18 ms·

the game pass domination strategy was always going to fail in a world where Steam exists it must be very frustrating for Microsoft their usual tactic of buyin

the game pass domination strategy was always going to fail in a world where Steam exists it must be very frustrating for Microsoft their usual tactic of buying out the competition isn't an option because Gabe Newell is already a billionare (and a gamer), who won't sell for any price and their backup strategy of tightening the screws of their competition on Windows can't work either, because he's funded a credible (almost) replacement for Windows so for once they have to compete on fair terms and when they do that: they lose

squigz 1y ago
This recent price increase notwithstanding, Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money. I suppose it's probably like Netflix at the beginning though, and we'll start seeing more things like this price hike and plan differentiation
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  If you’re in high school/college (hell your 20’s) and can game 10+ hours a week it was an unbelievable deal. Even $30 isn’t that crazy if you’re really using it. But a lot of people can’t get that kind of value out of it and it doesn’t help that Microsoft keeps cancelling every interesting game and/or lets their best studios languish.
  - lostmsu 1y ago
    $30 would be 6 AAA titles per year. There are barely that many descent games released in a decade.
    - addaon 1y ago
      > There are barely that many descent games released in a decade. There were three in the 90s that I know of. Have I missed some since?
      - NexRebular 1y ago
        At least the two Descent: FreeSpace titles...
      - lostmsu 1y ago
        Skyrim, GTA V, Minecraft
        croon 1y ago
        I think it was either a joke or a comment on the "descent" spelling of decent, referring to the Descent (sci-fi space sims) games.
        lostmsu 1y ago
        Shamed me there
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      Gamepass has a lot more than AAA’s (Silk Song for instance) and if you haven’t been sticking with consoles in particular over the last 10-15 years the back catalog of tentpole titles is actually pretty impressive. I’ve had many conversations with people in their 30s who have not touched video games since the 360/PS3 era. Gamepass, even if just for a few months, makes a ton of sense for them if they have the time. I say this as somebody who absolutely does not think people should be paying $30 for gamepass generally speaking and I think Microsoft/Xbox is incredibly weak right now. But there are certainly cases where it makes a ton of sense and Sony isn’t exactly offering a better alternative unless you want a Final Fantasy machine that’s library is dominated by PS3/PS4 remasters (which in many ways mimics the value prop of gamepass for those who have not been gaming for years).
  - squigz 1y ago
    I think it's still a good deal even for more casual gamers - I imagine it would feel worse to spend $80 on a game that you may put an hour or two into, if you ever launch it at all. I imagine most casual gamers will simply not buy many games; whereas on Game Pass you can browse, pick up a game (that would otherwise cost you an arm and a leg) for the few hours you've got for gaming. But like another commenter points out, if you're playing games like Silk Song or other similarly-priced games, it makes more sense to buy the game. But yeah, you're absolutely right: lots of flaws with it, and I expect it will just get worse, much like Netflix. Long live Steam, which I still use and love :)
- blibble 1y ago
  > Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money. it's a subsidised introductory price to capture market share and kill off the competition with the hope of creating a monopoly ("predatory pricing")
  - stanac 1y ago
    Apparently it was profitable (not subsidized), not sure if true. https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/xbox-series-x/xbox-president-says-game-pass-is-profitable-and-good-for-creators-despite-alleged-division-over-the-subscription-model/ https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/xbox-series-x/xbox-pres...
    - blibble 1y ago
      depends entirely how you attribute the game revenue this price rise was driven by them fearing cannibalisation of game sale revenues for the imminent new call of duty release last year just on CoD they gave up $300 million (due to gamepass) https://archive.is/ic79u https://archive.is/ic79u
      - ErneX 1y ago
        And over 82% of the copies sold were on PlayStation. Seems MS bet on GamePass + all the publishers acquisitions moving lots of units of Xbox hardware but that simply did not happen, so now they pivoted to be the biggest 3rd party publisher and are releasing everything on all the other consoles, even their own original Xbox Studios games like Forza, Flight Simulator, Gears of War, etc.
        rkomorn 1y ago
        I thought common wisdom was that console hardware was sold at low profit to generate software-based revenue? If that's true, then selling software at low profit to sell hardware at low profit to sell software at high profit seems convoluted.
    - 1y ago
- chrisfosterelli 1y ago
  Agreed; it has been an incredible deal, especially with the redemption loopholes they originally left open. I think I got nearly three years for less than $150 originally. But it's pretty obvious now that they've been nearly giving it away so they can capture the market and then raise the price.
- rapind 1y ago
  It's a good deal if you're really really using it, or I guess if you're a blizzard sub (not even sure if this is still a thing). If you're just playing Silk Song now and then, you can buy it for $20 from Steam. I get you don't fully own it with steam, but it a hell of a lot closer to owning it than having temporary access via GamePass. IMO the real issues for the more casual gamer (who is not a mobile gamer), is having either a decent console or cloud gaming. There's not a ton of options besides GEForce Now and XBox Cloud, and the Steam consoles are kinda crap and outdated at the moment. Also XBox cloud kinda sucks last I checked and had restrictions on multiplayer etc. If XBox cloud gets as good as nVidia's cloud AND you get GamePass library access AND you can use a pretty dumbed down / cheap console for cloud gaming... then this might be a win for at least a subset. I think this is where they are headed? Even with all that, it's hard to beat Steam + GEForce Now which is the direct competitor. I dream of a world where Windows is no longer the dominant OS for gaming.
  - SSLy 1y ago
    much to my disappointment, GamePass doesn't give a sub to World of Warcraft.
- rs186 1y ago
  You happen to know many gamers who do spend a lot of time playing (different) games. But that's not necessarily the user base of Game Pass, especially when it was cheap. Many don't even play 1 new title per month.
amatecha 1y ago
Yeah, Valve understood MS' position/power a long time ago and worked to mitigate that risk. I remember them shopping around nearly 15 years ago to find a partner to help them work on Linux and improve Steam's abilities there, which resulted in SteamOS[0]. Indeed the plan worked, and now you can even buy a dedicated gaming console[1] that runs ~all the Windows games but completely without reliance on MS. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck
- sho_hn 1y ago
  Of course Newell literally was a Microsoft employee prior to founding Valve.
- em-bee 1y ago
  the risk mitigation hasn't played out yet. if that's what it is. we need to wait until microsoft tries to squeeze Steam out of windows. we have yet to see whether it works to keep valve alive against microsoft. the attack hasn't happened yet. and judging by microsofts actions it looks like they are cancelling themselves. for now at least. the war is not over. of course as a linux user i am not complaining about linux support, but for now it still looks like valve supports linux from the goodness of their heart, and not as a way to make money. lets hope that this changes.
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    Not goodness, it's an insurance policy. It takes many years to achieve anything like this, so groundwork needs to be laid early.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      of course. my point is that we don't know if it will be enough. and i am not saying linux is a risky bet, because there are no safer bets to make. (other than gabe taking his earnings and keeping them for himself) if microsoft shuts out Steam, then valve will lose more than 90% of its current revenue. despite the insurance policy that just might kill the company outright. and, the more revenue valve gets from linux, the more of a threat it becomes to microsoft, which makes microsoft trying to shut out Steam even more likely. our only hope is that regulators prevent microsoft from even trying...
bob1029 1y ago
> he's funded a credible (almost) replacement for Windows Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows. I've loaded Win64 Unity builds on the machine to test and they run perfectly every time. I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point. The machine doesn't even get hot despite my fear that it would doing something like this. The only part of the SD experience that felt like "linux" was the OOBE wherein I had to arbitrarily restart the first time setup process 3-4 times before it finally worked. I am at a point where I almost prefer to game on the linux handheld over my windows desktop. It really is a superior package in many ways. Games like Elden Ring, Arkham Knight, Euro Truck Simulator 2, etc., are so much better to play on a machine like this. On keyboard+mouse I struggled to enjoy these titles. I realize I could always connect a controller to my PC, but it never felt right to me in that form factor. Playing ETS2 on the couch is a completely different dimension of relaxation. I'd never touch this game on my PC.
- testdelacc1 1y ago
  > I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point. I would have agreed, having played the windows build Baldurs Gate III on the Deck. But a week ago the developer put out a native Deck build that outperforms the windows build, which is very helpful in the later parts of the game.
- addaon 1y ago
  > Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows. Really? I haven’t used it, but I’ve mostly heard good things. It really has ads everywhere and needs regular reinstalls and malware scrubbing?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - estimator7292 1y ago
    You aren't funny or clever, just juvenile
the_snooze 1y ago
Steam is great, in no small part because Valve isn't beholden to quarterly earnings numbers. But I'm worried what will happen when Gabe Newell retires. Valve has been a pretty good (though at times imperfect) steward for PC gaming and it'll be sad if a change in leadership decides to extract value from 20+ years of goodwill.
- protimewaster 1y ago
  I think the biggest problem with Steam is that when you buy a game on Steam, it's tied to your Steam account forever. In theory, Gabe could croak and they get bought by a VC firm that decides that a Steam account costs $45/month. At that point, you either give up all the games you purchased on Steam, or pay the $45/month. I don't know why anyone would prefer their games tied to a service in that way. Especially when we've seen other digital stores go belly up, resulting in inaccessible collections.
  - surgical_fire 1y ago
    Steam was the OG online store, it grandfathered itself in before a time people started to think that having their gaming library behind such a service might offer some downsides. Nowadays I mostly buy PC games on GoG for that reason, but I have plenty on Steam. I do worry about it a little.
    - protimewaster 1y ago
      One of the things that drives me a little crazy about Steam is that there was actually an earlier digital game store (run by Stardock IIRC) that made the launcher and other tie-ins optional. That one didn't take off, though. Steam required a tie-in to the launcher, and it took off. I would've much rather had the launcher and all that be optional, but I'm guessing that requiring Steam for games like Half-life 2 probably was the smarter move (from a profit perspective) than having it be optional, so that's the way the market went.
- spwa4 1y ago
  Steam, and this concern, is an illustration of why we used to have rules that marketplaces need to be run by the government.
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam. I've paid $10/month for a library of hundreds of games I can play on both PC and Xbox. We all knew that price was too good to be true but I've paid it happily for 5 years. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop and now it has. I've loaded up 2.5 years on my account at $20/month (the current retail price for Ultimate is $60 for 3-month cards.) I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on. Even if I only played day one AAA games, the same $70 would get me one game on Steam for 2.3 months of the entire Game Pass library at the $30 price point or 3.5 months at the still-available $20/month price point. The game can't be resold on either platform. Microsoft created a new business model that changed how I play games for the better. I can't see how the service isn't worth $30/month for 500+ games. (For a regular and not casual gamer.) This isn't shovelware like the Netflix library. There's a ton of high-quality games in there. And I don't see how their price increase, which was inevitable and the timing of which was hastened by tariffs, has anything but a specious like to the merger. Steam has done nothing but contrive a rent-seeker position for itself on an otherwise open platform. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember a time when I could buy from the publisher without that middleman and click setup.exe for myself. And still retain the rights to resell and play offline without a middleman.
- root_axis 1y ago
  GamePass is the worst thing to happen to gaming in the last two decades. It's an unsustainable race-to-the-bottom business model that devalues games and incentives shoveling out crap instead of producing quality titles. Worse yet, it conditions players to dismiss challenging, innovative, or unusual game mechanics due to the siren song of a functionally infinite catalog tempting them to just load up another title at the first sign of struggle.
  - add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
    Wow, there's a lot to unpack here.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
  There was also a time where no videogames were available on pc because publishers didn't want to sell there anymore. I think proton is such a huge thing,given what's happening with all OSes, that Valve should be considered great. Also, we never had a portable pc gaming device ever,until now.
surgical_fire 1y ago
And on the console world, Playstation exists, with plenty of exclusives. Also Nintendo exists. Sony and Nintendo are not exactly companies they can buy (would almost certainly trigger anti monopoly cases everywhere, even if they could pay God knows how much money for one of those). And honestly, this is great. I shudder to think of a world where fucking Microsoft has a dominant position on gaming.

squigz 1y ago

This recent price increase notwithstanding, Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money. I suppose it's probably like Netflix at the beginning though, and we'll start seeing more things like this price hike and plan differentiation

Forgeties79 1y ago
If you’re in high school/college (hell your 20’s) and can game 10+ hours a week it was an unbelievable deal. Even $30 isn’t that crazy if you’re really using it. But a lot of people can’t get that kind of value out of it and it doesn’t help that Microsoft keeps cancelling every interesting game and/or lets their best studios languish.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  $30 would be 6 AAA titles per year. There are barely that many descent games released in a decade.
  - addaon 1y ago
    > There are barely that many descent games released in a decade. There were three in the 90s that I know of. Have I missed some since?
    - NexRebular 1y ago
      At least the two Descent: FreeSpace titles...
    - lostmsu 1y ago
      Skyrim, GTA V, Minecraft
      - croon 1y ago
        I think it was either a joke or a comment on the "descent" spelling of decent, referring to the Descent (sci-fi space sims) games.
        lostmsu 1y ago
        Shamed me there
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    Gamepass has a lot more than AAA’s (Silk Song for instance) and if you haven’t been sticking with consoles in particular over the last 10-15 years the back catalog of tentpole titles is actually pretty impressive. I’ve had many conversations with people in their 30s who have not touched video games since the 360/PS3 era. Gamepass, even if just for a few months, makes a ton of sense for them if they have the time. I say this as somebody who absolutely does not think people should be paying $30 for gamepass generally speaking and I think Microsoft/Xbox is incredibly weak right now. But there are certainly cases where it makes a ton of sense and Sony isn’t exactly offering a better alternative unless you want a Final Fantasy machine that’s library is dominated by PS3/PS4 remasters (which in many ways mimics the value prop of gamepass for those who have not been gaming for years).
- squigz 1y ago
  I think it's still a good deal even for more casual gamers - I imagine it would feel worse to spend $80 on a game that you may put an hour or two into, if you ever launch it at all. I imagine most casual gamers will simply not buy many games; whereas on Game Pass you can browse, pick up a game (that would otherwise cost you an arm and a leg) for the few hours you've got for gaming. But like another commenter points out, if you're playing games like Silk Song or other similarly-priced games, it makes more sense to buy the game. But yeah, you're absolutely right: lots of flaws with it, and I expect it will just get worse, much like Netflix. Long live Steam, which I still use and love :)
blibble 1y ago
> Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money. it's a subsidised introductory price to capture market share and kill off the competition with the hope of creating a monopoly ("predatory pricing")
- stanac 1y ago
  Apparently it was profitable (not subsidized), not sure if true. https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/xbox-series-x/xbox-president-says-game-pass-is-profitable-and-good-for-creators-despite-alleged-division-over-the-subscription-model/ https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/xbox-series-x/xbox-pres...
  - blibble 1y ago
    depends entirely how you attribute the game revenue this price rise was driven by them fearing cannibalisation of game sale revenues for the imminent new call of duty release last year just on CoD they gave up $300 million (due to gamepass) https://archive.is/ic79u https://archive.is/ic79u
    - ErneX 1y ago
      And over 82% of the copies sold were on PlayStation. Seems MS bet on GamePass + all the publishers acquisitions moving lots of units of Xbox hardware but that simply did not happen, so now they pivoted to be the biggest 3rd party publisher and are releasing everything on all the other consoles, even their own original Xbox Studios games like Forza, Flight Simulator, Gears of War, etc.
      - rkomorn 1y ago
        I thought common wisdom was that console hardware was sold at low profit to generate software-based revenue? If that's true, then selling software at low profit to sell hardware at low profit to sell software at high profit seems convoluted.
  - 1y ago
chrisfosterelli 1y ago
Agreed; it has been an incredible deal, especially with the redemption loopholes they originally left open. I think I got nearly three years for less than $150 originally. But it's pretty obvious now that they've been nearly giving it away so they can capture the market and then raise the price.
rapind 1y ago
It's a good deal if you're really really using it, or I guess if you're a blizzard sub (not even sure if this is still a thing). If you're just playing Silk Song now and then, you can buy it for $20 from Steam. I get you don't fully own it with steam, but it a hell of a lot closer to owning it than having temporary access via GamePass. IMO the real issues for the more casual gamer (who is not a mobile gamer), is having either a decent console or cloud gaming. There's not a ton of options besides GEForce Now and XBox Cloud, and the Steam consoles are kinda crap and outdated at the moment. Also XBox cloud kinda sucks last I checked and had restrictions on multiplayer etc. If XBox cloud gets as good as nVidia's cloud AND you get GamePass library access AND you can use a pretty dumbed down / cheap console for cloud gaming... then this might be a win for at least a subset. I think this is where they are headed? Even with all that, it's hard to beat Steam + GEForce Now which is the direct competitor. I dream of a world where Windows is no longer the dominant OS for gaming.
- SSLy 1y ago
  much to my disappointment, GamePass doesn't give a sub to World of Warcraft.
rs186 1y ago
You happen to know many gamers who do spend a lot of time playing (different) games. But that's not necessarily the user base of Game Pass, especially when it was cheap. Many don't even play 1 new title per month.

amatecha 1y ago

Yeah, Valve understood MS' position/power a long time ago and worked to mitigate that risk. I remember them shopping around nearly 15 years ago to find a partner to help them work on Linux and improve Steam's abilities there, which resulted in SteamOS[0]. Indeed the plan worked, and now you can even buy a dedicated gaming console[1] that runs ~all the Windows games but completely without reliance on MS. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck

sho_hn 1y ago
Of course Newell literally was a Microsoft employee prior to founding Valve.
em-bee 1y ago
the risk mitigation hasn't played out yet. if that's what it is. we need to wait until microsoft tries to squeeze Steam out of windows. we have yet to see whether it works to keep valve alive against microsoft. the attack hasn't happened yet. and judging by microsofts actions it looks like they are cancelling themselves. for now at least. the war is not over. of course as a linux user i am not complaining about linux support, but for now it still looks like valve supports linux from the goodness of their heart, and not as a way to make money. lets hope that this changes.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  Not goodness, it's an insurance policy. It takes many years to achieve anything like this, so groundwork needs to be laid early.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    of course. my point is that we don't know if it will be enough. and i am not saying linux is a risky bet, because there are no safer bets to make. (other than gabe taking his earnings and keeping them for himself) if microsoft shuts out Steam, then valve will lose more than 90% of its current revenue. despite the insurance policy that just might kill the company outright. and, the more revenue valve gets from linux, the more of a threat it becomes to microsoft, which makes microsoft trying to shut out Steam even more likely. our only hope is that regulators prevent microsoft from even trying...

bob1029 1y ago

> he's funded a credible (almost) replacement for Windows Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows. I've loaded Win64 Unity builds on the machine to test and they run perfectly every time. I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point. The machine doesn't even get hot despite my fear that it would doing something like this. The only part of the SD experience that felt like "linux" was the OOBE wherein I had to arbitrarily restart the first time setup process 3-4 times before it finally worked. I am at a point where I almost prefer to game on the linux handheld over my windows desktop. It really is a superior package in many ways. Games like Elden Ring, Arkham Knight, Euro Truck Simulator 2, etc., are so much better to play on a machine like this. On keyboard+mouse I struggled to enjoy these titles. I realize I could always connect a controller to my PC, but it never felt right to me in that form factor. Playing ETS2 on the couch is a completely different dimension of relaxation. I'd never touch this game on my PC.

testdelacc1 1y ago
> I actually dont see the reason I would bother with a native Linux build at this point. I would have agreed, having played the windows build Baldurs Gate III on the Deck. But a week ago the developer put out a native Deck build that outperforms the windows build, which is very helpful in the later parts of the game.
addaon 1y ago
> Proton on Steam Deck is indistinguishable from Windows. Really? I haven’t used it, but I’ve mostly heard good things. It really has ads everywhere and needs regular reinstalls and malware scrubbing?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- estimator7292 1y ago
  You aren't funny or clever, just juvenile

the_snooze 1y ago

Steam is great, in no small part because Valve isn't beholden to quarterly earnings numbers. But I'm worried what will happen when Gabe Newell retires. Valve has been a pretty good (though at times imperfect) steward for PC gaming and it'll be sad if a change in leadership decides to extract value from 20+ years of goodwill.

protimewaster 1y ago
I think the biggest problem with Steam is that when you buy a game on Steam, it's tied to your Steam account forever. In theory, Gabe could croak and they get bought by a VC firm that decides that a Steam account costs $45/month. At that point, you either give up all the games you purchased on Steam, or pay the $45/month. I don't know why anyone would prefer their games tied to a service in that way. Especially when we've seen other digital stores go belly up, resulting in inaccessible collections.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  Steam was the OG online store, it grandfathered itself in before a time people started to think that having their gaming library behind such a service might offer some downsides. Nowadays I mostly buy PC games on GoG for that reason, but I have plenty on Steam. I do worry about it a little.
  - protimewaster 1y ago
    One of the things that drives me a little crazy about Steam is that there was actually an earlier digital game store (run by Stardock IIRC) that made the launcher and other tie-ins optional. That one didn't take off, though. Steam required a tie-in to the launcher, and it took off. I would've much rather had the launcher and all that be optional, but I'm guessing that requiring Steam for games like Half-life 2 probably was the smarter move (from a profit perspective) than having it be optional, so that's the way the market went.
spwa4 1y ago
Steam, and this concern, is an illustration of why we used to have rules that marketplaces need to be run by the government.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam. I've paid $10/month for a library of hundreds of games I can play on both PC and Xbox. We all knew that price was too good to be true but I've paid it happily for 5 years. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop and now it has. I've loaded up 2.5 years on my account at $20/month (the current retail price for Ultimate is $60 for 3-month cards.) I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on. Even if I only played day one AAA games, the same $70 would get me one game on Steam for 2.3 months of the entire Game Pass library at the $30 price point or 3.5 months at the still-available $20/month price point. The game can't be resold on either platform. Microsoft created a new business model that changed how I play games for the better. I can't see how the service isn't worth $30/month for 500+ games. (For a regular and not casual gamer.) This isn't shovelware like the Netflix library. There's a ton of high-quality games in there. And I don't see how their price increase, which was inevitable and the timing of which was hastened by tariffs, has anything but a specious like to the merger. Steam has done nothing but contrive a rent-seeker position for itself on an otherwise open platform. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember a time when I could buy from the publisher without that middleman and click setup.exe for myself. And still retain the rights to resell and play offline without a middleman.

root_axis 1y ago
GamePass is the worst thing to happen to gaming in the last two decades. It's an unsustainable race-to-the-bottom business model that devalues games and incentives shoveling out crap instead of producing quality titles. Worse yet, it conditions players to dismiss challenging, innovative, or unusual game mechanics due to the siren song of a functionally infinite catalog tempting them to just load up another title at the first sign of struggle.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Wow, there's a lot to unpack here.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
There was also a time where no videogames were available on pc because publishers didn't want to sell there anymore. I think proton is such a huge thing,given what's happening with all OSes, that Valve should be considered great. Also, we never had a portable pc gaming device ever,until now.

surgical_fire 1y ago

And on the console world, Playstation exists, with plenty of exclusives. Also Nintendo exists. Sony and Nintendo are not exactly companies they can buy (would almost certainly trigger anti monopoly cases everywhere, even if they could pay God knows how much money for one of those). And honestly, this is great. I shudder to think of a world where fucking Microsoft has a dominant position on gaming.