6 ms·

MS Admits Xbox Has 'Lost the Console Wars', Battles for $69B Activision Buyout

22 points by indigodaddy 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago
Go to Gamestop and look at what is for sale for the XBOX ONE and it is sad. Most of the big games are on both, the exclusives for PS5 are better (… all the more so since I am a weeaboo) and XBOX some how gave up on Halo for the utterly meh Gears of War which isn’t half as entertaining as Sony’s Killzone series. Maybe Microsoft should reconsider if it really wants to make a game console.
- budlit3 3y ago
  They’re trying to acquire a company run by a CEO who is quoted as taking the fun out of games: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-the-fun-out-of-making-games/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-... MS is just looking for arbitrary fiat economics wins. Big corp just needs us to keep showing up, as its ability to point at how many people were convinced to give up their agency to build their moat makes primates hallucinate big corp is central to literal existence of reality. It’s not mired in fantasy imagery like religion but modern economics is still social gossip.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted. The only strong exclusives Xbox has are Halo, Gears of War, Forza (which IMHO is actually better than Gran Turismo, especially the Forza Horizon series), and Flight Simulator. Meanwhile the PS5 has over a dozen incredible exclusives.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    I wouldn't sleep on Sea of Thieves. It's not a multi-game franchise (yet?), but it's a "live service game" on interesting footing with Destiny, Overwatch, and others. Also, the Fable franchise is on its way to return (from the Forza Horizon dev studio Playground Games). (Plus Starfield, whatever is next in Elder Scrolls, whatever is next in Fallout, new games soon from Obsidian and inXile neither of which are currently using the franchises that made them most famous as both are trying to build new ones. That's a massive ownership over "Western" RPGs, lacking mostly "just" Bioware. [Microsoft tried to buy Bioware before EA did. That would have been a wild ride.])
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      All good points. I just hope Microsoft has enough exclusives to hang in there to drive console gaming forward. Nintendo's position in the market forces them to innovate, but I'm not sure Sony without Microsoft nipping at their heels would do the same.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  MS owns Bethesda now so the next generation of Elder Scrolls and Fallout will be Xbox exclusive. If MS also acquires Activision then Call of Duty also becomes an Xbox exclusive. All 3 of those are massive franchises in the US Market (arguably much more than Weeb/JRPG content which is split between PlayStation and Nintendo)
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    > MS owns Bethesda now so the next generation of Elder Scrolls and Fallout will be Xbox exclusive. nah. those franchises will die if that happens, esp. since modding and community is a big part of their continued success.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  What? There's a more recent Halo game (Infinite; released 2021) than Gears of War game (5; released 2019). They seem to be alternating them every so often (and developing them in parallel under two different dev studios, 343 and The Coalition respectively) and it doesn't yet sound like they have "given up" on either franchise. Also, Xbox has pushed more of its "exclusives" to Digital First or Digital Only, especially its "weeaboo" games, so Gamestop is an increasingly disconnected view of the Xbox. You may get a much better view of "exclusives" looking at Xbox Game Pass lists.
suff 3y ago
[dead]
JustBreath 3y ago
Where are they getting 16% marketshare from? What's Sony/Nintendo's? Stats I read online paint a similar Sony(1st), Nintendo(2nd), Microsoft(3rd) picture but put it more like 45%, 28%, 25%, meaning MS has hardly "lost", but rather is just in third place.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  That's very misleading though. Nintendo is in a very different market segment. They basically sit in the space between Xbox/Playstation and iPhone/Android mobile gaming. The N64 was the last console they made that attempted to compete on performance. When you take Nintendo out of the picture and look strictly at Sony and Microsoft, the numbers look so much worse for Microsoft. Unless they can score some important exclusives, I just don't see them continuing to produce future generations of game consoles. So all of you fighting this merger, I hope that you enjoy your Sony game console monopoly.
  - worrycue 3y ago
    > The N64 was the last console they made that attempted to compete on performance. Should that be the GameCube? It’s successor the Wii was went they stopped trying to keep up tech-wise.
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      You're right, my memory on that was faulty. Thanks for the correction!
    - kbelder 3y ago
      It was the GameCube, in-between the PS2 and X-Box in performance.
- rfwhyte 3y ago
  I'd gladly take the L if it meant having a quarter share of a multi-hundred-billion a year industry.
pier25 3y ago
The war isn't over though. Starfield is going to sell a bunch of xbox consoles.
- proc0 3y ago
  Agreed, but they're too far behind. Japan is just too good at making video games, and in part I blame the attitude towards video games in the West (mostly US and UK).
  - pier25 3y ago
    But most PS exclusive games are not really made in Japan?
    - proc0 3y ago
      Not sure, but I would think it would not be about the quantity of games, but the quality and the number of players per game. PS seems to have many more "blockbuster" games, although I'm just guessing. I like Xbox, and also I'm a huge PC gamer, so just giving my observation.
- shortcake27 3y ago
  I’m super excited for Starfield. I’ve been waiting for a worthy successor to Freelancer for 20 years and it finally looks like this is it.
shortcake27 3y ago
I find this surprising - since getting onto Gamepass I rarely even touch my PlayStation. PS Plus a joke in comparison.
- iamcasen 3y ago
  My step-son insisted on an Xbox S because he plays only Gamepass games. He is 11, and all his friends have Xbox's as well. Being a die-hard Playstation guy (in a former life) I was confused, since Playstation seems so much better. I do agree that Microsoft's software is a better experience than PSN, and cloud gaming via Gamepass is quite cool.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  PS Plus Extra is pretty good, you get a lot of the Sony exclusives like Returnal, Horizon Forbidden West, Spider Man, etc
gloryjulio 3y ago
Aand that's no one else's fault. Ms has been failing to publish good games for a couple of years.
devnull255 3y ago
Has Halo and Master Chief appeared on any of the other consoles in the contest? No? Then the war is far from over.
nathants 3y ago
fortnite only kind of works on console at 120fps and high graphics. everyone is on pc at 240 fps and performance graphics.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > 240 fps Okay that seems beyond unnecessary.
  - nathants 3y ago
    a lot of people are using 360 fps now, which may actually be unnecessary. playing on 240 fps feels extremely different. it’s about how the occasional rapid movement feels. spinning around, or making a series of edits in a fight. in a typical interactive movie type game with a controller, the maximum delta-v of camera or character is very low. 60 fps feels smooth the same way movies are fine at 30, a lack of low latency high delta interaction. in fortnite with a 24x48 inch mousepad, delta-v peaks pretty high, and when frame time goes above 4ms, you notice. low latency interaction makes the world feel more real in a way graphics can’t. graphics are important, but secondary.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      I can believe that 60 to 120 is a noticable difference to the careful observer. But 120 to 240? Really?
      - nathants 3y ago
        definitely! it’s easy to mess around with since you can limit framerate to a lower level. the other part is frame dips. no matter the game, frames drop sometimes. a drop from 240 to 180 will be harder to notice than a drop from 120 to 80. 4ms consistent frame time is a challenging engineering target. whatever game dethrones fortnite will improve client side performance and reduce the effect of server ping on client side interactions.
        3y ago
ddtaylor 3y ago
How does Nintendo avoid any criticism in this topic when it comes to market share and exclusivity? All of Nintendo content is locked on their own consoles and they entirely control the kid and young adult market.
- Kye 3y ago
  People accepted long ago that Nintendo primarily makes consoles for its games, and anyone who wants to come along is welcome, but not necessary. They aren't trying to corner those markets. They just do as a result of the games they make.
  - ddtaylor 3y ago
    But one of the loudest issues related to Microsoft acquiring Blizzard/Activision is that Call of Duty will be part of the deal and that Microsoft will keep the game on it's platform. My question is, how is this considered a deal-breaker if this is something that Nintendo already does and has been doing in the industry for decades?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  >They entirely control the kid and young adult market My friends had PlayStations…
- ThatPlayer 3y ago
  Exclusivity and market share aren't necessarily anti-competitive [0]. The relevant market is also important when deciding market share. Like does the Switch compete with home consoles? Or does it compete with smartphone games? Or both? [0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/exclusive-supply-or https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

22 points by indigodaddy 3y ago

Go to Gamestop and look at what is for sale for the XBOX ONE and it is sad. Most of the big games are on both, the exclusives for PS5 are better (… all the more so since I am a weeaboo) and XBOX some how gave up on Halo for the utterly meh Gears of War which isn’t half as entertaining as Sony’s Killzone series. Maybe Microsoft should reconsider if it really wants to make a game console.

budlit3 3y ago
They’re trying to acquire a company run by a CEO who is quoted as taking the fun out of games: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-the-fun-out-of-making-games/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-... MS is just looking for arbitrary fiat economics wins. Big corp just needs us to keep showing up, as its ability to point at how many people were convinced to give up their agency to build their moat makes primates hallucinate big corp is central to literal existence of reality. It’s not mired in fantasy imagery like religion but modern economics is still social gossip.
lockhouse 3y ago
Not sure why you got downvoted. The only strong exclusives Xbox has are Halo, Gears of War, Forza (which IMHO is actually better than Gran Turismo, especially the Forza Horizon series), and Flight Simulator. Meanwhile the PS5 has over a dozen incredible exclusives.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I wouldn't sleep on Sea of Thieves. It's not a multi-game franchise (yet?), but it's a "live service game" on interesting footing with Destiny, Overwatch, and others. Also, the Fable franchise is on its way to return (from the Forza Horizon dev studio Playground Games). (Plus Starfield, whatever is next in Elder Scrolls, whatever is next in Fallout, new games soon from Obsidian and inXile neither of which are currently using the franchises that made them most famous as both are trying to build new ones. That's a massive ownership over "Western" RPGs, lacking mostly "just" Bioware. [Microsoft tried to buy Bioware before EA did. That would have been a wild ride.])
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    All good points. I just hope Microsoft has enough exclusives to hang in there to drive console gaming forward. Nintendo's position in the market forces them to innovate, but I'm not sure Sony without Microsoft nipping at their heels would do the same.
alephnerd 3y ago
MS owns Bethesda now so the next generation of Elder Scrolls and Fallout will be Xbox exclusive. If MS also acquires Activision then Call of Duty also becomes an Xbox exclusive. All 3 of those are massive franchises in the US Market (arguably much more than Weeb/JRPG content which is split between PlayStation and Nintendo)
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > MS owns Bethesda now so the next generation of Elder Scrolls and Fallout will be Xbox exclusive. nah. those franchises will die if that happens, esp. since modding and community is a big part of their continued success.
WorldMaker 3y ago
What? There's a more recent Halo game (Infinite; released 2021) than Gears of War game (5; released 2019). They seem to be alternating them every so often (and developing them in parallel under two different dev studios, 343 and The Coalition respectively) and it doesn't yet sound like they have "given up" on either franchise. Also, Xbox has pushed more of its "exclusives" to Digital First or Digital Only, especially its "weeaboo" games, so Gamestop is an increasingly disconnected view of the Xbox. You may get a much better view of "exclusives" looking at Xbox Game Pass lists.

suff 3y ago

[dead]

JustBreath 3y ago

Where are they getting 16% marketshare from? What's Sony/Nintendo's? Stats I read online paint a similar Sony(1st), Nintendo(2nd), Microsoft(3rd) picture but put it more like 45%, 28%, 25%, meaning MS has hardly "lost", but rather is just in third place.

lockhouse 3y ago
That's very misleading though. Nintendo is in a very different market segment. They basically sit in the space between Xbox/Playstation and iPhone/Android mobile gaming. The N64 was the last console they made that attempted to compete on performance. When you take Nintendo out of the picture and look strictly at Sony and Microsoft, the numbers look so much worse for Microsoft. Unless they can score some important exclusives, I just don't see them continuing to produce future generations of game consoles. So all of you fighting this merger, I hope that you enjoy your Sony game console monopoly.
- worrycue 3y ago
  > The N64 was the last console they made that attempted to compete on performance. Should that be the GameCube? It’s successor the Wii was went they stopped trying to keep up tech-wise.
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    You're right, my memory on that was faulty. Thanks for the correction!
  - kbelder 3y ago
    It was the GameCube, in-between the PS2 and X-Box in performance.
rfwhyte 3y ago
I'd gladly take the L if it meant having a quarter share of a multi-hundred-billion a year industry.

pier25 3y ago

The war isn't over though. Starfield is going to sell a bunch of xbox consoles.

proc0 3y ago
Agreed, but they're too far behind. Japan is just too good at making video games, and in part I blame the attitude towards video games in the West (mostly US and UK).
- pier25 3y ago
  But most PS exclusive games are not really made in Japan?
  - proc0 3y ago
    Not sure, but I would think it would not be about the quantity of games, but the quality and the number of players per game. PS seems to have many more "blockbuster" games, although I'm just guessing. I like Xbox, and also I'm a huge PC gamer, so just giving my observation.
shortcake27 3y ago
I’m super excited for Starfield. I’ve been waiting for a worthy successor to Freelancer for 20 years and it finally looks like this is it.

shortcake27 3y ago

I find this surprising - since getting onto Gamepass I rarely even touch my PlayStation. PS Plus a joke in comparison.

iamcasen 3y ago
My step-son insisted on an Xbox S because he plays only Gamepass games. He is 11, and all his friends have Xbox's as well. Being a die-hard Playstation guy (in a former life) I was confused, since Playstation seems so much better. I do agree that Microsoft's software is a better experience than PSN, and cloud gaming via Gamepass is quite cool.
tapoxi 3y ago
PS Plus Extra is pretty good, you get a lot of the Sony exclusives like Returnal, Horizon Forbidden West, Spider Man, etc

gloryjulio 3y ago

Aand that's no one else's fault. Ms has been failing to publish good games for a couple of years.

devnull255 3y ago

Has Halo and Master Chief appeared on any of the other consoles in the contest? No? Then the war is far from over.

nathants 3y ago

fortnite only kind of works on console at 120fps and high graphics. everyone is on pc at 240 fps and performance graphics.

paulddraper 3y ago
> 240 fps Okay that seems beyond unnecessary.
- nathants 3y ago
  a lot of people are using 360 fps now, which may actually be unnecessary. playing on 240 fps feels extremely different. it’s about how the occasional rapid movement feels. spinning around, or making a series of edits in a fight. in a typical interactive movie type game with a controller, the maximum delta-v of camera or character is very low. 60 fps feels smooth the same way movies are fine at 30, a lack of low latency high delta interaction. in fortnite with a 24x48 inch mousepad, delta-v peaks pretty high, and when frame time goes above 4ms, you notice. low latency interaction makes the world feel more real in a way graphics can’t. graphics are important, but secondary.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    I can believe that 60 to 120 is a noticable difference to the careful observer. But 120 to 240? Really?
    - nathants 3y ago
      definitely! it’s easy to mess around with since you can limit framerate to a lower level. the other part is frame dips. no matter the game, frames drop sometimes. a drop from 240 to 180 will be harder to notice than a drop from 120 to 80. 4ms consistent frame time is a challenging engineering target. whatever game dethrones fortnite will improve client side performance and reduce the effect of server ping on client side interactions.
      - 3y ago

ddtaylor 3y ago

How does Nintendo avoid any criticism in this topic when it comes to market share and exclusivity? All of Nintendo content is locked on their own consoles and they entirely control the kid and young adult market.

Kye 3y ago
People accepted long ago that Nintendo primarily makes consoles for its games, and anyone who wants to come along is welcome, but not necessary. They aren't trying to corner those markets. They just do as a result of the games they make.
- ddtaylor 3y ago
  But one of the loudest issues related to Microsoft acquiring Blizzard/Activision is that Call of Duty will be part of the deal and that Microsoft will keep the game on it's platform. My question is, how is this considered a deal-breaker if this is something that Nintendo already does and has been doing in the industry for decades?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
faeriechangling 3y ago
>They entirely control the kid and young adult market My friends had PlayStations…
ThatPlayer 3y ago
Exclusivity and market share aren't necessarily anti-competitive [0]. The relevant market is also important when deciding market share. Like does the Switch compete with home consoles? Or does it compete with smartphone games? Or both? [0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/exclusive-supply-or https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...