Sony's business model very much seems to be times exclusive-based when not leveraging their own exclusive games of course.
Seems to me that Microsoft fought back the only possible way by buying Studios to make exclusive content all the while using the resources at their disposal.
How anyone thought that something like this wasn't inevitable is beyond me. Sony just cannot compete with Microsoft in this regard. There will be other large acquisitions from Microsoft in the future as well. It's inevitable.
Sony has extreme pressure to not fail with their exclusives. One generation of games that fail to live up to standards could dramatically increase xbox market share as game pass keeps providing unavoidable value to casual gamers. Also, Sony has to do everything possible to keep xbox on the fringes in Asian markets. I feel as if Sony is playing a short term game that can't hold up in the future. Microsoft is correct in seeing Amazon, Google and Apple as the real competitors in this space. Microsoft doesn't really care about selling consoles, they care about services.
Hope I'm wrong though as having multiple consoles is awesome for choice!
This is something people need to truly understand. Right now, with MS seemingly giving more of their full backing behind the Xbox division (granted it's because they know this also benefits Azure, Windows/PC and their other services, but still), and companies like Amazon now getting serious (and we can't count out Google yet even though they've had an Atari Jaguar-sized flop so far with Stadia), the simple truth is Sony
can't compete with these massive companies in the spending and financial resources arms race.
If they do, what'll happen to Sony will be the same thing that happened to SEGA in the mid '90s when they tried taking Sony head-on:
failure. SEGA were a
fraction of Sony's size at the time and did not have ownership of a lot of their tech the same way Sony did (nor did they have related divisions they could pull resources from and pass it along like a tax write-off), but they tried going tit-for-tat with them anyway. Which is why IMHO they missed an opportunity to double-down on a way of expanding on their niche (arcades and arcade gaming at home) in a fashion that'd integrate them 100% into a
wholly unique offering where they wouldn't need compete head-on with Sony to still be successful.
Nintendo saw the writing on the wall
even back then which is why they did a notable shift with the N64; it was still a powerful console but they focused on game types and genres they excelled at, focused on IP they had been established for years, and made sure their system had features (local 4-player multiplayer for example) that simply weren't possible on Sony or SEGA's systems without extra hardware. Then there's the Gameboy, which definitely provided them with a different type of identity than their competitors. Gamecube's relative failure in the market cemented Nintendo into the modern-day philosophy they have now, and I don't see that ever changing again.
Sony has to double-down on their strengths, and integrating them as
tightly as possible. I'm talking across the board: where are the God of War movies at? Some PS5 apps/features that take advantage of your consumer electronics more directly? How about an anime series for Arc the Lad or something like that, tied into an Arc the Lad remake? Stuff like that.
This is where they have to dig deep and realize, sometime in the future, they
may not have the 3rd-party advantage going forward, but that doesn't mean they have to suffer for it. They've got enough resources in IP, product divisions and various tech to solidify a
future-proofed identity that can easily coexist with Nintendo, Microsoft, Amazon, Google etc. And, they still have a good bit of time to bring it all together; if these kind of massive buyouts keep course, I don't see it potentially
really hurting PlayStation division until like 2023 - 2024 or something like that.
There's also something else I want to mention here since you bring it up: ironically, I think Microsoft would
rather prefer Sony being around, versus them being a position where a Google or Amazon can take over. MS might want more marketshare, but I
don't think they want to push Sony out of the console market as a platform holder. Same goes for Nintendo. They are likely
much more comfortable with Sony and Nintendo than Google and Amazon ever getting massive traction, so there's an impetus for Microsoft to try working with Sony and Nintendo (which we can already see in stuff like Sony using Azure for PSN).
I think this is why, if push comes to shove, the option's on the table for Sony and Nintendo to consider letting Gamepass on their platforms, though it'd probably either be just for MS 1st-party, or some kind of industry-redefining system/standard of game streaming platform standard consortium, kind of like how the industry was forced to make the ESRB in 1994. They'd have to also agree upon how software royalty rates would work in such a system.
(Also this is kinda what Trip Hawkins wanted to do with 3DO back in the '90s but it was way too early and also didn't consider any consolidation for hardware costs of entry for other companies, hence why 3DOs were so expensive in the first place.)
Don't really know how that would work, honestly, without it seeming overbearing. At least at the moment.
Another solution might be to provide the streaming platform as a technology licensable to all companies
willing to pay a licensing fee, and then they can implement a compatible version of the service on their own devices and keep the revenue of software sales through their own version of the platform. However, the
big benefit would be that all licensees get to legally access a
global database of game software from 3rd-parties who opt-in (simply having companies like Google, Amazon, Apple etc. potentially use this platform would incentivize them to opt-in with no costs on those platform holders tbqh, and 3rd-parties would have to pay a recurring licensing fee; all licensees of the service platform would get an even slice of the recurring fee 3rd-parties pay to host their games on the platform database), and retain cloud streaming distribution of
75% of their 1st-party content exclusively. The other 25%? It'd have to be made available on the global network at some point (day-and-date, or 3-month stagger) for other partners to provide on their implementation of the service; choosing those specific games though can either be done at a publisher's discretion or done following some established guidelines.
Some exceptions to a bit of this for the founders of the platform standard of course, so basically Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Maybe some of the massive 3rd-parties like Rockstar, too. All partners collaborating together to iterate on global features and standards of the platform, similar to consortiums like JEDEC in the technology space.
...now I've probably gone off-course
