4 ms·

Seems a bit calculated and agreed across the industry. What can really make sense of Microsoft's acquisitions and ruining of billion dollar IPs? It's a manufact

Seems a bit calculated and agreed across the industry. What can really make sense of Microsoft's acquisitions and ruining of billion dollar IPs? It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector. I'm not saying they all got together and decided this together but their wonks are probably all saying the same thing. The market is shrinking and whether it's by design or incompetence, this creates a new opportunity to acquire it wholesale for pennies on the dollar and build a wall around it and charge for entry. It's a natural result of games requiring NVidia developers for driver tuning, bitcoin/ai and buying out capacity to prevent competitors. The wildcard I can't fit into this puzzle is Valve. They have a huge opportunity here but they also might be convinced that they have already saturated the market and will read the writing on the wall.

layoric 1y ago
Valve is a private company so doesn’t have the same growth at all costs incentives. To Microsoft, the share price is everything.
keyringlight 1y ago
As much as they've got large resources, I'm not sure what projects they could reasonably throw a mountain of money at and expect to change things, and presumably benefit from in the future instead of doing it to be a a force of chaos in the industry. Valve's efforts all seem to orbit around the store, that's their main business and everything else seems like a loss-leader to get you buying through it even if it comes across as a pet project of a group of employees. The striking one for me is their linux efforts, at least as far as I'm aware they don't do a lot that isn't tied to the steam deck (or similar devices) or running games available on steam through linux. Even the deck APU is derived from the semi-custom work AMD did for the consoles, they're benefiting from a second later harvest that MS/Sony have invested (hundreds of millions?) in many years earlier. I suppose a lot of it comes down to what Valve needs to support their customers (developers/publishers), they don't see the point in pioneering and establishing some new branch of tech with developers.
bob1029 1y ago
I think the reason you see things like Blizzard killing off Overwatch 1 is because the Lindy effect applies in gaming as well. Some things are so sticky and preferred that you have to commit atrocities to remove them from use. From a supply/demand perspective, if all of your customers are still getting high on the 5 (or 20) year old supply, launching a new title in the same space isn't going to work. There are not an infinite # of gamers and the global dopamine budget is limited. Launching a game like TF2 or Starcraft 2 in 2025 would be viewed as a business catastrophe by the metrics most AAA studios are currently operating under. Monthly ARPU for gamers years after purchasing the Orange Box was approximately $0.00. Giving gamers access to that strong of a drug would ruin the demand for other products.
- a_wild_dandan 1y ago
  I purchased "approximately $0.00" in TF2 loot boxes. How much exactly? Left as an exercise to the reader.
  - refulgentis 1y ago
    This is too clever for me, I think - 0?
    - simonh 1y ago
      Approximately. +/- 0
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    People forget that TF2 was originally 20 dollars before hitting the F2P market.
    - ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
      I paid full price for the orange box
  - KeplerBoy 1y ago
    When were microtransactions added to TF2? Probably years after the initial launch, and they worked so well the game became f2p.
kbolino 1y ago
The video game industry has been through cycles like this before. One of them (the 1983 crash) was so bad it killed most American companies and caused the momentum to shift to Japan for a generation. Another one I can recall is the "death" of the RTS (real-time strategy) genre around 2010. They have all followed a fairly similar pattern and in none of them that I know of have things played out as the companies involved thought or hoped they would.
- georgeecollins 1y ago
  I worked in the video game industry from the 90s through to today. I think you are over generalizing or missing the original point. It's true that there have been boom and busts. But there are also structural changes. Do you remember CD-ROMs? Steam and the iPhone were structural changes. What Microsoft is trying to do with Gamepass is a structural change. It may not work out the way that they plan but the truth is that sometimes these things do change the nature of the games you play.
  - kbolino 1y ago
    But the thing is that Steam didn't cause the death of physical media. I absolutely do remember PC gaming before Steam, and between the era when it was awesome (StarCraft, Age of Empires, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, etc.) and the modern Steam-powered renaissance, there was an absolutely dismal era of disappointment and decline. Store shelves were getting filled with trash like "40 games on one CD!" and each new console generation gave retailers an excuse to shrink shelf space for PC games. Yet during this time, all of Valve's games were still available on discs! I think Microsoft's strategy is going to come to the same result as Embracer Group. They've bought up lots of studios and they control a whole platform (by which I mean Xbox, not PC) but this doesn't give them that much power. Gaming does evolve and it often evolves to work around attempts like this, rather than in favor of them.
    - georgeecollins 1y ago
      I am not saying that about Steam. In fact Steam pretty much saved triple A PC gaming. Your timeline is quite accurate! >> Microsoft's strategy is going to come to the same result as Embracer Group. I hope you are right. If I were trying to make a larger point, I guess it would be that big tech companies (Apple, MSFT, Amazon) don't want content creators to be too important in the ecosystem and tend to support initiatives that emphasize the platform.
MangoToupe 1y ago
> It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector. It also won’t work, and Microsoft has developed no way to compete on actual value. As much as I hate the acquisitions they’ve made, even if Microsoft as a whole were to croak tomorrow I think the game industry would be fine.
- ehnto 1y ago
  New stars would arise, others suggesting the games industry would collapse and go away is like saying the music industry collapsing would stop people from making music. Yes games can be expensive to make, but they don't have to be, and millions will still want new games to play. It is actually a pretty low bar for entry to bring an indie game to market (relative to other ventures). A triple A studio collapse would probably be an amazing thing for gamers, lots of new and unique indie titles. Just not great for profit for big companies, a problem I am not concerned with.
beefnugs 1y ago
This post is crazy nonsense: Bad games companies have always existed, and the solution is easy: dont buy their trash. I buy mostly smaller indie games these days just fine. nvidia isn't purposely killing anything, they are just following the pivot into the AI nonsense. They have no choice, if they are in a unique position to make 10x by a pivot they will, even if it might be a dumpsterfire of a house of cards. Its immoral to just abandon the industry that created you, but companies have always been immoral. Valve has an opportunity to what? Take over video card hardware market? No. AMD and Intel are already competitors in the market and cant get any foothold (until hopefully now consumers will have no choice but to shift to them)
proc0 1y ago
I've always played a few games for many hours as opposed to many games for one playthrough. Subscription just does not make sense for me, and I suspect that's a big part of the market. Add to this the fact that you have no control over it and then top it off with potential ads and I will quit gaming before switching to subs only. Luckily there is still GoG and Steam doesn't seem like it will change but who knows.
pointlessone 1y ago
If it’s manufactured it implies intent. Someone at Microsoft is doing it on purpose and, presumably, thinks it’ll benefit them. I’m not sure how this can be seen as a win for them. They invested a massive amount of money into buying all those game studios. They also admitted Xbox hardware is basically dead. So the only way they can any return on that investment is third party hardware: either PlayStation or PC. If I were to choose it would be pc for MS. They already have game pass and windows is the gaming OS. By giving business to Sony they would undermine those. I don’t think nVidia wants gaming collapse either. They might not prioritize it now but they definitely know that it will persist in some form. They bet on AI (and crypto before it) because those are lucrative opportunities but there’s no guarantee they will last. So they squeeze as much as they can out of those while they can. They definitely want gaming as a backup. It might be not as profitable and more finicky as it’s a consumer market but it’s much more stable in the long run.

layoric 1y ago

Valve is a private company so doesn’t have the same growth at all costs incentives. To Microsoft, the share price is everything.

keyringlight 1y ago

As much as they've got large resources, I'm not sure what projects they could reasonably throw a mountain of money at and expect to change things, and presumably benefit from in the future instead of doing it to be a a force of chaos in the industry. Valve's efforts all seem to orbit around the store, that's their main business and everything else seems like a loss-leader to get you buying through it even if it comes across as a pet project of a group of employees. The striking one for me is their linux efforts, at least as far as I'm aware they don't do a lot that isn't tied to the steam deck (or similar devices) or running games available on steam through linux. Even the deck APU is derived from the semi-custom work AMD did for the consoles, they're benefiting from a second later harvest that MS/Sony have invested (hundreds of millions?) in many years earlier. I suppose a lot of it comes down to what Valve needs to support their customers (developers/publishers), they don't see the point in pioneering and establishing some new branch of tech with developers.

bob1029 1y ago

I think the reason you see things like Blizzard killing off Overwatch 1 is because the Lindy effect applies in gaming as well. Some things are so sticky and preferred that you have to commit atrocities to remove them from use. From a supply/demand perspective, if all of your customers are still getting high on the 5 (or 20) year old supply, launching a new title in the same space isn't going to work. There are not an infinite # of gamers and the global dopamine budget is limited. Launching a game like TF2 or Starcraft 2 in 2025 would be viewed as a business catastrophe by the metrics most AAA studios are currently operating under. Monthly ARPU for gamers years after purchasing the Orange Box was approximately $0.00. Giving gamers access to that strong of a drug would ruin the demand for other products.

a_wild_dandan 1y ago
I purchased "approximately $0.00" in TF2 loot boxes. How much exactly? Left as an exercise to the reader.
- refulgentis 1y ago
  This is too clever for me, I think - 0?
  - simonh 1y ago
    Approximately. +/- 0
- bigyabai 1y ago
  People forget that TF2 was originally 20 dollars before hitting the F2P market.
  - ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
    I paid full price for the orange box
- KeplerBoy 1y ago
  When were microtransactions added to TF2? Probably years after the initial launch, and they worked so well the game became f2p.

kbolino 1y ago

The video game industry has been through cycles like this before. One of them (the 1983 crash) was so bad it killed most American companies and caused the momentum to shift to Japan for a generation. Another one I can recall is the "death" of the RTS (real-time strategy) genre around 2010. They have all followed a fairly similar pattern and in none of them that I know of have things played out as the companies involved thought or hoped they would.

georgeecollins 1y ago
I worked in the video game industry from the 90s through to today. I think you are over generalizing or missing the original point. It's true that there have been boom and busts. But there are also structural changes. Do you remember CD-ROMs? Steam and the iPhone were structural changes. What Microsoft is trying to do with Gamepass is a structural change. It may not work out the way that they plan but the truth is that sometimes these things do change the nature of the games you play.
- kbolino 1y ago
  But the thing is that Steam didn't cause the death of physical media. I absolutely do remember PC gaming before Steam, and between the era when it was awesome (StarCraft, Age of Empires, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, etc.) and the modern Steam-powered renaissance, there was an absolutely dismal era of disappointment and decline. Store shelves were getting filled with trash like "40 games on one CD!" and each new console generation gave retailers an excuse to shrink shelf space for PC games. Yet during this time, all of Valve's games were still available on discs! I think Microsoft's strategy is going to come to the same result as Embracer Group. They've bought up lots of studios and they control a whole platform (by which I mean Xbox, not PC) but this doesn't give them that much power. Gaming does evolve and it often evolves to work around attempts like this, rather than in favor of them.
  - georgeecollins 1y ago
    I am not saying that about Steam. In fact Steam pretty much saved triple A PC gaming. Your timeline is quite accurate! >> Microsoft's strategy is going to come to the same result as Embracer Group. I hope you are right. If I were trying to make a larger point, I guess it would be that big tech companies (Apple, MSFT, Amazon) don't want content creators to be too important in the ecosystem and tend to support initiatives that emphasize the platform.

MangoToupe 1y ago

> It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector. It also won’t work, and Microsoft has developed no way to compete on actual value. As much as I hate the acquisitions they’ve made, even if Microsoft as a whole were to croak tomorrow I think the game industry would be fine.

ehnto 1y ago
New stars would arise, others suggesting the games industry would collapse and go away is like saying the music industry collapsing would stop people from making music. Yes games can be expensive to make, but they don't have to be, and millions will still want new games to play. It is actually a pretty low bar for entry to bring an indie game to market (relative to other ventures). A triple A studio collapse would probably be an amazing thing for gamers, lots of new and unique indie titles. Just not great for profit for big companies, a problem I am not concerned with.

beefnugs 1y ago

This post is crazy nonsense: Bad games companies have always existed, and the solution is easy: dont buy their trash. I buy mostly smaller indie games these days just fine. nvidia isn't purposely killing anything, they are just following the pivot into the AI nonsense. They have no choice, if they are in a unique position to make 10x by a pivot they will, even if it might be a dumpsterfire of a house of cards. Its immoral to just abandon the industry that created you, but companies have always been immoral. Valve has an opportunity to what? Take over video card hardware market? No. AMD and Intel are already competitors in the market and cant get any foothold (until hopefully now consumers will have no choice but to shift to them)

proc0 1y ago

I've always played a few games for many hours as opposed to many games for one playthrough. Subscription just does not make sense for me, and I suspect that's a big part of the market. Add to this the fact that you have no control over it and then top it off with potential ads and I will quit gaming before switching to subs only. Luckily there is still GoG and Steam doesn't seem like it will change but who knows.

pointlessone 1y ago

If it’s manufactured it implies intent. Someone at Microsoft is doing it on purpose and, presumably, thinks it’ll benefit them. I’m not sure how this can be seen as a win for them. They invested a massive amount of money into buying all those game studios. They also admitted Xbox hardware is basically dead. So the only way they can any return on that investment is third party hardware: either PlayStation or PC. If I were to choose it would be pc for MS. They already have game pass and windows is the gaming OS. By giving business to Sony they would undermine those. I don’t think nVidia wants gaming collapse either. They might not prioritize it now but they definitely know that it will persist in some form. They bet on AI (and crypto before it) because those are lucrative opportunities but there’s no guarantee they will last. So they squeeze as much as they can out of those while they can. They definitely want gaming as a backup. It might be not as profitable and more finicky as it’s a consumer market but it’s much more stable in the long run.