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[Unknown Soldier]

Microsoft in 2023: "What if instead of spending millions we spent... BILLIONS?"

 

[normalguy09x]

Millions?? Try billions. I would love to see their numbers. I'd love see how much Microsoft has spent on Xbox compared to the revenue Xbox brings in.

 

[DavidGzz]

It's hard to combat loyalism to corporations(lmao), just look at Epic's attempts.

 

[Griffon]

Doesn't matter how much money you waste if you're just bad at it.

Nintendo doesn't need to throw money around.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Honestly, if you are Microsoft, with the resources they had/have... it really is that simple.

MS came in in 2001, and they had Bungie... they even got GTA4 exclusive content at some point, and had Epic making games for them and being one of their biggest third-party partners.

Then look at every studio Sony has acquired since, every partnership made, or the fact that MS had COD marketing rights before Sony and let go of that license because they felt Halo was better.

MS isnt where they are now because they couldn't have competed, or even beat Sony at every game Sony tried to pull. MS are where they are now because they made bad decisions after bad decisions. Over and over again.

The narrative that xbox couldn't compete is false. They failed to compete.

 

[nosoynadie22]

Millions?? Try billions. I would love to see their numbers. I'd love see how much Microsoft has spent on Xbox compared to the revenue Xbox brings in.

they are buying ABK for 7 billion dollars, but since even with that they can't compete with Sony the next step is going to be spending a trillion dollars

 

[xBlueStonex]

I don't understand the logic here. Do people just want Microsoft to roll over and let Xbox die?

Instead they just pulled off (or about to pull off) the biggest acquisition in gaming history and are launching one of the biggest exclusives of all time next week. Starfield is absolutely going to be a Series X seller.

Threads like this just reinforce how insecure the PS fanbase is getting.

 

[normalguy09x]

they are buying ABK for 7 billion dollars, but since even with that they can't compete with Sony the next step is going to be spending a trillion dollars

70 billion on ABK actually.

 

[JaksGhost]

He's speaking in terms of Xbox being A. a brand new console to the market and B. the last kid to arrive to the party during that generation. In that realm what he's saying is valid. I don't know how this discussion jumped to 2023.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

The narrative that xbox couldn't compete is false. They failed to compete.

I won't even say they failed to compete. More like they failed at competing. Because they did compete, and for a short while, were even winning or had Sony on the ropes. And that's what is crazy about this whole thing. We have Xbox to thank for the focused, streamlined, stick-to-what-works version of PlayStation we have today. It took the 360 handing them their ass for them to make a course correct and go on a path to never make the mistakes they made that go them into the mess that was the PS3.

For whatever reason though, no matter how many times MS loses, unlike Sony, they just never seem to be able to learn from their mistakes. Even crazier, they seem hell-bent on making new and improved mistakes.

 

[nosoynadie22]

En realidad, 70 mil millones en ABK.

Ups!

 

[Gavon West]

Buying up everything is monopoly like which is "cheating".

Gamers also have issues because they have been stagnant and haven't made the best use of the purchases, with some being arguably worse since being acquired.

Some of you guys dont understand what monopoly means...

And which studios are ran worse since being acquired? Far as I've heard, every studio thats been acquired is happy with their purchase.

 

[Gavon West]

The bit that got my back up about that FTC trail was Spencer claiming that Xbox is operated as its own division with profit and loss heavily scrutinised.

But then they’ve used their Windows/Azure/Enterprise money to distort the gaming industry - not Xboxes.

You can’t have it both ways. Just be honest.

I’m well aware that doesn’t matter legally etc, but it’s such a shame that the worst company is the one to consolidate.

Apparently they aernt the worst company. Not one company thats been acquired has complained. Like, at all. I still find it funny how not long ago, everyone thought the war chest was fiction. Like, no cap.

At the end of the day, Xbox saw fit that its time to compete. Thats what their doing. I honestly cant see the problem with it, personally.

 

[Thirty7ven]

He makes such a simple and true observation that they had to court support yet so many people write like they didn’t read.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Some of you guys dont understand what monopoly means...

And which studios are ran worse since being acquired? Far as I've heard, every studio thats been acquired is happy with their purchase.

I don't think you do.


All of them.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Honestly, if you are Microsoft, with the resources they had/have... it really is that simple.

MS came in in 2001, and they had Bungie... they even got GTA4 exclusive content at some point, and had Epic making games for them and being one of their biggest third-party partners.

Then look at every studio Sony has acquired since, every partnership made, or the fact that MS had COD marketing rights before Sony and let go of that license because they felt Halo was better.

MS isnt where they are now because they couldn't have competed, or even beat Sony at every game Sony tried to pull. MS are where they are now because they made bad decisions after bad decisions. Over and over again.

Ding, ding ding!!!

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Peanuts compared to what they're spending now.

 

[Azelover]

I fucking love Peter Moore. He is such a bad ass.

He did such a good job in the companies he had a position in. Sega, Microsoft, EA.. I still remember the conference call the morning Sega went third party. His emotion and overall strength was quite amazing.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

I don't understand the logic here. Do people just want Microsoft to roll over and let Xbox die?

Instead they just pulled off (or about to pull off) the biggest acquisition in gaming history and are launching one of the biggest exclusives of all time next week. Starfield is absolutely going to be a Series X seller.

Threads like this just reinforce how insecure the PS fanbase is getting.

Some people desperately want to return to the days of Sony telling them to get a second job to afford the PS6.

 

[Poop!]

As a worker in the game industry in 1994.... Sony Japan put their US headquarters in Foster City, CA two freeway exits from both SEGA and EA to launch the original PSX. They spent millions to poach the talent of both SEGA and EA because Sony only had the name of a giant consumer electronics company and billions of dollars to spend and nothing else. The vast majority of the original PlayStation launch team were SEGA employees.

They literally could have put Sony HQ in any other location...

 

[majorgamer10]

Millions in 2023 >_>

 

[L*][*N*K]

Sony is a very difficult business to go against…

Remember when bill said this?

Was he wrong? I know people who prepurchased Knack II ffs

 

[SportsFan581]

Moore was probably the best showman of them all when it came to E3 and things like that. Very interesting (long) video there. I think he really did an amazing job with what he had to work with. He was the perfect salesman for the moment at Xbox. I had always figured he was a lifetime marketing guy, had no idea he was a teacher. That's quite a career switch.

Spencer has done a brilliant job of getting MS to really buy-in substantially into gaming and done plenty of great things for the brand as well, but he isn't the showman that Moore was.

 

[linkent]

Was he wrong? I know people who prepurchased Knack II ffs

Whats wrong with purchasing GOTY?

 

[L*][*N*K]

Whats wrong with purchasing GOTY?

Exactly

 

[In Cold Blood]

If a company comes into al already mature market, with a dominant player, they will have to spend money to compete.
Why do people think that Amazon and Apple have yet to jump in to compete with Sony and Microsoft? That's because the sheer amount of money and time it would cost them is difficult to get over the line.
Lucky for Xbox, Microsoft has more money than anyone else to buy gaming interests.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I don't understand the logic here. Do people just want Microsoft to roll over and let Xbox die?

Instead they just pulled off (or about to pull off) the biggest acquisition in gaming history and are launching one of the biggest exclusives of all time next week. Starfield is absolutely going to be a Series X seller.

Threads like this just reinforce how insecure the PS fanbase is getting.

No, but I want Microsoft to stop fucking up and actually competing with solid first party support. Starfield will likely be their first great game in years. That is unacceptable. Even if Starfield is successful, I have little faith that MS will be able to have maintain regular releases. They just have too much history of fucking up and poor leadership. I am sorry, but after 10 years I have little faith that Phil Spencer and Matt Booty (seriously how does this fucktard still have a job?) can turn this around.

I am also not a fan of Gamepass and don't think it is good long term nor that it will bring in the subscriber numbers to sustain these massive budget AAA game releases.

For the record, I will be playing Starfield Day 1 on PC with Gamepass. I would have preferred to play it on my XSX in my living room, but 30 fps is no longer playable.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Moore was probably the best showman of them all when it came to E3 and things like that. Very interesting (long) video there. I think he really did an amazing job with what he had to work with. He was the perfect salesman for the moment at Xbox. I had always figured he was a lifetime marketing guy, had no idea he was a teacher. That's quite a career switch.

Spencer has done a brilliant job of getting MS to really buy-in substantially into gaming and done plenty of great things for the brand as well, but he isn't the showman that Moore was.

Yet, he has been an absolute failure when it comes to 1st party exclusives.

 

[Alan Wake]

24 million vs 155 million.

That first generation was about getting a foothold in the market, at any cost basically. Which they did.

Love these interviews with Moore btw. Such a great guy.

 

[Three]

No, all those studios were independent from sony and were bought later because of the quality of their games. And of course they had exclusive games, because sony had the absolute dominance of the market during PSX and PS2, which was when these studios emerged. And at that time is when sony was consolidated a large part of the industry and its studios.

This is a pretty dumb take. Naughty Dog was pretty much a nobody until Sony funded Crash Bandicoot for the original PlayStation. Housemarque, another dev you mentioned wasn't even acquired until recently so it has absolutely zero to do with dominance of the market during PSX and PS2. It's just studios they relied on for their output. Studios that they mostly funded and helped build. Studio's that didn't have multiplaform IPs. They didn't go out and buy Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft, Bioware or whatever other mainly multiplaform studios there were back then. You can choose to ignore this and pretend it is the same but it isn't.

 

[Heisenberg007]

I don't understand the logic here. Do people just want Microsoft to roll over and let Xbox die?

Instead they just pulled off (or about to pull off) the biggest acquisition in gaming history and are launching one of the biggest exclusives of all time next week. Starfield is absolutely going to be a Series X seller.

Threads like this just reinforce how insecure the PS fanbase is getting.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

The voices in your head are not "their own words". Competing in the living room does not mean "they failed because they did not validate my projections of the only metric of success being deleting your competition".

Are they competing in the living room outside the US and UK though?

I haven't even ever seen an Xbox One irl and that came out in 2013?

 

[Hudo]

I sincerely hope that people don't believe that Sony weren't and aren't investing the huge sums of money to get to and retain their current position. Again, this is something every company that competes in a market does. Back when Sony entered the market, they had some shady deals in place (especially against Sega) and some heavy investments going on as well. And that is well documented nowadays. Nintendo as well.

Artficial drama.

 

[cartman414]

As usual MS strategy since it entered the videogame market has being throwing money to the problem. They are still on that strategy today. Nothing changed and this is why many of their games (but not all, they are doing some great stuff) are soulless.

What they don't understand is the human aspect of the problem. The IPs, the games are made by humans and teams first. If you neglect those, either they'll leave or they'll do mediocre stuff.

By the way what MS is doing could be compared to communist strategies. In the end they never work well because they are treating humans like slaves.

Sounds pretty late stage capitalist to me.

 

[cartman414]

It's hard to combat loyalism to corporations(lmao), just look at Epic's attempts.

Epic hasn't really put in the work to be a compelling alternative to Steam or GOG. The free games are a band-aid.

As a worker in the game industry in 1994.... Sony Japan put their US headquarters in Foster City, CA two freeway exits from both SEGA and EA to launch the original PSX. They spent millions to poach the talent of both SEGA and EA because Sony only had the name of a giant consumer electronics company and billions of dollars to spend and nothing else. The vast majority of the original PlayStation launch team were SEGA employees.

They literally could have put Sony HQ in any other location...

Sony had bought CBS Records and Columbia Pictures in the late '80s, and formed Sony Imagesoft in '89. They'd already expanded big time.

 

[StealthGoblin]

Apparently they aernt the worst company. Not one company thats been acquired has complained. Like, at all. I still find it funny how not long ago, everyone thought the war chest was fiction. Like, no cap.

At the end of the day, Xbox saw fit that its time to compete. Thats what their doing. I honestly cant see the problem with it, personally.

They’ve clearly demonstrated over the course of two decades that they struggle to manage studios, lack creativity, and aren’t consistent with marketing, investment etc.

In my opinion they are by far the worst of the three by a country mile. Here they are being Microsoft again - if you can’t compete using your own creativity, buy your way to the top.

Happy for those developers that have security and funding of course, but literally the worst of the three I’d want consolidating at all (and I don’t want ANY consolidation of publishers).

 

[YeulEmeralda]

I don't understand the logic here. Do people just want Microsoft to roll over and let Xbox die?

Instead they just pulled off (or about to pull off) the biggest acquisition in gaming history and are launching one of the biggest exclusives of all time next week. Starfield is absolutely going to be a Series X seller.

Threads like this just reinforce how insecure the PS fanbase is getting.

Buying your way to success if you don't have the talent. It's the American way.

 

[NeverYouMind]

At least they have something to show for it across several platforms unlike Epic Games' PC digital marketplace investment. I am willing to bet Sony spent a pretty penny to enter the market with Sega and Nintendo during its induction as well. Don Mattrick and Microsoft Gaming Division's operating philosophy at the time of Xbox One really stunted growth of the brand and caused many to jump ship.

 

[Akuji]

Exactly. You can’t achieve this level without producing extraordinary hardware that people love in the first place. This situation is not a given.

They can even afford to let things loose a bit and still ride the wave.. the PS5 is not really their best work all things considered.

Better then ps4 and ps3 imo. Ps2 was a diffrent time. Ps1 was super impressive.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

I won't even say they failed to compete. More like they failed at competing. Because they did compete, and for a short while, were even winning or had Sony on the ropes. And that's what is crazy about this whole thing. We have Xbox to thank for the focused, streamlined, stick-to-what-works version of PlayStation we have today. It took the 360 handing them their ass for them to make a course correct and go on a path to never make the mistakes they made that go them into the mess that was the PS3.

For whatever reason though, no matter how many times MS loses, unlike Sony, they just never seem to be able to learn from their mistakes. Even crazier, they seem hell-bent on making new and improved mistakes.

The two go hand in hand. Xbox would not have given PlayStation that fight had Sony not gift wrapped things for them.

What Microsoft hasn’t proven is when Sony ain’t fuckin’ around, Xbox can stand toe-to-toe. This is on top of the fact that the PS3 still sold more (or equal) to the best Xbox.

 

[Woopah]

What sells well in Japan? Just look at what is selling in Japan. Nintendo software.

I think that was their point, that Japanese developers missed opportunities in Japan by being too Sony focused.

That was an issue for the first couple of years of Switch, but much less so now.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

The two go hand in hand. Xbox would not have given PlayStation that fight had Sony not gift wrapped things for them.

What Microsoft hasn’t proven is when Sony ain’t fuckin’ around, Xbox can stand toe-to-toe. This is on top of the fact that the PS3 still sold more (or equal) to the best Xbox.

Microsoft shifting from what was working to the Kinect lost them a win that generation.

 

[DryvBy]

It's true. It's like Apple fans. It takes years to nurture that kind of fandom. Props to them. Imagine trying to sell an android phone to an apple fan.

The difference is Sony isn't behind the times with features they introduce when the competition rolls them out years before. Apple fans would buy a new iPhone if you told them you can now text message, and they'd argue that it's revolutionary even though we've all had it for decades.

 

[Adam_802]

And it paid off and worked. Both still do this lol.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

Microsoft shifting from what was working to the Kinect lost them a win that generation.

Had Sony launched the PS3 at $399, Kinect or not, the 360 would have lost.

What ended up turning the tides was a number of things — Sony stepped their game up by '09, Kinect later on, and PlayStation's stronger presence outside of UK/US.

 

[Dolomite]

Is this news? As an Xbox gamer this is common knowledge. Sony has the mind share and loudest fans Xbox has the money

 

[John Wick]

Peter Moore chatting his usual rubbish. We know the Sega demise was hard for you.
He seems to forget that when Sony appeared on the scene with PlayStation they had to get developers to develop for the PSX. They didn't magically transition overnight to PS. They were in Sega and Nintendo pockets. Sony offered a friendly developer environment and a far better 3rd party contract. This is where MS failed.

 

[DragonNCM]

yes....3 trillion company who cares about 150 million

 

[DaleinCalgary]

I fucking love Peter Moore. He is such a bad ass.

He did such a good job in the companies he had a position in. Sega, Microsoft, EA.. I still remember the conference call the morning Sega went third party. His emotion and overall strength was quite amazing.

He did do an excellent job. Everyone since has been piss poor and made such huge mistakes I often wonder how MS fucked it up so bad as far as studios and developing games. They had it perfect with the 360 then threw it all away with corporate heads making choices that prove they have no idea what gaming is about.

 

[SportsFan581]

Microsoft shifting from what was working to the Kinect lost them a win that generation.

They did win the generation in the US/UK which were the primary markets they were putting effort into (along with Japan where they did quite poorly). Sony just built up unit sales in many of the smaller markets + Japan and the totals gave them an overall win, they never touched the 360 in the US or the UK. MS never tried to be as global with 360 as Sony was with the PS3. It makes it hard to compare the two systems in a lot of ways because the software market was also more segregated by region at the time.