this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
66 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
59358 readers
7317 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Saying Xbox has $2.4T at their disposal is ridiculous. They are such a small part of the overall company, they don't have the pull of, say, the Windows team or Office team. Otherwise, why would they wait a whole generation when they could have just made moves when they were being outsold 2:1 during the XBO days? People really don't understand how close Xbox got to going the way of Mixer or Windows Phone especially with Nadella made CEO right after that launch.
Playstation understood. And that's why they went with this scorched earth policy expecting MS to make the sensible decision to close up shop if they could get Xbox to repeat last gen. There's really no other reason for it unless you want to believe that somehow Xbox was going to not only catch up but overtake Playstation's massive install base, rich IP library, and crazy talented 1st party studios by just having a bunch of 3rd party games that are already on PS5. That's laughable.
Somehow Phil Spencer convinced Nadella to invest heavily in Xbox. But realistically, Xbox division is so inconsequential to Microsoft's success, the only way he would realistically do it is if the ROI was massive. Hence giant acquisitions and not a tit for tat bid wars against Sony on a game by game basis. Jim Ryan gambled big and he lost big. And we'll all suffer for it. Maybe not right away because Spencer doesn't strike me as the type of person Ryan is, but he'll leave one day and who knows who'll be next.
Me:
You:
Nice reading skills. How do you expect any discussion if you start by putting something in my mouth I never even remotely said?
Anyway.
Yes, Sony was bullish in the PS2 days, and their arrogance lead to fairly botched PS3 launch, which they needed years to recover from. But even the launch PS3 was a pretty good console on its own, the main problem were their dev tools.
MS had a hiccup with RROD, but otherwise the X360 was a massive hit and became the default console of that generation everywhere except Japan. Together with the Xbox interfaces for Windows, the ABXY Xbox buttons was a synonym for gaming.
MS had massive good will, all they needed is to just keep going.
But what does a company like MS do when they have momentum? They try to strangle the market. Always. They are incapable of working in any other way. And so instead of a proper gaming console, the xbox one was designed as machine for ads delivery, rental, DRM and spyware, with games only being an afterthought at best.
They also pulled that shit with Windows 10, but I'm not getting into that.
And they are doing it again with GamePass, their goal is for you to eventually have no other option then to rent games in perpetuity.
After they gobble up all the game studios and starve the market of everything else, after they gain enough dominance in yet another market, then you'll see the same disgusting dystopian corporation that has been pushing IE, Office, Windows and other cancer.
We've been there many many times.
And you'll see it again. Maybe not very soon, but in 10 years it'll be the same again.
You like Xbox? Let's have the Xbox brand fully separate from MS. Not be a subsidiary, a fully separate company with no relation to MS. Maybe then I'd give it 1% chance, but even then I wouldn't have them acquire fucking Activision. Heck, even if MS was the good guy here, Activision alone is a poisonous tumor that's been sucking the game industry dry. So how can this ever end well?
Anyway, I'm out. Got better things to do. Nice venting, tho.
If all you got from what I said is "You like Xbox" then I agree there's no point in continuing the discussion.
Good talk.