would be entitlement. Not buying a switch because switch games are too expensive for me is not being entitled. I also think not buying a switch because I may think switch games are too expensive is not being entitled.
> [..] , which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
Yeah, way to go. First you suggest in a reply to me that people who think like you think I do are entitled and then you state your opinion is objective and then throw a blanket statement about something no one said and suggest this position is objectively ridiculous.
Fitting username.
I still play $60 for games because it's not a big deal for me but it's weird when I already have so much entertainment available for almost nothing. Playnite says I have 1050 games available to play, about 50 are duplicates and about 350 are from Game pass. I've apparently spent less than $600 on steam and much less than that on all other stores. Seems like the market value of the average game is about $1. (Hands waving furiously)
Gaming companies aren't entitled to my money. They're allowed to offer games for the prices they want, and the market is allowed to buy them or not.
Besides, many of those $10 games that are $30 on the Switch are made by smaller teams or even solo creators. Just because some video game properties have grown into giant franchises with multimedia companies pouring tens and hundreds of millions dollars and armies of people into them, that doesn't mean the majority of video game titles around are like that.
Come to think of it, in the light of the countless recent stories of overwork and abuse in the games industry and the scandalous quality issues plaguing high-profile releases in recent years, I'm not even sure if we should be incentivizing games having a lot of work go into them.
How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? Expensive things don't become cheap just because they're cheaper than four decades ago nor because they happen to be created and marketed by large corporations with lots of employees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfyxWaeGCE
That's a fair point. My first guess is lootboxes and microtransactions being used to make up the difference, as well as underpaying employees. For big studios it is common to lay off developers immediately after a big release.
Regardless, I don't think that same logic applies to smaller studios.
> How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway?
That isn't what I was saying, though I admit I didn't make it very clear. If you don't want to buy something because the cost isn't worth it to you, that's perfectly fair. What I am annoyed by and think is entitled is any kind of objective-sounding judgement that 'games are too expensive'.
the biggest is market size. in 1980, there were very few people buying games compared to today.
also, for non-aaa games, the difficulty of making a game has in many ways gone down significantly. NES era games were at the absolute limit of hardware capabilities, and required a ton of wizardry to fit within size constraints. now graphics expectations are higher, but modern computers are so much more powerful that you can afford a lot more sloppiness.
You can still redownload things. Nintendo says at some point they'll turn that off, but they haven't said when yet.
Even if you made sure to unregister your phone number and email addresses from iMessage first? You can do this while still using an iPhone to validate that it's worked before you give it up.
You are right, of course. And you can also do it afterwards if you forgot. There is no nefarious plan to void your messages when you change phone.
The "lock-in" and the lack of ownership/copyright extension for media provided by their service is absolutely a problem, but it's not "servitude". There's a couple of other members of FAANG where the relationship with users is much more like servitude.
I'm hoping the Steam Deck will provide a more open portable console.
When passion projects become "loss making", then people loose their passion for it.
I have a 14" gaming notebook (ASUS G14 2021) that's portable enough and offers decent battery life especially for lighter games with access to my Steam library offline, and plenty of key shops to find games for uber cheap when there's no demo available for me to vet the value of a title first.
Win-wins all around!
Do devs get more money from Steam than Switch on a per unit basis? If not, using Steam means the dev is not winning as much as they could.
Good for them though, I mean it's a great game, and it means the games don't depreciate much on the secondhand market either. Although I'm confident people don't want to sell physical Switch games, a lot of them have a lot of life in them and become prized possessions.
https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Indie/#p=0&tab=TopRat...
Do we count mods? DotA and CS would be indie if so, but are now quite commercial.
Indie studios have produced a lot of games with varied mechanics that are just a huge breath of fresh air for me, personally.
You'd never see a AAA studio making Factorio or Satisfactory, for instance. Probably unlikely to see them make a game like Darkest Dungeon, or Don't Starve, or Stardew Valley or Terraria or Starbound or.. the list goes on. You just might have to look a bit deeper to dig through the roguelikes and platformers.
e.g. Annapurna Interactive has been publishing AAA-quality titles from indie devs for a long time. And most of those games don't fall into the roguelike or platformer vertical.
But yeah, not many games between AAA and indie. :(
Lot of those studios between AAA and indie have closed or have been bought up, by Paradox, Microsoft, Tencent, Embracer/THQ Nordic...
* Puzzle (The Witness, Baba is You, Antichamber, Manifold Garden, ...)
* Survival/open-world (Minecraft, Terraria, Don't Starve, Subnautica, The Long Dark, ...)
* Horror (Amnesia, Outlast, Layers of Fear, Five Nights at Freddy's ...)
* Management/simulation (Factorio, Stardew Valley, Kerbal Space Program, ...)
* Metroidvanias (Cave Story, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, ...)
* "Walking simulators" (The Stanley Parable, Gone Home, Firewatch, ...)
Some of these maybe you'd disagree with (Are Metroidvanias just platformers? Can Minecraft still be put on a list of indie games?), but I personally think it's a crime to omit at least puzzle games and survival games. The offerings from the AAA space for those is not very impressive compared to the indie space.
Tencent and Microsoft have both spread a lot of money around. Perhaps for varying reasons, namely MS needs to make up for the lack of titles developed for the Xbox Series, and add titles to Game Pass to make it more a more attractive offering.
There's so many platforms to build for, and on some (xbox/ps5) a high(er) barrier to entry, vs. low on the PC, or mobile. I'm not surprised that there's much indie action on the xbox/ps5.
As an indie game developer (hard to get more indie than me, I think, since I'm doing this mostly solo), I can attest that it's never been easier to get your game on Steam or a console platform. On Steam it's mostly a matter of a $100 fee and filling a form. Consoles are a bit harder, but still dramatically more open to indie titles than say a decade ago, and all of them are possible to get on even for small developers.
I also wouldn't say that "the group of indie dev studios is dwindling". It's just a matter of the old indie studios "growing up" to become bigger enterprises, but there is tons of other people replacing them on the lowest rung, with teams of several people and true labor of love projects.
Have you looked at Steam recently? Indie studios are doing just fine, and new indie studios are popping up all the time. I'd argue the indie market is stronger than ever.
1. invested in by one of the platform owners themselves, in exchange for a [temporary] exclusivity agreement, making them essentially a sharecropper on the platform; or
2. invested in almost exclusively by a single bigcorp publisher, making the studio essentially a secret marque of that publisher for projects they don't want associated with their regular brand image.
Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners, or by a bigcorp publisher.
> Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners
My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements. And I have more access to such games than at any time in history.
> What evidence? My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements.
Ignore indie games that have been on Steam for years and years, or that only get published on Steam and no other platforms; these are the exceptions to the rule (despite this set containing some of the largest hits by sales volume.)
While there are studios that sell only on Steam and other low-barrier-to-entry channels, 99% of them don't last more than a year or two, because selling only on Steam is leaving almost all your money on the ground. There's a reason that many of these games don't get support updates any more and won't run on e.g. macOS or Linux after any major OS update, despite originally intending support for those platforms: the studio didn't survive.
And while there are indie studios that eventually take their console-exclusive game over to Steam, it's often still published by the publisher on Steam. Take a careful look at the Steam catalog page for the "publisher" field. If there is one? That's who's making the direct revenue on the game sales. Like the publisher of a book. The "author" — the studio — is only getting a commission.
There are a few indie studios who manage to "earn out" their deals with publishers, and take over their own Steam pages (though not usually their console marketing rights — the platform owners don't like dealing with the long tail of self-publishers, they much prefer well-known bigcorps as marketing partners.)
> Don't look at the game as it exists on Steam > Instead, look at any game that's still console exclusive.
So I should ignore all the evidence that refutes your position, and only look at a limited subset of data that does support it?
Having a publisher doesn't invalidate a companies indie label. Being "indie" has never meant being bootstrapped.
This is such a narrow, HN-ified view of indie developers that I genuinely have a hard time believing this is anything other than satire.
I don’t have any stats but would find that interesting, mainly as I’m not sure how much revenue indie studios have. Is the split like 10% get most of the money while the other 90% starve?
FWIW, I have heard they are hands-off and offer resources, like great groups for closed alphas.
The only concern I have is that they can become more hands on and excersie control over creative decisions in the future.
Personally, I value good stories from mid sized indy studios. The dominance of 2 engines can make things feel a bit homogenized. Pair a great story with another engine, and my interest is piqued.
This is inaccurate.
I don't have the stats to back it up, but the power of Unity Engine and Unreal Engine have effectively created an indie game developer renaissance.
One of my favorite games at the moment, Hell Let Loose, is published by an indie studio that started in 2017 as a Kickstarter project. They launched their PC version last summer and successfully launched an Xbox port this past fall. It is objectively a better (but harder) game than COD WWII or Battlefield V, both of which are considered AAA titles and have had hundreds of millions put into them for development.
Combine that with the lower barrier to entry with the discoverability of games on Steam and Xbox marketplaces and you have a very hot market. Oh, and consumers play video games now more than ever.
And, to my eyes, Epic uses openly monopolistic practices: they drop the license fee for the engine if you use their game store.
I used to make games, so I hated when people used GameStop because it avoided the developers getting any money. But now I'm thinking that GameStop would be great, because most all but three of the games I bought just suck.
These online-purchase-only systems frankly need a one-hour refund policy. So many games where the controls are just jank (like 100% janky). Like everyone looked at Celeste and thought "This game is good because it's hard" instead of "This game is good because it rewards skill". I'd rather play Celeste and Returnal than these other utter wastes of hard drive. I only made it through Unsighted because you can make yourself invulnerable: fun story, fun ideas, fun levels, jank combat.
Bah humbug.
There is quite a Nintendo tax on indie games though.
Hollow Knight was great; if I hadn't nearly fully completed it at the time I probably would have started another playthrough already.
Yeah, but from TFA:
>> Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities.
I don't see a need for this and agree with the notion that companies should not buy companies. There are cases where it makes sense, but I think another mechanism needs to be created because buying and selling companies is often too much like buying and selling people in addition to being anti-competitive.
yes, because what would he do without.
We already know that Bethesda is keeping their autonomy to make the same great games we love from them, and Starfield is a chance to prove it. The only downside being: Playstation owners losing out on playing what may end up being among the most popular titles in the next 5-10 years if Starfield and TES6 are a success.
Activision Blizzard already competed with Sony, which is why people think the market is more healthy prior to this acquisition.
In your comment you point out that Bethesda still has their autonomy. So why is it good again for MS to be acquiring these studios? They continue to make the same product in more or less the same way, but now have to appease their MS gods, all while generating more profit for MS to the benefit of not really anyone, except MS.
My last comments were more in the shoes of Microsoft.
Which is also a bad thing!!!
Gaming is not a human right.
Apple is not obligated to invest into building Apple Music app on Android or Windows. Just because Apple tied Apple Music into their own ecosystem, doesn't mean you are owed anything.
But I agree the concentration is still a problem in itself, even if the owners are OK.
They're becoming the Disney of gaming, which is scary, but hey, Microsoft gonna Microsoft.
I'm curious how game development is under the large tech companies like Microsoft. Game development is notoriously recognized as a slave driving industry for the labor force. Massive tech companies, like Microsoft, aren't exactly known as places to slack in the software world, but they also don't seem to have as toxic of a labor culture as the gaming companies who pass mountains of costs to their labor to remain competitive (Amazon perhaps being the exception here).
(Itemization and damage looks very bad in Diablo 4 previews though - damage in hundreds of thousands and "strictly better" items instead of trade offs)
What will happen to Bobby Kotick now?
> Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth.
you don't need to make another Starcraft game. you can use that IPs to develop different kind of game like Warcraft is used to make Hearthstone the card game.
Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard's IPs
Starcraft was just a fantastic game - people have been playing it for decades. Not sure how financially successful it has been (fairly well I would imagine) but it has a legion fan base.
Almost everyday play map or two on SC:R.
About time other studios get a chance to work with Blizzards IPs, they did well creating all those beautiful universes, but they struggle so much making just one new game every few years.
I've read the GP comment with a strong dose of sarcasm.
They love their Linux. I won't be surprised at all if some key games would magically become less compatible with WINE in the future.
The world, it be complicated, yo.
Consoles have always been packaged, standardized, and locked computers. That Nintendo is bad at security isn't proof of any great altruism. It just means they're not good at secure hardware design.
Actually Texas Instruments had a go at it with their beige TI-99/4A, but by the time that came out most of the TI-99/4As that would ever be sold were already sold, without the lockout. But it was the NES that turned the locked box into a business model.
Yes. I mean the sub-headline is XboxGamePass is now 25M+ subscribers. Logical next step isn't even games: it's convergence.
Curious we don't see similar consolidation in the Japanese market: Square Enix, Konami, Capcom, Tecmo, Bandai Namco, From. Even Nintendo. All seem attractive targets, no?
Samsung, Toyota, Hyundai, Sony... They all are huge conglomerates spawning across multiple industries.
Sony did expand on some fronts via acquisitions, e.g. Sony Electronics acquiring Konica-Minolta, Sony Electronic Entertainment acquiring several studios, etc.
I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest.
In what way is PC gaming attached to Microsoft? Microsoft Game Studios doesn't have a lot of market share in PC games besides Minecraft, and the industry is very diverse. Most games happen to run on Windows, but apart from DirectX they have resisted every attempt from Microsoft to use that in any way.
If PC gaming is attached to anyone it's Valve, but even that is slowly changing.
Wow, that sucks. They should acquire someone with a bigger catalogue!
And Obsidian Entertainment. And inXile.
PC Gaming runs on Windows, not on Valve's OS (while valve is intending to change that progressively).
It's not like you have to pay royalties to Microsoft if you sell a PC game (but you do have to pay MS/Sony if it's a Xbox/PS game).
You could see it coming that this is controversial.
1. Microsofts share in publishing video games isn't exactly what you'd call small. They acquired Zenimax Media [1] last year, which is kind of big. That said, Microsoft can't be seen as a dominator in the publishing market.
2. But the argument wasn't necessarily about who owns the most studios. Microsoft absolutely dominates in the platform market on PC. Games are developed for Windows. Period. Everything else is either niche or an extra.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Media
1) Microsoft holds a very respectable share of the video game market (especially if you ignore mobile). But their share of the PC game market specifically is much smaller.
2) Microsoft is the dominant platform of PC gaming without question. But that doesn't make the market attached to them. Being without alternative or having high switching costs is what makes you attached, not merely using it. Most games are inherently multi-platform, either because they are built in an engine that is or because they are also sold on other platforms (mostly consoles). Not having Linux, Mac or SteamOS builds is usually a business decision, not a technical one. You could argue that they are attached to Microsoft because that's where the consumers are, and that's true in a sense. But that limits what kind of benefit Microsoft can get out of the attachment and what kind of damage they can do - at most as much as it takes to get enough consumers to switch (dual boot, some SteamOS device, etc). In a world where games sell platforms the attachment isn't very strong
God of War, a 4 years old PS4 title, was just released on PC and sold very well. That should tell you everything you need to know...
The Avengers was a large AAA game from the world's most popular media franchise and it recently tanked. "That should tell you everything you need to know..."
There are good AAA games and bad AAA games. The good ones do very well, the bad ones don't do as well. If we move the goalposts to say that the high-grossing/well-reviewed AAA games don't count then of course we're going to end up with a skewed picture of what the market looks like.
The fact of the matter is that the people who talk about games make up a small portion of the total group of people who play games. AAA still exists because it still rakes in cash, year over year.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-video-game-ever...
But clearly the AAA studios have the market figured out, it's just easier, less risky, and more profitable to make shallow "product" than a rewarding and interesting "game."
And the same complaints hold true in film, where people argue that studios are just taking the safer, more profitable path. But the people who make those complaints aren't the audience that the studios/publishers are targeting, and they are a minority in the larger market as a whole.
I mean, don't get me wrong, there are indie games or whatever that break out or break the mold; Stardew Valley has sold 15 million copies since it launched in early access in 2016, and though I think the CoD game from that year sold more, I guarantee you there are more people still playing SV than CoD: Infinite Warfare. But Activision made their buck and moved on, and that strategy continues to work for them.
I'm just saying that there is definitely an appetite among the general game consumer for a more complex and cerebral type of game! And that it's sad to see such few of those titles come from the big studios (while at the same time they nickel-and-dime everyone with their dlc's and other schemes).
Unfortunately this is not true. Modern AAA franchises do not innovate. They are just shinier. You can find the same systems, and often more complex or creative ones, in games from the nineties and 2000's as you can today. Modern gamers either become jaded, seek out indie games, or, more often, simply buy what is offered.
Remember when the big question used to be "are video games art? CAN they ever be art?" I remember publications like PC Gamer spending a lot of time and energy wrestling with these questions. It wasn't lip service; it was a real goal that game creators at the time pushed towards, because gaming was trying to find acceptance and respect alongside other forms of media. I think that has mostly been lost, now. There is and will always be indie creators pushing their own creations that are inspired, but the AAA market is totally lost, imo, if you are interested in games as more than just a mindless bit of fun. That overarching sense of progressing towards something that could be considered true "art", is gone, for the time being.
edit: didn't mean to sound like I wasn't giving credit to all the fine indie games and game creators out there. There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
Even Minecraft and Fortnite, two of the most popular games in the world, are systemically quite interesting compared to games 20 years ago. (yes really, Fortnite is much more interesting than you might think looking at it superficially)
Defining “art” when it comes to games is of course subjective. Some would say The Witness is much closer to art than The Last of Us 2, while others would say the opposite… but does it matter? Either way they’re both fantastic games. The medium is still being pushed forward, you just have to know where to look.
Games like: Elite 2: Frontier, Star Control 2, Heroes of Might and Magic, KOTOR 1 and 2, all had strong writing, narrative, complex and difficult systems to manage, and were innovative in their time. And none were "indie" games (though at the time, some of these games could be made by 1 or 2 people). This is a real difference. Just look at the difference in Blizzard. Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo 1 & 2 made them hugely influential and successful because of their commitment to quality. Now, they're a joke. But somehow, still one of the biggest gaming companies in the world!
It's not about defining art. It's about a push to create games that can stand up to works of literature and cinema which are considered to be important artistic achievements. I'm happy to hear that there are titles out their which are striving for that, but AAA studios aren't doing that. In fact they actively push new titles as being cutting edge while they retain or dumb down systems that were created decades ago.
Disagree hard on Fortnite. It is very shallow. The building system seems interesting but is superficial. Yes it's integral to winning the match, but its not very strategic...just like Fortnite's shooting and physics are quite cartoony and not very tactical. It is a VERY poor "shooter," but a fun "battle royale game." There is a difference these days.
Minecraft was not a AAA game, it was just purchased by a AAA studio.
Again, I'm not saying that there aren't any games that are artistic or interesting. In fact that's the opposite of what I said in my original post! I'm saying that "The Industry" (which will ALWAYS have the most market share, visibility, and resources) is not creating those games. They are not interested. And that is a sad change from what used to be.
On top of that, there are still massive budget AAA games that are willing to take risks for artistic integrity. Obvious examples of this are things like Death Stranding or The Last of Us 2.
Blizzard’s quality hasn’t actually fallen. They’ve clearly had some internal culture issues but their games have always been stellar. They just operate on glacial timescales which everyone seems to forget. Their last release was in 2016, which was Overwatch, a fantastic game.
And re: Fortnite, if you don’t think the building is strategic, you need to watch some high end competitive matches. It’s incredibly tactical. Each player acts like a real time map designer trying to give themselves the biggest positional advantage (while balancing resource usage etc). I would argue that it uses the full 3-dimensions more than any other competitive game out there.
> There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
I guess that's my point and I didn't write it very well. AAA publishing/production has become a low-risk money-machine that feeds a very large audience occasionally surprising but increasingly bland content, while making small formulaic incremental changes year-on-year e.g. next-gen textures, bigger maps, more multiplayer servers and modes. Unfortunately a large proportion of players are happy with just that model as evidenced by the revenue derived from it.
https://www.engadget.com/xbox-phil-spencer-activision-blizza...
This exclusivity game has to stop. I understand MS’s motivations — they want people to buy their console, after all. But it’s awful that you can make an educated console decision, and then two years later have a good chunk of games stolen from you because of a merger.
I concur that I’d really like to see Linux take the PC gaming space over. Personally I feel that we should focus on indie games and low-level platform compatibilty — if enough users switch to Linux, AAA studios will have to follow. Except the MS-owned studios who have a standing order to ignore Linux, of course…
Just watch the LTT videos about gaming on Linux. Linux is a Cluster** of an OS to troubleshoot and configure.
I'm a dev myself I love my Arch and everything but this OS is NOT meant for normal people.
Its 2022, people don't want to fiddle around with a terminal.
Until Linux and its users don't fix the core problem of linux and thats usability, I don't see people switching to it.
Maybe steam changes this.. but we will see..
Is this a good thing though?
Computer illiteracy seems to be at a new high-water mark with the upcoming generation. They generally know how to punch some buttons to make a few things work, but nothing more.
If anything, I think we should be teaching the basics of the UNIX command line starting around 5th or 6th grade. Get those kids playing around and learning a bit more about their systems. Maybe teach a few little python or Javascript one-liners to automate some stuff. Not everyone will pick everything up, but a lot of overlooked kids would find a new skill that will help them no matter which direction their lives take them.
I love the terminal and everything but we should not teach people how to use it. The terminal is not the most user friendly thing out there is it? (maybe its harsh saying "should not teach" but lets say make them aware there is a terminal but there should be alterantives)
I would not get rid of it.. ever, but I would love to see alternatives to it. People are too fixated on working from the terminal and using the terminal that they don't see that its literally the thing that gate keeps people away from trying Linux.
People use the terminal because it's easier to learn and use than countless GUI windows.
The concepts aren't hard. People aren't stupid and there's no reason to treat them like they are.
My terminal usage on MacOSX and Ubuntu is equal - only running git commands and AWS CLI. And I play Steam games on my Ubuntu Thinkpad P1.
Have you ever tried running an old App on linux compared to windows lets say? Windows compatibility is unmatched. I can effortlessly run old programs and games.
If a linux project is abandoned for a few years, good luck making it run. (and I know you can always recompile etc, but thats besides the point, no "normal" user will compile an app)
You repeated an old cliche(which is false) and now you moved goalposts.
PS: I've tried to run multiple Windows apps that wouldn't run on Windows 11. I have an older In System Programming software, that I have to run in a virtualized Windows XP. So...
It will take a long time before anything material comes from this from a games perspective. I would assume legal agreements are in place for cash-cow games like Call Of Duty on other platforms so that should alleviate any anti-competitive investigation.
As a major, why should I take the (large) risk to develop novel product? When I can outsource that function to a large number of smaller companies, who either go bankrupt or produce something of value, which I can then afford to pay a premium to acquire, after its value is known? I.e. if I can substitute money for risk, why wouldn't I?
It seems to me that the mismanagement of Acti/Blizz is a product of a corrupt corporate apparatus. From the inside of Acti/Blizz, the problem is basically intractible, but I don't think that really applies the same way once you install higher rungs of authority. MS is no stranger to acquisitions, either, so it's not as though they will be asleep at the wheel during this transition.
the company is rotten from the very top, through the middle to the bottom
they're going to have one hell of a time cleaning that up
I certainly think this should happen.
The trillion dollar giants should not span multiple industries. They have absurd monopoly power and can make growing your own niche impossible.
Why does a cloud computing / operating system vendor / hardware manufacturer / business software / developer tooling company also own the third biggest gaming outfit?
Why, for that matter, are Amazon and Apple also movie studios (and soon to be game studios)?
This is ridiculous. These companies never have to compete with you. It's easy for them to funnel money into any effort and clone your product. You can struggle to grow revenue and they can simply allocate an engineering team and marketing budget.
You'll probably also have to buy your competitor's products or pay their taxes at some point.
So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies completely seperate in order to operate; otherwise, they would have too much of a competitive advantage over Comcast.
For the customer, it's just EPB, but for legalize and accountants, it's two completely separate companies, and money isn't allowed to go from the power division to the internet division and vice versa.
Imagine if these conglomerates had to do similar type of accounting. I don't know if that would be a positive for the customer/consumer, but it's an interesting thought exercise. Amazon might even consider shutting down quite a bit of e-commerce if they couldn't subsidize it with AWS...
Considering how much eBay charges for less - Amazon's eCom is not going to fold, if AWS was separated.
I don't think Comcast is in a position to claim victimhood, nor is EPB. However, I would be interested in seeing this type of accounting being enforced for companies that receive grants and significant tax breaks/advantages and have localized enforced monopolies, such as Comcast and several other large companies.
In what world is it a good thing that instead of accepting an offer to provide a needed service that you're in the business of, you refuse the offer and sue/lobby the requester into submission out of spite.
This world is so, so broken.
If you read what I said, Comcast, having received billions from the government to build fiber optic networks that they never built, should be under advanced scrutiny, perhaps forced to keep their internet providing monies separate from their TV cable system monies.
1850 - 1920 (Railroad + oil/steel trusts)
1880 - 1982 (ATT)
1950 - 1975 (IBM)
1985 - 2000 (Intel/Microsoft)
2008 - current (Google/Apple/Amazon)
2014 - current (Meta)
It's the nature of technology to produce consolidation, before the next breakthrough occurs and incumbents are typically swept away.
On the plus side, the length of dominant periods seems to be decreasing.
And realistically, data portability standards and pricing for cloud & ability to use independent app stores are the biggest tweaks I'd make.
What I was casting about for was the earliest example of innovation-suppressing economic subordination by force, over a wide area.
The Achaemenid (or later Abbasid) seem have featured more individual freedom, with regards to innovation, and less maximally-taxing policy to redirect economic output to ostensible land owners.
But the taxing and redirection of excess economic output, accomplished through ownership and lending of land, leading to an underperforming history of innovation, seems borne out by the history of Europe, regardless of the intricacies or framework through which it's viewed.
And that seems pretty on point for exactly what everyone is decrying with regards to consolidation into conglomerates in the tech sector.
Spending ~$70bn to acquire another company is also impressive. Sure, Microsoft has limitless resources, and using acquisitions to hurt the competition is something they love to do, but still.. He did it. This is his win.
This paints Sony as the unwilling party. Microsoft can say, “we would love to have CoD on PlayStation.”
Why else buy them? Most Blizzard games are PC first anyway.
I doubt that existing franchises will become exclusive.
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/xbox-phil-spencer-bethesda...
I'd like to see this acquisition blocked, it will be bad for gaming long term to have so much control with one company.
Selling full versions everywhere else is good business, we saw that from both Microsoft and Sony making more PC ports - and for Xbox it is yet another driver into their subscription model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJYsA1jXf60
You forgot to mention he started with billions of dollars backing him up. It was not like a small startup or something.
How big were Sony and Nintendo at the time? Even with Microsoft's war chest, it was an uphill battle.
And, to the GP point of crediting Spencer, there weren't even many synergies to exploit with a Microsoft console in the first XBox generation. It certainly didn't "integrate" with Windows in any way that made you more likely to buy it over alternative consoles.
AFAICT (as someone who doesn't spend much time console gaming now), its success was essentially built on the back of (1) access to capital, (2) savvy exclusives, (3) intelligent acquisitions, (4) avoiding missteps in hardware refreshes, and in later generations (5) strength of social platform. So, props where props are due, because 4/5 of those are skill. Especially while no doubt having to fight an internal battle against all the other Microsoft political power centers.
I guess, in retrospect, Microsoft's fundamental synergy was "developers, developers, developers!" And realizing trading more powerful commodity PC hardware for decreased programming difficulty was a good deal. There were a large number of developers, or future developers, dissatisfied with catering to {insert Nintendo or Sony weird architecture hoops du jour}.
I'm not trying to argue about the specifics about what happened, but just in general terms, there was always going to be room for a competitor in a space that big, that was changing that rapidly. Imho.
I'm more flummoxed by the fact that a fundamentally social-native offering didn't disrupt the existing ecosystem, in the 2000 timeframe.
We had chat. We had basic web. Keyboards weren't that expensive, were they? Seems a killer feature for kids.
Not straight "the Web on your console", but something more like AOL, Prodigy, and the late 90s portals.
My only explanation is that the 3 big platform companies were still thinking in packaged software/games, sold retail, terms. Hence XBox Live, when it emerged, was essentially a way to get more value (multiplayer) out of the packaged software you bought.
As a longtime Blizzard fan and a former Microsoft employee, maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, but there's really only one thing I care about:
Will they finally start getting the fucking games right again?
Be happy that old Blizzard happened, I say, and look on with eagerness to new indie studios, many of which are being run by the same Blizzard vets.
Don't get your hopes up :)
Unlikely without regulatory intervention. The added value for MS shareholders here is that MS has now more leverage to gently heard gamers towards their platforms.
According to Wikipedia[0]:
> Spencer served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft's European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008
He came to be in charge of Xbox via his experience managing their internal studios. How's Lionhead doing these days btw?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spencer_(business_executi...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29966958
You are reading too much from too little.
> A summary of those personnel actions was scheduled to be released by Activision before the winter holidays, but Chief Executive Bobby Kotick held it back, telling some people it could make the company’s workplace problems seem bigger than is already known, the people familiar with the situation said.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However, they could also be withholding that until next week so they can get more news out of this acquisition, saying that he (and hopefully a lot of management) is stepping down would make a lot of news on its own, doing it now would muddle it.
Joking aside (I got over my Microsoft hatred when they started to finally embrace Linux and FOSS, YMMV (though I was salty about Nokia ditching Maemo!)), I have a deja vu:
Microsoft + Elop -> Nokia + Elop -> Nokia + Elop = Microsoft.
Microsoft + Ybarra -> Blizzard + Ybarra -> Blizzard + Ibarra = Microsoft.
Sure, I don't mention Kotick. I don't give a shit about Activision's IP, so no problem for me there. Its Blizzard's IP which I like, or perhaps rather, liked. Cause its gone downhill.. ehh.. 'somewhat'.
What’s left to really show they’re going this direction is to release a VR that works on Xbox.
One party want to sell, the other wants to buy. As long as the deal doesn't breach any anti-trust laws, it's good to go.
Either there would need to be some revolution with the legal profession, or congress would have to pass some new law.
What the judges realized is that by an more open definition pretty much any company and any merger could be said to be against anti-trust.
So if you want such a law, you need to actually get some exact definition of how every is judged that can be consistently legally applied.
If you are referring to anti-trust laws preventing this, then MS would need to be buying a huge number of companies to monopolize the gaming market, not just Activision, in order to be in violation of this law.
They can "ask" gaming companies to use Azure if they want to run on Windows or Xbox. They can ignore Mac and PlayStation as platforms. They can bundle software licenses, payment gateways, and design hardware that only works in one ecosystem.
This is the modern monopoly. Good luck competing with it or avoiding their platform fees as you try to grow your revenue. You'll undoubtably wind up feeding your direct competition somehow or another.
> They can wield this power to force deals and push out competitors across their multiple business units.
The only way this would matter is if you can prove that they have some monopoly in any one market and use that monopoly position to drive up prices.
So if somehow could leverage their Windows OS as to sell games for 1000$ rather then 100$.
Microsoft does not have monopoly in any one market as far as I can tell.
There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even.
They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.
You said Tencent twice ;)
Isn’t that the point? Why can something as large as MS have a “division” that can go into mergers and acquisitions as if they were a separate entity?
> There are stills lots of other large publishers
…goes on to name 5.
> They are definitely not “buying all their competit
Sure, you can be as pedantic as you want and jump through hoops to come to that rationalization.
And I guess you can question my use of the subjective word "lots", my fault. I still think there are _enough_ large publishers around in the gaming industry that you can't really start throwing around terms like "monopoly" or "anti-trust" etc...
I was mostly just pointing out that the original comment was factually inaccurate by saying MS were buying up "all their competitors".
I'm not trying to rationalize or "jump through hoops" here. We're all just debating and guessing, having a conversation..
If you somehow accidentally assigned me to the opposite 'side' from the one you appear to be on, let me gently correct you.. I don't care enough about this to be picking sides.
Especially when Microsoft is using the rest of Microsoft to subsidize said "division"
But overall even though it's a big acquisition both together will still remain one amongst a few big gaming companies.
Unless politicians make major changes to the anti-trust law its unlikely to be effective. And doing so would require major action in congress.
The president could use non anti-trust actions as well of course. But rather unlikely.
Sony Interactive Entertainment actually relocated to California a few years ago and literally everything PlayStation is under them so I'd probably call them a US company at this point.
I'm not convinced.
> Also, a law like that (and any law infringing a free market)
You don't have a market without competition, which is what acquisitions accomplish. There is no such thing as a free market, by the way, that's a fantasy. There have always been laws governing markets.
> disincentivizes growth
Yes, that's exactly what I want to accomplish. These companies are too big & powerful.
> and innovation.
Huge companies use acquisitions to squash innovation.
It might be bad for 3p developers, but it's pretty hard to argue that iOS is bad for consumers despite continuing to gain marketshare in the US.
> I'm not convinced.
So you think that cars built by 1 company providing engines and then another company sells you the cabin to put on top?
Should rocket companies not be able to build and launch rockets, or their own sats? Should we prevent Tesla from making batteries? Should Apple or Oxide (if you want a startup) be prevented from developing software and hardware together? What is that other then vertical integration.
Vertical integration is everything, being against vertical integration means that basically every company should only ever be allowed to control a single step in a production process. And its hard even define 'a step' even means, as even things like making steel requires many steps.
If you want things, at least actually figure out what you want because I don't think that is it.
I want competition. I want more choices. Acquisitions are the opposite of that.
>Yes, that's exactly what I want to accomplish. These companies are too big & powerful.
Economic growth is a consequence of gains in productivity. Therefore, we should champion economic growth because it allows us to do more during a day.
>Huge companies use acquisitions to squash innovation.
Another idea: people set up really innovate companies because they hope to be acquired by a bigger company. In other words – big companies enable an incentive structure favouring innovation. In general, VC:s (which drive most innovation today) hope to exit via an IPO – but selling to a big tech-company is a safety cushion. If we remove the safety cushion – the VC market will be more risk averse and less willing to spend on innovative, but unproven, ideas.
I agree this is a very good thing but I think we'd both agree that Apple buying Arm would probably be a very bad thing in the medium-long run. I don't know what the solution is but as a consumer, I'd like companies to collaborate and thrive in a single big ecosystem vs having one big company. For example, Activision games can still be on Game Pass without Microsoft completely owning them and as an end user, I think that is more balanced.
> it's not their desire for the games to run there
And yet they can prevent their games from running on Proton like some devs have done by anti-cheat measures. IIRC Overwatch refuses to run on Linux and risks a ban because of the Vulkan translation layer.
I think we'll look back in 10 years and wonder why antitrust regulators did nothing, but it may be too late by then.
I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens.
I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the market, and it was wild to me how that was allowed to happen.
(Visa + Plaid)
AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.
I think that assessment was obvious to everyone at the time. The question is whether buying out competitors is good for the public.
Of course, the cash was a penalty for not being able to pull off the merger; if the cash was critical for T-Mobile to become the threat it has been, the outcome is ironic.
The equivalent for this merger would be something like Minecraft and Bethesda games on the A-B launcher for 7 years. Huge giveaway by AT&T I think, as foolish as it might have been for them to think the merger would actually go through; having at-least 4 major carriers was policy at the time and still is (Dish's spectrum hoarding notwithstanding).
https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/nvidia-slash-arm-merger-inquiry
“FTC Sues to Block $40 Billion Semiconductor Chip Merger” 2 December 2021 https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/12/ftc-s...
The original purchase of Rite Aid by Walgreens was aborted due to similar concerns, although that one ended in a revised partial acquisition anyway.
The Staples acquisition of Office Depot/Office Max was stopped as well on anti-trust grounds.
They also blocked a merger of Nasdaq and NYSE.
Those are all since 2010. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few big ones too. They should definitely be blocking more, but they have stopped some.
So even the antitrust that goes through usually only goes through because powerful (often monopolistic) forces want to block a merger, not because it’s what’s objectively best for competition.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/visa-and-plaid-abandon-merger...
https://www.rferl.org/a/1096891.html
A lot has been written about the decline of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1970.
https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...
Just today, the DOJ and FTC announced plans to toughen up on mergers and acquisitions.
>The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division kicked off a process to rewrite merger guidelines for businesses on Tuesday, signaling a tougher stance toward large deals.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/ftc-doj-seek-to-rewrite-merg...
Saw an indie game last night and felt like buying it.
Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land.
Although I will admit I'm tempted to cancel my pre order since I'm worried it won't run well.
If Microsoft starts subsidizing Game Pass games from their other businesses (like Amazon, Google and Apple do for their other services), it'll make the business model of actually selling games unviable by pure race to the bottom. As a result, you'll lose independent development and market diversity because everyone will need to beg Microsoft (and maybe Sony and Apple as other megacorps) for money scraps.
This is very similar what actually happened in mobile games market - a race to the bottom that only left a few winners filled with exploitative anti-patterns that feed on peoples addiction to recoup their costs instead of selling the product.
It'll of course be amazing for users - games will be cheap! And free! Just like views on YouTube are, where creators are getting more and more burned out fighting against the algorithm which decides how much they deserve to be paid.
Also -- EA (EA Play), Ubisoft (Uplay Plus), and Sony (PS Now) already went the way of subscription gaming. EA Play is included in Xbox/PC Game Pass, and PS Now isn't just Sony's catalog, either.
Judging by the reactions I've seen to this acquisition around the internet, this crowd is really not that large.
The average consumer of today does not care in the slightest about owning things, they only care about being able to enjoy whatever the current flavor of the week AAA tripe is for now before the next flavor of the week comes along to replace it. When they're done with a game, they don't care about having it anymore.
This way you can fully play the game and if you really want to "permanently" add it to your library, you can do so for less.
Don't blame mobile games - they got those exploitative ideas from PC market.
The upside of a PC market, is the lack of a centralized authority to tell you what games are good - a.k.a the app stores. (App stores are horrible for games or any creative content discovery, as they use purely utilitarian categorization) That doesn't mean that PC, or web, games are any less exploitative than mobile counterparts. (remember mafia wars or farmville?)
Is it? Undoubtedly there's exploitative crap on PC, but there are countless great titles -- indie and otherwise -- released every year that you can pay money to own. On my iPhone I can hardly even find games to pay a fair price once to own anymore; it's almost entirely exploitative crap.
I used to buy games all the time on my iPhone; were it not for Apple Arcade I'd've hardly played anything in years.
In spaces where casual gaming dominates - exploitative games are top of the "charts".
I'm not an enthusiast gamer - I don't have time to search for indie games. What I see is primarily exploitative games, which turned me off gaming.
If you even read about gaming industry or new games - you're not the majority , that drives casual games to the top of the charts in primary app stores.
Regardless, my point isn't that there aren't spaces where exploitative games predominate. My point is that so many actual good games exist that aren't the slightest bit difficult to find, whereas my experience on the iPhone has been almost uniformly negative the past few years. On average, people just aren't willing to lay out ten, fifteen bucks for a game on mobile, so the race to the bottom is real.
Do you have to be an enthusiast gamer to find good PC games? Just google "best PC games", the first hit is a decent list from PC gamer. Takes all of 60 seconds to search and skim the list. If you don't have time for that, then you don't have time to be gaming at all. If I google "best iOS games" I see a mix of exploitative crap and games that are years and years old by now. (A list of "best iOS games 2021" that includes Bastion -- a game I was playing on my phone ten years ago -- is criminal.)
Take PlayPass, for instance: the play store is a landfill of endless trash, but PlayPass adds both a level of curation and it unlocks all the microtransactions.
So for a low yearly fee you get access to the best Play Store games, never pay for microtransactions, and don't need to go digging to find gems in the garbage heap.
Any random $20 Switch title from the Shovelware Shelf at your local retailer is so much more polished and fun than even the best phone games, it's insane
This seems to put the writing on the wall for the Steam Deck though, right? How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog?
I preordered the Steam Deck and plan to follow through with the purchase, but things look pretty dismal for Valve at this juncture. It seems like they're five years too late to the party with the Deck, and they now have no leverage to push MS to interoperate.
You can run Game Pass directly in a browser. So you could use GamePass on really any modern web connected device.
I would be shocked if Microsoft supported the actual GamePass app on Linux
It was absolutely unplayable without a controller, mind you, but it worked.
MS now has a truly huge library, and Valve extracting a portion of every sale on Steam isn't something that's likely to make them happy. They now have so many games that they can use DRM to force users into their own ecosystem (i.e. Windows 11/XBox) to play them.
You could say, correctly, that MS's previous storefronts have not been a great success, but with such a huge catalogue they can just pull the users wherever they want them. There's no incentive for them to allow a competitor to run their games.
Proton is only a solution for as long as MS allows it, and I don't see any incentive for them to do so at this point.
Maybe things move slowly and the Steam Deck itself can still deliver these titles before this happens, but the Valve "ecosystem" as such seems to have really poor prospects.
So far, it seems MS is quite happy to put its games on Steam as an additional revenue source. Looking now, Xbox Game Studios has 49 games on steam, including its latest and biggest offerings, such as Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5[0].
[0]https://store.steampowered.com/curator/3090835-Xbox-Game-Stu...
I don't know why anybody would give Microsoft of all companies the benefit of the doubt on this front.
Maybe the calculus changes as they eat up publishers and grow their catalog, but traditionally Microsoft's storefronts haven't done particularly well.
As some other folks have pointed out, the existence of WINE and other compat layers is actually hindering gaming on Linux, by disincentivizing game devs to make games directly for linux. A huge hit with the Steam Deck could actually start bringing more games directly to Linux.
That's a very generous definition of "Linux".
Android won, not Linux.
What's the GUI toolkit? Android's one. Audio? Same. Notifications? Android. Etc, etc.
There's a reason many people are scared of Fuchsia, it's not inconceivable that Google at some point just pulls the plug on Linux and replaces it wholesale with Fuchsia as the base for Android.
Linux on mobile failed utterly, from Maemo to Meego to Ubuntu Mobile to all other attempts.
Isn't that exactly what Tencent are well known for doing?[1]
> According to the designer, Riot managers had provided a PowerPoint presentation that she assumed Tencent had made for them, although she didn’t know for sure.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/15/china-video-gam...
> The deal still leaves Riot with a largely independent remit, however, with CEO Brandon Beck telling press that Tencent see Riot more as investment partners than as a fully-owned subsidiary.
> "Riot is going to remain completely independent. There are no redundancies, no layoffs, no synergy fishing, no leadership change," Beck told Gamasutra. "Nothing is going to change other than they're dramatically increasing their holding in the company. They see this more as an investment in a partner.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-02-07-tencent-ac...
I remember reading somewhere that Tencent has the reputation of not interfering with the game studios it had acquired.
Somehow I'm not impressed.
Yeah, I've noticed that. I don't know why they do that, it's annoying. If I can download a game in a half hour I'd like it in a half hour, not next Tuesday, please.
Valve has boxes hosted at many ISPs around the world and so each location could have lower usage numbers, thus less need to throttle.
Pure speculation though.
With who? Most names known for the titles of good old Blizzard are long gone. Possibly even retired.
I haven't really ever used it. I used to buy everything Blizzard made (OK that's an exaggeration, but I was all about WarCraft/StarCraft/Diablo...). Before Steam, I bought lots of games on disk. Now I buy most things on Steam. And I haven't bought anything Blizzard since Diablo III.
Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?
(I'm just one person, but among the people I know that play PC games, I don't hear about Game Pass much. One person mentioned he's on a 14 day $1 trial - that was the extent of it.)
Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam (and/or only buy them on deep, deep sale. Which doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way).
Sure, that $10 gets you only 1 month, but will you buy a different $10 game next month? Will you play this game for more than a month?
Pretty soon the GamePass ROI becomes difficult to ignore. (This coming from someone that doesn't have GamePass but is very impressed by the business model and value proposition around it).
This month, Game Pass subscribers will lose access to Cyber Shadow (launched January 2021), Nowhere Prophet (launched July 2020), Prison Architect (launched January 2021) and Xeno Crisis (launched August 2020).
I'm also having trouble believing that Game Pass will remain $10 for long. At some point Microsoft will want to start recouping its investments and it's gonna start hiking prices. I personally got pretty tired of the constant Netflix price updates and I'd rather not do the same to my video game collection. I didn't actually have a gaming PC between January 2014 and March 2021, and it was actually pretty nice to install Steam and see all of the games that I bought between 2006 and 2014 still waiting for me in my library.
I subscribe to Game Pass occasionally and it sucks every time to lose access to all the games I'm playing. It becomes a balancing act of "I can buy this game for $30 or I can play it (and others) for 3 months at the same price... but what if I want to play it again in the future?" Like most rental models, most times it's easier and cheaper to just buy the game upfront if you can afford it, especially when it's on sale, which is easy to predict (and be notified of) on stores like Steam.
But how long do you play these games for, and how often do you replay them? There are definitely games I replay a lot (Resident Evil games, for one) but there are many where I'm done after one playthrough. I'm totally okay "renting" it and moving on with Game Pass for a lot of titles.
Some of my most-played on Game Pass are Crusader Kings 3, ARK, Dragon Age, My Time at Portia, and No Man's Sky, which are basically what I go back to every time I resubscribe. But after getting up near a dozen months subscribed at $10/mo, I'm now really wishing I would have just dished out the cash earlier to buy the games instead, especially if I want to keep playing them over time. I'm very much in a sunk cost mindset though: "I've already paid to play the game so much, surely this month is the month I'll 'finish' it and get to stop paying, right? Therefore, I shouldn't pay full price to own it when I can just pay the $10..."
It's very much a digital Blockbuster all over again. There, too, I spent many more hundreds of dollars on repeatedly renting games that I should have just bought. But, like Blockbuster, Game Pass is really good for discovering new games because it's such a low cost to try anything in the library once.
super simple stuff.
steam presented a bit of an issue about owning what you pay for. because, if their service is down, you can't access your "assets". some people called it a type of subscription model.
with this shift in the industry, outright paying a subscription for temporary access, we move even further away from owning what we pay for.
imagine never buying a house but always renting. why be against it? who is that business model good for? what kind of world are we voting for when we buy into these types of businesses?
in the long term, a subscription model puts us, the customers, at a loss. and a successful business plans for long term.
But maybe they'll get there.
It's really is literally just Netflix of games. Not great at all when you want to watch Movie X, better if you want to just watch some movie, and the only way when you want their in house productions which in theory are striving to be high quality. GamePass isn't to that final level of exclusivity yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some game goes "Only on GamePass" in the nearish future.
It's also similar to Netflix in that if your usecase was the old "Just streaming The Office only" you could probably just purchase it. A mono game player would definitely be better served just buying the title they want for $60 rather than a monthly fee, but it starts to get more attractive at just a few games per year.
Got Conan Exiles for $12 and played it for 3 months.
If you really like playing a wide variety of games, and like to rent them, then a $10/mo deal is excellent. I like to buy inexpensive games and play them for a long time. Should I even mention the 15 years I got out of StarCraft?
I'll go in waves, playing one game like crazy for a couple months, and then maybe not playing anything for a few. I like going back to the games I already know I enjoy and playing them some more, so I don't want to rent them.
So you get access to these games to try them, and if you really, really like them, you can buy them when they go on sale for cheap on Steam.
I don't use Gamepass because it somehow has eluded me, but it seems like a good deal even if I tend to buy games for cheap on Steam.
or if you want to play games that aren't on Game Pass. Though then it's not exactly a fair Game Pass vs Steam comparison, more Microsoft vs Steam.
I paid like $5/mo for 1 year of the Ultimate version, I can play games on both Xbox and PC and carry over progress for most of them. It's great. Steam doesn't have anything like that, so not sure there's any comparison to do.
For the gaming industry, this seems to push Microsoft into 3rd place (by size) behind Sony and Tencent. So hardly a monopoly and akin to T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint a few years ago. It makes Microsoft much more competitive against Sony and even Nintendo since it'll likely bolster their 1P offerings in the future.
But if Microsoft uses their ownership to favor their own game subscription services (aka GamePass) as well as platforms (aka Windows 11, Xbox console), then certainly that'll be monopolistic behavior. Interesting to note that they're probably #1-#2 in either of those sub-industries. It's possible to end up with an "Internet Explorer-esque" antitrust scenario if Microsoft removes or heavily discourages Activision and Bethesda from making their titles cross-platform.
I'm pretty sure that Starfield is announced to be a Windows/Xbox exclusive already.
The only reason it got approved the third time was that regulators were convinced that either way, the US would only have three mobile operators because it did not look like Sprint could be a going concern.
Now if they buy Sony or Nintendo then I’ll actually be concerned. But for now they’re hardly controlled opposition or anything lol
It's only an issue if this negatively. affects the competitive market. And since games are a creative market - there's hardly any reason to fear that Microsoft can restrict access to new players.
This is not like a utility, that could technically force something on you. One company can buy all of game developers/publishers and still not make a dent in competitiveness of the games market.
Kids' PCs are windows. Microsoft has Game Store installed by default. Pop ups about the latest Fortnite NextGen, installed by default. More addictive than gambling but hella legal.
Easy scenario, no regulations. Market is heavily skewed and MS has a big win in the gambling for kids industry.
Nah, it's just a play to gain more monopoly into PCs and what runs on them. Today, it's a nightmare to get something signed for MS. God forbid you need to sign drivers. With them moving the goal post every now and then, broken APIs, broken SDKs and support SLA of infinity, pluton is a forced dependency.
Pluton is a pure business move with zero customer value. The greatest threat, last year, in security was supply chain attacks. And this tries to "solve" kernel modifications? End users have nothing to gain.
The thing about subscriptions is that consumers tend to buy multiple.
Their "software as a service model of IP consumption" didn't seem to bother many regulators so far.
Besides, with so many games out right seeking to get kids addicted, let's at least have some trade regulations. It's not like parents can ignore them.
Prolly knocked a few bucks off the price at least.
Activision doesn't create very much new IP these days, and that's where the talent is that brings new games and gamers to your platform.