13 ms·

Xbox has accused Sony of paying Game Pass 'block fees' to developers

blargey 4y ago
“You see, your honor, it would foster more competition if we owned the developers/publishers outright and decided their distribution platforms unilaterally, instead of having to price our distribution platform to compete with other company’s exclusivity deals”
- blargey 4y ago
  Legal slap fights aside, it’s interesting to hear about these “block fees” that target this specific subset of Microsoft’s platform. Since it isn’t involved in the big launch sales, and feels more common among smaller budget / indie games, it may be much cheaper for Sony to offer this deal to many prospective Games Pass games. (Though the laissez-faire answer to Microsoft’s frustrations remains “well Microsoft’s publishing platform should pay more than a figment of Sony’s marketing budget if it’s actually a profitable/sustainable business unit”)
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- daoist_shaman 4y ago
  Shhh, don't point fingers at their anti-competitive acquisitions and mergers. It's clearly the people paying fair wages in a free market who are at fault. /s
thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
"Sony's desire to impede such growth has prevented Microsoft from expanding Game Pass. To stop content creators from adding to Game Pass and other rival subscription services, Sony pays for 'blocking rights.'" "These kinds of platform agreements are common in the games industry, and in documents made public as part of the Epic vs. Apple lawsuit last year, PlayStation was even mentioned as blocking the appearance of third-party games on Game Pass." How are "blocking rights" legal? Don't they violate anti-trust / competition laws?
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  I don't think it is per se. Exclusive dealing is a common practice in many sectors. Circumstances can make it illegal, however.
- kahrl 4y ago
  Probably, but do laws actually matter in white-collar America? As long as the right groups get the right cut, the system will continue.
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  - EMIRELADERO 4y ago
    Yes, laws do matter. Were it otherwise civil courts would have lots of free time. The legal system isn't known for being the corruption oasis that movies make it out to be.
    - Judgmentality 4y ago
      > Were it otherwise civil courts would have lots of free time. Laws don't have to matter for you to waste a court's time. In fact dragging out court cases is a common legal tactic. > The legal system isn't known for being the corruption oasis that movies make it out to be. Your experience differs from mine. It also differs from most lawyers I know. Lawyers aren't famous for drinking heavily because they think they're making the world a better place. Why do you think the court system works? What country do you live in?
- rexf 4y ago
  I don't see a problem with Sony (or MS/Nintendo/Apple/etc) paying game developers to keep their games exclusive to a platform. Game creators make decisions on where to put their games and how to monetize. Epic Games is notorious for giving "free games" where consumers get the game for free, but EG is paying the publisher/developer behind the scenes. So the game creators are getting paid.
- 4y ago
Ekaros 4y ago
At least Microsoft has good grace to buy the entire studio...
- yoyohello13 4y ago
  Exactly! I find if funny that Microsoft is complaining about Sony buying "blocking rights" when Microsoft is doing effectively the same thing. It just costs them more money.
  - girvo 4y ago
    You know Sony has also been purchasing studios left right and centre for… well, literally forever? And each one of their exclusive games from other studios has money behind the scenes to convince them too? Microsoft absolutely does the same shit, of course. None of these companies are our friends lol
  - sylens 4y ago
    I’d much prefer Microsoft buying a studio right now than Sony. When Sony buys a studio, I’m required to buy a $500 box and pay $70 to play future games from them. Microsoft lets me play it on PC or stream it for $10 or $15 a month. The lower barrier to entry has let me try out and discover a bunch of new titles I actually enjoy.
    - debug-desperado 4y ago
      I wouldn't. Sony has a track record of fostering creative excellence with their studio purchases. Microsoft can barely get their studios to release anything within a reasonable timeframe, and most releases tend to be good-but-not-great. Something about the Redmond management just doesn't deliver here despite the exorbitant budgets. Of course, my perspective is a bit different because I own both consoles.
    - cma 4y ago
      Sony has been doing PC releases recently of many former exclusives from studios they own, like with Horizon: Zero Dawn and God of War.
causi 4y ago
Look I love Game Pass as much as anyone but it's a true act of cuntery for Microsoft to do things as heinous as making Elder Scrolls 6 a Microsoft platform exclusive and then cry foul when Sony does the same. "Cries out as he strikes you" indeed.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  Isn’t it the other way around? Sony pushes hard for platform exclusivity and deals that work against Xbox and now Gamepass. It’s only natural that Microsoft will want to compete and get leverage.
  - flutas 4y ago
    Realistically, didn't most of this start when MS paid massive amounts for time exclusive DLC in the 360 era for some of the biggest games like Skyrim[0] or COD (5 years in a row)[1], or flat out exclusive content in GTA IV[2]? To me this seems like MS is crying that Sony stole their playbook and is doing it better. Granted either of them doing it is bad for consumers in general. [0]: https://www.eurogamer.net/skyrim-dlc-timed-xbox-360-exclusive https://www.eurogamer.net/skyrim-dlc-timed-xbox-360-exclusiv... [1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/after-five-years-of-xbox-exclusivity-call-of-duty-switches-to-playstation https://www.eurogamer.net/after-five-years-of-xbox-exclusivi... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/gta-iv-downloadable-content-cost-microsoft-50-million-is-360-exclusive/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/gta-iv-downloadable-c...
    - girvo 4y ago
      No, Sony has always had exclusive agreements with certain studios properties (and then purchased those studios later on) going back to the late 90s, before Microsoft ever entered the console market. This sort of behaviour was well established in the industry.
  - 015a 4y ago
    Everyone has been doing this since forever. Halo was originally supposed to be released on MacOS (!!); then Microsoft bought up Bungie and made it an Xbox exclusive. Sony paid Call of Duty / Activision millions to get exclusive content (like maps, cosmetics, marketing, etc) on PlayStation; before Microsoft bought up Activision. Epic is infamous for their massive spend to gain exclusive distribution of PC games; in only one example, it was revealed that they paid ~$10M USD for one year of exclusive distribution of Control (the game's budget was only ~$36M USD, if that's any indication of how insane these deals are, but oftentimes they're structured in-part as a pre-payment of sales, not just a big free check). All of this is shitty, but its like two pigs arguing who is more covered in mud.
Kukumber 4y ago
Microsoft is choosing the wrong enemy to fight Nintendo is the only winner, and i suspect Apple in the coming years will be the only one competing with Nintendo, since Sony abandoned the handheld market, and Microsoft has no interests in the mobile market GamePass is the bastardisation of gaming, that'll end up killing gaming as we know it, and the Xbox brand, it is not even profitable for game studios, it's just an attempt for Microsoft to pump a meaningless number, and it doesn't even help their earning reports EU is moving to force Apple/Google to open up their ecosystem for 3rd party stores, Sony/Microsoft have 0 presence there, if steam doesn't try, then it's game over for all 3 of them I suspect in the mid-long term, Apple, Google, Epic will be the 3 main actors of the gaming industry Microsoft will give up and focus on their cloud gaming infrastructure Looking at console and game sales, it is clear that Microsoft is not a strong gaming brand; even when their competitors are struggling with supply chain issues, they fail to capitalize on that https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ a great website to gain some precious knowledge about their individual performance
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- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think you're right that Game Pass is a terrible idea. It reminds me of what happened to cable TV. Back in the 1980s cable channels all had definite brands to uphold. The cable bundle meant, however, that you had to take them all or leave them all. You couldn't pick your favorite news channel, you had to get all of them. Like the Discovery Channel? You pay for the Hallmark Channel. Cable channels thus don't have any motivation to be any good. They get paid whether or not you like them, whether or not you watch them. So why bother? The cable industry "thrived" for many years by simply jacking up the price, something that people tolerated for a while but each time they increase the price they lose a few subscribers, every time there is a funeral a cable TV subscriber is gone and they don't get replaced by anyone new. It irks me that young people who didn't live through this think anything is going to be different with GAME PASS. Each time I see that logo on my Xbox it makes my blood boil -- I am thinking about getting rid of it since it doesn't play music well, doesn't play HEVC videos at all, and there aren't that many games I want to play on it. I still keep it though because it plays Blu-Ray.
aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
When it suits them: "exclusive deal" When it doesn't: "IT'S A BLOCK FEE"
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- aardvarkr 4y ago
  I recommend that you read the article. Sony is trying to block the activision merger on grounds that Microsoft could block Sony from having access to Call of Duty on their platform. Microsoft is countering by submitting evidence that Sony actively employs the very same strategy of blocking games from being played on rival systems that they're claiming is anticompetitive, demonstrating the hypocrisy of their claim.
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marcodiego 4y ago
Posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32418130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32418130
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- pvg 4y ago
  These make sense when there's discussion to read at the previous post and there isn't in that one.
sylware 4y ago
where are the glibc/linux native builds of the games from the studios microsoft owns?
- andrewia 4y ago
  Linux builds are nice, but they are a ton of work. It basically doubles the workload testing for PC, which is already complex due to the thousands of hardware configurations out there. It's one of a few reasons why Nvidia GeForce Now has more games than Google Stadia - Stadia requires porting the game to Linux (and they are an "easier" target since devs only have to support Google's hardware configurations). Valve gave up on convincing studios to port their games to Linux and just forked Wine to make Proton.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    > It basically doubles the workload testing for PC, which is already complex due to the thousands of hardware configurations out there. This is only true if your engine is abstracting nothing away and there wasn't any common denominator in APIs across systems. Given that neither is the case for popular game engines, the statement is wrong. You also don't have to test gameplay related things on both systems, only technical aspects, and only a small subset of them.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      This is completely wrong and doing the bare minimum of research will show you the nightmare native linux support has been for some games The most high profile case I recall is Rust, but there've been others
      - sylware 4y ago
        I have been playing games on native glibc/linux for a decade, and unfortunately I have to agree. But the main culprits are not who we think they are. With my system development skills, I did peak deep into this issue. There is no ABI stability, except linux kernel syscalls and the alsa-lib (for how long?), on glibc/linux based OS. And we are talking really short time frames. For instance with glibc gnu symbol versioning, game binaries compiled on a recent glibc will break all distros older than 1 year and a half. Game devs must be careful to compile against a VERY old glibc (like a decade?), what a pain. It is not that dark: cross-platform 3D engine devs are aware about this and are carefull about this (usually). Game binaries are also destroyed by the accutely toxic c++/libgcc_s ABIs (did happen again very recently). Hopefully, compilers have -static-libgcc and -static-libstdc++ options, but it does solve only partially the issue. Many games are using c++ (I have an extremely negative opinion about this language), and the static libstdc++ is not libdl-ing any of its dependencies from the system, then those dependencies end up in the static loading list of the ELF binaries... often with nasty gnu symbol versions. To fix properly this, it would require a fork of gcc(clang?) static libstdc++ which does have a libdl mode, namely does libdl everything from the system. To say the least, the main culprits are... gcc and glibc devs (IBM? MIT?). It is so accute, I started to think conspiracy: microsoft pulling the strings in the shadows, or those devs trying to blackmail valve/game studios with planned obsolescence (are laws already setup against this type of accutely toxic scam?). Since the game binaries should libdl everything from the system, they must be simple and pure ELF64 binaries. Namely, using a minimal set of relocation types, no c/c++ main(), and have to manage system TLS variables (for instance errno) with the sysv ABI __tls_get_addr() (this may require a bit of ELF header parsing... if there is an clean ABI way to reach the ones from the libdl-ed ones). Game binaries would statically load only libdl (not even libc) to dynamically load the video game core libs: xcb libs, libxkbcommon(wayland/x11), wayland code is static into the binaries, libasound (pulseaudio/pipewire/jack/etc are hidden behind the alsa-lib API), libgl, vulkan, and even the libc if requiring anything from it (name resolution?). About 3D programing, vulkan would have to be used very conservatively, nothing fancy. proton is a massive amount of literaly and fairly, garbage, software, microsoft grade. It is a money sink hole for valve, not to mention if I recall properly, it does include straight copies of closed source windoz components, that to make things even worse. I manage to build a lean wine win64/vulkan/dx12->vulkan(at least avoid that thing which is dxvk) with a C compiler, but I know that nearly no doz game will content themselve from that to actually run.
prvit 4y ago
Did Xbox spin-off from Microsoft?
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- theandrewbailey 4y ago
  No, but acts like it has. Xbox is Phil's own little fiefdom inside Microsoft, since it's business is rather unique from the rest of the company.
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norwalkbear 4y ago
Sony needs to be broken up. They are trying become a an ultra mega corp on anime, videogames, streaming, etc Everything they touch goes to shit with censorship.
PostOnce 4y ago
Microsoft's list of faults would make this comment several megabytes. Sony is not without fault either: they're already selling a PlayStation with no game slot for a disk or cartridge, it's download only. They're killing the secondhand market, and probably the long-term availability of many titles, which in the future will not be playable (since they'll be lost), only watchable on YouTube. In the game industry specifically though, Microsoft has many faults: Microsoft made Halo an Xbox exclusive when people were waiting for it on PC, so how can they complain about anyone blocking anything? This wasn't the only time: Halo 2 was a Windows 7 exclusive because they soft-locked it to some version of DirectX they wouldn't release on XP, and it took the pirates 5 minutes to make it work on XP, clearly that was artificial. Microsoft promised that Rare's upcoming game Kameo would be on the Xbox, but they converted it to a 360 exclusive to try to drum up sales for 360. They started charging people to use their own internet connections with Xbox live, so we all played on VLANs with the games on LAN mode, now every game company charges to play online. Anyway, Microsoft is a terrible company, always has been, always will be. They also invented Pluton, put ads in the start menu, blah. Don't give them money. This push to move to subscription may ruin gaming as an artform, and the more these companies fight and fuck that up, the better. Hopefully if they bicker enough it'll ruin the whole concept of a subscription.
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- Andrex 4y ago
  > Microsoft's list of faults would make this comment several megabytes. Sony is not without fault either: they're already selling a PlayStation with no game slot for a disk or cartridge, it's download only. They're killing the secondhand market, and probably the long-term availability of many titles, which in the future will not be playable (since they'll be lost), only watchable on YouTube. You lost me here. The solution is to improve library portability and backwards compatibility, not clinging to increasingly-obsolete physical formats. Imagine putting a cartridge in your phone for every app. Insanity.
  - washadjeffmad 4y ago
xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
This is all a race to the bottom and we're all going to be worse off for it. These subscription services started off innocuous enough by recycling old content, injecting life and cash into nearly dead (but good!) titles. And the subscriptions ate and ate and ate. And now they sign deals with studios before the game is even off the ground. Don't even get me started on all the acquisitions. In the modern world of the internet, providing both a platform and a service ultimately stifles competition which ultimately harms consumers. It's great that small studios are reaping the wild cash injections due to Game Pass, or PS+ or Apple's thing. It can be a life changing amount of funding. I'm happy for them. But it can't continue indefinitely without extinguishing the entire industry. It's getting harder and more expensive to publish, whether bootstrapped or otherwise. And the publishers are rapidly conglomerating. The early 21st century was ripe with rampant piracy and unbundling. And now we're practically worse than where we started. We own less, nothing is portable, we are slaves to the recurring subscription, and we must sell ourselves to the platform to put food on the table. It's all so depressing.
- Victerius 4y ago
  I haven't bought a new game since 2021. At this point, I'm prepared to give up on video games completely. Once the multiplayer servers of the 2-3 games I still play[1] are shut down. Now I'm growing my book collection instead. No subscriptions, DLC or microtransactions for those at least. [1] Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), Ace Combat 7, and Mass Effect Legendary Edition
  - eertami 4y ago
    > Now I'm growing my book collection instead. No subscriptions, DLC or microtransactions for those at least No subscriptions, DLC, or microtransactions... yet.
    - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
      > > Now I'm growing my book collection instead. No subscriptions, DLC or microtransactions for those at least > No subscriptions, DLC, or microtransactions... yet. Hopefully not the future: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
RadixDLT 4y ago
microsoft just bought bethesda games, it would be ashamed if STARFIELD would not be available on ps4
pipeline_peak 4y ago
> Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense lmao, you had me up until here.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Microsoft on the wrong end of anticompetitive practices? Here, let me play a violin.
robomartin 4y ago
A couple of decades ago I was in a business that competed directly with one of Sony's divisions (not gaming). Our products were doing extremely well. It's the old story of a small, underfunded, highly motivated team being able to run circles around a large competitor with lots of inertia and, shall we say, more bodies and less talent. Anyhow, one day I got word from one of our partner companies that they were witness to Sony making an arrangement with a major reseller in that industry segment to not feature our products at the most important tradeshows in the industry in exchange for discounts and other compensation. They must have done that with multiple vendors because that year we went from being featured in dozens of booths to almost not having any product on the show floor. I was absolutely incensed. The problem is, when you have asymmetry of financial and legal power of that magnitude the laws almost don't matter. When spending $250K on a retainer just so that a law firm will take your case puts you in financial peril, well, you have to choose your battles. They caused massive damage to us using such techniques. Anyone who doesn't believe business is a bloody contact sport isn't in touch with reality. It can get brutally ugly. I have the scars to prove it.
xbmcuser 4y ago
So Microsoft should be allowed to buy out all independent game studios and make their games unavailable for playstation. But Sony is not allowed to pay independent studios to keep their games off Xbox.
rickdeckard 4y ago
"Sony's desire to impede such growth has prevented Microsoft from expanding Game Pass. To stop content creators from adding to Game Pass and other rival subscription services, Sony pays for 'blocking rights.'" Or: Sony pays a part of the development-cost for the right to be involved on how/where the final product goes on sale. Without further evidence from Microsoft to back this malicious framing of the matter, this sounds very reasonable to me.
- echelon 4y ago
  Microsoft's repeated acquisition of big development studios is the real problem. They're the ones actually behaving like a monopoly.
  - johnebgd 4y ago
    Embrace, extend, extinguish.
  - rickdeckard 4y ago
    well, they're making a shortcut to produce in-house content like Nintendo and Sony does. Instead of discovering talented studios, (more or less) carefully curate and support them until the eventual point of acquisition (like Sony does IMO), or focusing on finding talented individuals to scale your in-house R&D (like Nintendo does IMO), Microsoft's strategy is to buy entire machines which create games proven to be commercially successful. The downside to this is that those large studios Microsoft buys are currently complementing the in-house portfolio of all console-makers. If those studios at one point stop serving all platforms for some strategic reasons of their parent company, many of the games they offer today might not be economic anymore and would end up not being developed. I wonder how such a move would impact the variety of games available today...
  - intelVISA 4y ago
    It's painful to think of how much they own these days, weird they haven't faced Meta level anti-trust yet despite being way more of a monopoly imo.
boondaburrah 4y ago
"block fees" or "blocking rights"? You can't just rename "paid exclusives" and make it the new scary. Consoles have had this sort of thing since at least the original Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1985.

“You see, your honor, it would foster more competition if we owned the developers/publishers outright and decided their distribution platforms unilaterally, instead of having to price our distribution platform to compete with other company’s exclusivity deals”

blargey 4y ago
Legal slap fights aside, it’s interesting to hear about these “block fees” that target this specific subset of Microsoft’s platform. Since it isn’t involved in the big launch sales, and feels more common among smaller budget / indie games, it may be much cheaper for Sony to offer this deal to many prospective Games Pass games. (Though the laissez-faire answer to Microsoft’s frustrations remains “well Microsoft’s publishing platform should pay more than a figment of Sony’s marketing budget if it’s actually a profitable/sustainable business unit”)
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daoist_shaman 4y ago
Shhh, don't point fingers at their anti-competitive acquisitions and mergers. It's clearly the people paying fair wages in a free market who are at fault. /s

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago

"Sony's desire to impede such growth has prevented Microsoft from expanding Game Pass. To stop content creators from adding to Game Pass and other rival subscription services, Sony pays for 'blocking rights.'" "These kinds of platform agreements are common in the games industry, and in documents made public as part of the Epic vs. Apple lawsuit last year, PlayStation was even mentioned as blocking the appearance of third-party games on Game Pass." How are "blocking rights" legal? Don't they violate anti-trust / competition laws?

EMIRELADERO 4y ago
I don't think it is per se. Exclusive dealing is a common practice in many sectors. Circumstances can make it illegal, however.
kahrl 4y ago
Probably, but do laws actually matter in white-collar America? As long as the right groups get the right cut, the system will continue.
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- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  Yes, laws do matter. Were it otherwise civil courts would have lots of free time. The legal system isn't known for being the corruption oasis that movies make it out to be.
  - Judgmentality 4y ago
    > Were it otherwise civil courts would have lots of free time. Laws don't have to matter for you to waste a court's time. In fact dragging out court cases is a common legal tactic. > The legal system isn't known for being the corruption oasis that movies make it out to be. Your experience differs from mine. It also differs from most lawyers I know. Lawyers aren't famous for drinking heavily because they think they're making the world a better place. Why do you think the court system works? What country do you live in?
rexf 4y ago
I don't see a problem with Sony (or MS/Nintendo/Apple/etc) paying game developers to keep their games exclusive to a platform. Game creators make decisions on where to put their games and how to monetize. Epic Games is notorious for giving "free games" where consumers get the game for free, but EG is paying the publisher/developer behind the scenes. So the game creators are getting paid.
4y ago

Ekaros 4y ago

At least Microsoft has good grace to buy the entire studio...

yoyohello13 4y ago
Exactly! I find if funny that Microsoft is complaining about Sony buying "blocking rights" when Microsoft is doing effectively the same thing. It just costs them more money.
- girvo 4y ago
  You know Sony has also been purchasing studios left right and centre for… well, literally forever? And each one of their exclusive games from other studios has money behind the scenes to convince them too? Microsoft absolutely does the same shit, of course. None of these companies are our friends lol
- sylens 4y ago
  I’d much prefer Microsoft buying a studio right now than Sony. When Sony buys a studio, I’m required to buy a $500 box and pay $70 to play future games from them. Microsoft lets me play it on PC or stream it for $10 or $15 a month. The lower barrier to entry has let me try out and discover a bunch of new titles I actually enjoy.
  - debug-desperado 4y ago
    I wouldn't. Sony has a track record of fostering creative excellence with their studio purchases. Microsoft can barely get their studios to release anything within a reasonable timeframe, and most releases tend to be good-but-not-great. Something about the Redmond management just doesn't deliver here despite the exorbitant budgets. Of course, my perspective is a bit different because I own both consoles.
  - cma 4y ago
    Sony has been doing PC releases recently of many former exclusives from studios they own, like with Horizon: Zero Dawn and God of War.

causi 4y ago

Look I love Game Pass as much as anyone but it's a true act of cuntery for Microsoft to do things as heinous as making Elder Scrolls 6 a Microsoft platform exclusive and then cry foul when Sony does the same. "Cries out as he strikes you" indeed.

PretzelPirate 4y ago
Isn’t it the other way around? Sony pushes hard for platform exclusivity and deals that work against Xbox and now Gamepass. It’s only natural that Microsoft will want to compete and get leverage.
- flutas 4y ago
  Realistically, didn't most of this start when MS paid massive amounts for time exclusive DLC in the 360 era for some of the biggest games like Skyrim[0] or COD (5 years in a row)[1], or flat out exclusive content in GTA IV[2]? To me this seems like MS is crying that Sony stole their playbook and is doing it better. Granted either of them doing it is bad for consumers in general. [0]: https://www.eurogamer.net/skyrim-dlc-timed-xbox-360-exclusive https://www.eurogamer.net/skyrim-dlc-timed-xbox-360-exclusiv... [1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/after-five-years-of-xbox-exclusivity-call-of-duty-switches-to-playstation https://www.eurogamer.net/after-five-years-of-xbox-exclusivi... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/gta-iv-downloadable-content-cost-microsoft-50-million-is-360-exclusive/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/gta-iv-downloadable-c...
  - girvo 4y ago
    No, Sony has always had exclusive agreements with certain studios properties (and then purchased those studios later on) going back to the late 90s, before Microsoft ever entered the console market. This sort of behaviour was well established in the industry.
- 015a 4y ago
  Everyone has been doing this since forever. Halo was originally supposed to be released on MacOS (!!); then Microsoft bought up Bungie and made it an Xbox exclusive. Sony paid Call of Duty / Activision millions to get exclusive content (like maps, cosmetics, marketing, etc) on PlayStation; before Microsoft bought up Activision. Epic is infamous for their massive spend to gain exclusive distribution of PC games; in only one example, it was revealed that they paid ~$10M USD for one year of exclusive distribution of Control (the game's budget was only ~$36M USD, if that's any indication of how insane these deals are, but oftentimes they're structured in-part as a pre-payment of sales, not just a big free check). All of this is shitty, but its like two pigs arguing who is more covered in mud.

Kukumber 4y ago

Microsoft is choosing the wrong enemy to fight Nintendo is the only winner, and i suspect Apple in the coming years will be the only one competing with Nintendo, since Sony abandoned the handheld market, and Microsoft has no interests in the mobile market GamePass is the bastardisation of gaming, that'll end up killing gaming as we know it, and the Xbox brand, it is not even profitable for game studios, it's just an attempt for Microsoft to pump a meaningless number, and it doesn't even help their earning reports EU is moving to force Apple/Google to open up their ecosystem for 3rd party stores, Sony/Microsoft have 0 presence there, if steam doesn't try, then it's game over for all 3 of them I suspect in the mid-long term, Apple, Google, Epic will be the 3 main actors of the gaming industry Microsoft will give up and focus on their cloud gaming infrastructure Looking at console and game sales, it is clear that Microsoft is not a strong gaming brand; even when their competitors are struggling with supply chain issues, they fail to capitalize on that https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ a great website to gain some precious knowledge about their individual performance

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PaulHoule 4y ago
I think you're right that Game Pass is a terrible idea. It reminds me of what happened to cable TV. Back in the 1980s cable channels all had definite brands to uphold. The cable bundle meant, however, that you had to take them all or leave them all. You couldn't pick your favorite news channel, you had to get all of them. Like the Discovery Channel? You pay for the Hallmark Channel. Cable channels thus don't have any motivation to be any good. They get paid whether or not you like them, whether or not you watch them. So why bother? The cable industry "thrived" for many years by simply jacking up the price, something that people tolerated for a while but each time they increase the price they lose a few subscribers, every time there is a funeral a cable TV subscriber is gone and they don't get replaced by anyone new. It irks me that young people who didn't live through this think anything is going to be different with GAME PASS. Each time I see that logo on my Xbox it makes my blood boil -- I am thinking about getting rid of it since it doesn't play music well, doesn't play HEVC videos at all, and there aren't that many games I want to play on it. I still keep it though because it plays Blu-Ray.

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago

When it suits them: "exclusive deal" When it doesn't: "IT'S A BLOCK FEE"

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aardvarkr 4y ago
I recommend that you read the article. Sony is trying to block the activision merger on grounds that Microsoft could block Sony from having access to Call of Duty on their platform. Microsoft is countering by submitting evidence that Sony actively employs the very same strategy of blocking games from being played on rival systems that they're claiming is anticompetitive, demonstrating the hypocrisy of their claim.
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marcodiego 4y ago

Posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32418130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32418130

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pvg 4y ago
These make sense when there's discussion to read at the previous post and there isn't in that one.

sylware 4y ago

where are the glibc/linux native builds of the games from the studios microsoft owns?

andrewia 4y ago
Linux builds are nice, but they are a ton of work. It basically doubles the workload testing for PC, which is already complex due to the thousands of hardware configurations out there. It's one of a few reasons why Nvidia GeForce Now has more games than Google Stadia - Stadia requires porting the game to Linux (and they are an "easier" target since devs only have to support Google's hardware configurations). Valve gave up on convincing studios to port their games to Linux and just forked Wine to make Proton.
- chmod775 4y ago
  > It basically doubles the workload testing for PC, which is already complex due to the thousands of hardware configurations out there. This is only true if your engine is abstracting nothing away and there wasn't any common denominator in APIs across systems. Given that neither is the case for popular game engines, the statement is wrong. You also don't have to test gameplay related things on both systems, only technical aspects, and only a small subset of them.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    This is completely wrong and doing the bare minimum of research will show you the nightmare native linux support has been for some games The most high profile case I recall is Rust, but there've been others
    - sylware 4y ago
      I have been playing games on native glibc/linux for a decade, and unfortunately I have to agree. But the main culprits are not who we think they are. With my system development skills, I did peak deep into this issue. There is no ABI stability, except linux kernel syscalls and the alsa-lib (for how long?), on glibc/linux based OS. And we are talking really short time frames. For instance with glibc gnu symbol versioning, game binaries compiled on a recent glibc will break all distros older than 1 year and a half. Game devs must be careful to compile against a VERY old glibc (like a decade?), what a pain. It is not that dark: cross-platform 3D engine devs are aware about this and are carefull about this (usually). Game binaries are also destroyed by the accutely toxic c++/libgcc_s ABIs (did happen again very recently). Hopefully, compilers have -static-libgcc and -static-libstdc++ options, but it does solve only partially the issue. Many games are using c++ (I have an extremely negative opinion about this language), and the static libstdc++ is not libdl-ing any of its dependencies from the system, then those dependencies end up in the static loading list of the ELF binaries... often with nasty gnu symbol versions. To fix properly this, it would require a fork of gcc(clang?) static libstdc++ which does have a libdl mode, namely does libdl everything from the system. To say the least, the main culprits are... gcc and glibc devs (IBM? MIT?). It is so accute, I started to think conspiracy: microsoft pulling the strings in the shadows, or those devs trying to blackmail valve/game studios with planned obsolescence (are laws already setup against this type of accutely toxic scam?). Since the game binaries should libdl everything from the system, they must be simple and pure ELF64 binaries. Namely, using a minimal set of relocation types, no c/c++ main(), and have to manage system TLS variables (for instance errno) with the sysv ABI __tls_get_addr() (this may require a bit of ELF header parsing... if there is an clean ABI way to reach the ones from the libdl-ed ones). Game binaries would statically load only libdl (not even libc) to dynamically load the video game core libs: xcb libs, libxkbcommon(wayland/x11), wayland code is static into the binaries, libasound (pulseaudio/pipewire/jack/etc are hidden behind the alsa-lib API), libgl, vulkan, and even the libc if requiring anything from it (name resolution?). About 3D programing, vulkan would have to be used very conservatively, nothing fancy. proton is a massive amount of literaly and fairly, garbage, software, microsoft grade. It is a money sink hole for valve, not to mention if I recall properly, it does include straight copies of closed source windoz components, that to make things even worse. I manage to build a lean wine win64/vulkan/dx12->vulkan(at least avoid that thing which is dxvk) with a C compiler, but I know that nearly no doz game will content themselve from that to actually run.

prvit 4y ago

Did Xbox spin-off from Microsoft?

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theandrewbailey 4y ago
No, but acts like it has. Xbox is Phil's own little fiefdom inside Microsoft, since it's business is rather unique from the rest of the company.

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norwalkbear 4y ago

Sony needs to be broken up. They are trying become a an ultra mega corp on anime, videogames, streaming, etc Everything they touch goes to shit with censorship.

PostOnce 4y ago

Microsoft's list of faults would make this comment several megabytes. Sony is not without fault either: they're already selling a PlayStation with no game slot for a disk or cartridge, it's download only. They're killing the secondhand market, and probably the long-term availability of many titles, which in the future will not be playable (since they'll be lost), only watchable on YouTube. In the game industry specifically though, Microsoft has many faults: Microsoft made Halo an Xbox exclusive when people were waiting for it on PC, so how can they complain about anyone blocking anything? This wasn't the only time: Halo 2 was a Windows 7 exclusive because they soft-locked it to some version of DirectX they wouldn't release on XP, and it took the pirates 5 minutes to make it work on XP, clearly that was artificial. Microsoft promised that Rare's upcoming game Kameo would be on the Xbox, but they converted it to a 360 exclusive to try to drum up sales for 360. They started charging people to use their own internet connections with Xbox live, so we all played on VLANs with the games on LAN mode, now every game company charges to play online. Anyway, Microsoft is a terrible company, always has been, always will be. They also invented Pluton, put ads in the start menu, blah. Don't give them money. This push to move to subscription may ruin gaming as an artform, and the more these companies fight and fuck that up, the better. Hopefully if they bicker enough it'll ruin the whole concept of a subscription.

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Andrex 4y ago
> Microsoft's list of faults would make this comment several megabytes. Sony is not without fault either: they're already selling a PlayStation with no game slot for a disk or cartridge, it's download only. They're killing the secondhand market, and probably the long-term availability of many titles, which in the future will not be playable (since they'll be lost), only watchable on YouTube. You lost me here. The solution is to improve library portability and backwards compatibility, not clinging to increasingly-obsolete physical formats. Imagine putting a cartridge in your phone for every app. Insanity.
- washadjeffmad 4y ago

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

This is all a race to the bottom and we're all going to be worse off for it. These subscription services started off innocuous enough by recycling old content, injecting life and cash into nearly dead (but good!) titles. And the subscriptions ate and ate and ate. And now they sign deals with studios before the game is even off the ground. Don't even get me started on all the acquisitions. In the modern world of the internet, providing both a platform and a service ultimately stifles competition which ultimately harms consumers. It's great that small studios are reaping the wild cash injections due to Game Pass, or PS+ or Apple's thing. It can be a life changing amount of funding. I'm happy for them. But it can't continue indefinitely without extinguishing the entire industry. It's getting harder and more expensive to publish, whether bootstrapped or otherwise. And the publishers are rapidly conglomerating. The early 21st century was ripe with rampant piracy and unbundling. And now we're practically worse than where we started. We own less, nothing is portable, we are slaves to the recurring subscription, and we must sell ourselves to the platform to put food on the table. It's all so depressing.

Victerius 4y ago
I haven't bought a new game since 2021. At this point, I'm prepared to give up on video games completely. Once the multiplayer servers of the 2-3 games I still play[1] are shut down. Now I'm growing my book collection instead. No subscriptions, DLC or microtransactions for those at least. [1] Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), Ace Combat 7, and Mass Effect Legendary Edition
- eertami 4y ago
  > Now I'm growing my book collection instead. No subscriptions, DLC or microtransactions for those at least No subscriptions, DLC, or microtransactions... yet.
  - thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
    > > Now I'm growing my book collection instead. No subscriptions, DLC or microtransactions for those at least > No subscriptions, DLC, or microtransactions... yet. Hopefully not the future: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

RadixDLT 4y ago

microsoft just bought bethesda games, it would be ashamed if STARFIELD would not be available on ps4

pipeline_peak 4y ago

> Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense lmao, you had me up until here.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Microsoft on the wrong end of anticompetitive practices? Here, let me play a violin.

robomartin 4y ago

A couple of decades ago I was in a business that competed directly with one of Sony's divisions (not gaming). Our products were doing extremely well. It's the old story of a small, underfunded, highly motivated team being able to run circles around a large competitor with lots of inertia and, shall we say, more bodies and less talent. Anyhow, one day I got word from one of our partner companies that they were witness to Sony making an arrangement with a major reseller in that industry segment to not feature our products at the most important tradeshows in the industry in exchange for discounts and other compensation. They must have done that with multiple vendors because that year we went from being featured in dozens of booths to almost not having any product on the show floor. I was absolutely incensed. The problem is, when you have asymmetry of financial and legal power of that magnitude the laws almost don't matter. When spending $250K on a retainer just so that a law firm will take your case puts you in financial peril, well, you have to choose your battles. They caused massive damage to us using such techniques. Anyone who doesn't believe business is a bloody contact sport isn't in touch with reality. It can get brutally ugly. I have the scars to prove it.

xbmcuser 4y ago

So Microsoft should be allowed to buy out all independent game studios and make their games unavailable for playstation. But Sony is not allowed to pay independent studios to keep their games off Xbox.

rickdeckard 4y ago

"Sony's desire to impede such growth has prevented Microsoft from expanding Game Pass. To stop content creators from adding to Game Pass and other rival subscription services, Sony pays for 'blocking rights.'" Or: Sony pays a part of the development-cost for the right to be involved on how/where the final product goes on sale. Without further evidence from Microsoft to back this malicious framing of the matter, this sounds very reasonable to me.

echelon 4y ago
Microsoft's repeated acquisition of big development studios is the real problem. They're the ones actually behaving like a monopoly.
- johnebgd 4y ago
  Embrace, extend, extinguish.
- rickdeckard 4y ago
  well, they're making a shortcut to produce in-house content like Nintendo and Sony does. Instead of discovering talented studios, (more or less) carefully curate and support them until the eventual point of acquisition (like Sony does IMO), or focusing on finding talented individuals to scale your in-house R&D (like Nintendo does IMO), Microsoft's strategy is to buy entire machines which create games proven to be commercially successful. The downside to this is that those large studios Microsoft buys are currently complementing the in-house portfolio of all console-makers. If those studios at one point stop serving all platforms for some strategic reasons of their parent company, many of the games they offer today might not be economic anymore and would end up not being developed. I wonder how such a move would impact the variety of games available today...
- intelVISA 4y ago
  It's painful to think of how much they own these days, weird they haven't faced Meta level anti-trust yet despite being way more of a monopoly imo.

boondaburrah 4y ago

"block fees" or "blocking rights"? You can't just rename "paid exclusives" and make it the new scary. Consoles have had this sort of thing since at least the original Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1985.