I actually don't think the Switch Lite has done that well for Nintendo in the grand scheme of things, but you're right of course. Like I said in the article, you're more likely to have multiple Switches per household than any PlayStation (though there will be exceptions, of course!)
Hard to know world wide but Japan does report model sales. Last week's charts listed:
Switch OLED Model – 28,787 (3,816,361)
Switch – 12,564 (19,150,623)
Switch Lite – 9,757 (5,185,166)
This means, at least in Japan, the lite accounts for 18% of total unit sales. That boost, in Japan alone might make the difference between the Switch outpacing the PS2 or not.
On the multiple console per household thing, though... I had 4 PS4 consoles in my house, gave away one when I got a PS5.
I Don’t play multiplier games outside classic MMOs (mostly FFXIV.) I know they claim this investment on service games won’t hurt their single player offerings, but this year we only have Spider-Man 2 in the calendar. They can try to pad the year(s?) with exclusivity deals like FF16, but that is not a replacement for actual first party games.
@theGoodChap I read that before, it’s far from a comprehensive take on the topic. Tangentially, I find the burning/destroying/etc things they love and already own is an absurd practice, regardless how problematic a creator involved on it might be. Self-depriving of things you already own does nobody any service.
Anyways, there is plenty more out there if you care to actually find out, but I can tell you the article you list (intentionally or accidentally) didn’t bother showing most of Rowling’s anti-trans statements.
I am glad the game is good-it looks like Avalanche did a good job. I will pick it up during a sale and have some Hogwarts fun. I do not like the way JK Rowling has been using her vast and in no way incumbered by this review platform, so I will make a donation to a group that advocates for human rights when I do.
As I stated on Pure Xbox: I for one am very glad Pure Xbox and Push Square have opted not to ignore the issues at hand. If Rowling gets to use her platform to spread hate, it’s fair to use this game reviews to spread awareness.
As for the game, I’m actually glad it turned out good. I’ll likely give it a shot at some point in the future, even if there was nothing making me feel dirty about spending money on it, I refuse to pay $70 for games I’m not 100% hyped about. But I’ll likely play it, eventually.
@Intr1n5ic fair enough, my reply was very much in the topic of US sales since that’s the theme of the article. Even then I feel not even discounts will change the perception for Xbox in the UK or Japan. For the console to gain additional momentum in those markets, Xbox needs strong highly desirable exclusives. The lineup so coming this year might help in the UK but doubt it will do anything in Japan.
Mind you, I don’t expect Xbox to even get close to overtaking PS in any market other than potentially the US, provided they deliver games in the next few years and can stock up in the US.
Sounds good, but 2024, potentially 2025 sounds very very far away. Anxious to hear what else we going to get from Sony this year, but don’t expect much. It’s very rare for them to announce a big Triple A title and release it the same year. But maybe we can get something akin to Sackboy Big Adventure 2?
@jcvandan Bethesda will start delivering for Xbox this year. They already delivered Tango’s HiFi Rush, Arkane‘s Red Fall is coming next, and then there will be Starfield, all this year. The years of waiting for the acquisition of ZeniMax to delivering are over, now we are talking about months.
That alone might not be enough to push the needle competition wise, other studios need to start delivering, but as far as the topic of Zenimax goes, we no longer talking about years.
For what it’s worth, I was a PS4 first player, I own 166 physical PS4 games, and this Gen I have gone Xbox first for all things. I did get a PS5 but I only use it for exclusives, and those I only buy when they go on deep sales.
@GamingFan4Lyf both, the series s and x are sold at a loss, but I think we can safely assume the S is sold at a lower loss.
Your point of ads and discounts, though, is a bit mute. For one I disagree on ads, almost every Xbox series ad i seen advertises both. As for discounts, the series X does not need discounts to sell, it needs stock.
In the US, it’s all about supply, both consoles still sell ridiculously fast, even the Series S sells relatively well, although it might take a few days to sell out of stock after resupply.
Hell, the statement quoted in the article itself states it’s all about supply in the US.
What is interesting, if anything, is that last summer Series X was way more available than PS5s, but that has shifted. MS seems to be having a hard time supplying Series X, this last Christmas it was easier to bump into a PS5 than a Series X, and Microsoft heavily relied on Series S to sell units.
Question is: why? Is it a poor cost saving decision on Microsoft’s part? Did Sony use the price increase on PS5 to flip the tables on MS outbidding for supply? Or did MS simply predict they would not be able to move the Series X in higher numbers without first party Triple A games, so held back on manufacturing?
@carlos82 what? I’m not sure what you mean by “into their stride”, but Uncharted 2 is still the highlight of the series, and TLOU 1 on the PS3 was the moment the Sony brand became basically synonymous with Cinematic Experiences.
Now if Sony would stop remastering PS4 games that we already can play and would work on remastering the top tier PS3 games…
@ShogunRok Right now the only way I can see the "does more" justification work is because they wanted to keep the same size but needed the room for the back paddle hooks, so the battery had to be smaller, that's not exactly the story implied by the wording they used. I think everyone assumed it would simply need to consume more power (something I think made no sense to anyone then.)
Wait what? Wasn't the official word that it's battery life was shorter due to all the additional things it does? Now it turns out its because they put a smaller battery in the thing??? 🤦
Despite what I have read, I will likely buy it once its on a decent physical sale. The cringy sit-com humor that some reviewers have criticized is actually right down my alley, if I'm in the right mood. But given the performance issues, I'll likely wait until there are a ton of patches and for a Black Friday sale.
As for how it will sell... I think it will be a disaster and will push Sqaure-Enix in some sort of emergency mode. I want to see who they blame now, they can no longer claim it's the fault of poor performance by western studios they will then sell off, or of a third party (Platinum) doing a poor job. This is all in-house, by the FF15 team.
I would say they can’t offer the same insane value because they don’t have the money to run a loss maker
This subscribes to the idea that because a game is day one in Game Pass, it just does not sell a single unit, something that is very easy to prove to be wrong. You can simply go to XBox store list of top paid games and see that Minecraft, Among Us, High on Life, Skyrim, Forza, and Ark are all on the first page, and that is way past their prime.
Its the conundrum of adding games day one: A) You face the risk of "no one" buying the game, but everyone subscribing to the service and giving you $10 to $15 a month for a whole year.... B) Or just a handful of people subscribe and you still sell a ridiculous number of copies of games... C) Or something in between.
It was easy for Xbox to do this because at the time they started, they were basically rock bottom, so they had less to lose if things went south.
PlayStation is at its peak, and they are terrified of disrupting things in a way that might give them even a single bad quarter.
Yeah yeah, sure Windows is not a monopoly on PC.
Try running all of your productivity software on Linux or Mac, let's see how it goes.
Easier than you would think. There are ways to run windows software inside Linux, and there are also plenty of native alternatives, it all depends what you are doing and what tool you want to use, but there are likely ways to do it. I still personally choose to run Windows myself, but this is not 1998 anymore, Linux is a viable alternative.
But that's nitpicking, its rare for the common person to go buy a laptop with Linux pre-installed. But you know what you can buy easily? A laptop with Chrome OS or OS X, or a Steam Deck running Steam OS.
Edit: According to Stat Counter, these are the current OS market shares:
44.6% Android
28.41% Windows
17.29% iOS
5.53% OS X
1.88% Unknown
1.11% Linux
Normalized to remove mobile OS:
76.93% Windows
14.97% OS X
5.09% Unknown
3.01% Linux
Edit 2
At the end of the day, Windows did not become the dominant OS via acquisitions. The go-to apps that everyone needs either were already "first-party" (Microsoft Office) or multi-platform (Photoshop, etc.)
Windows became dominant because they were the only OS producer to have a relatively open license for its OS. While Apple was trying to sell every Mac OS device themselves (and still do) Windows gave other manufacturers the chance to sell computers and compete with IBM without having to create their own OS. THAT is how Windows became dominant, by partnering with anyone that wanted to make compatible hardware. Hell, users could just buy parts off the shelf and put together their own frankenstein custom PC and then buy a copy of windows to throw in there.
There's all this talk about the "nascent subscription market"
This is possibly open for interpretation, but for me, that argument gets to my nerves. A business model does not create a whole new "market". A business model is simply the way you choose to participate within a market. Selling, vs renting, you still in the game distribution and game platform markets.
If we go in the direction of "subscription services" being a market, how you start narrowing it down? Because PSN basic is larger than Game Pass. Sure, it only gives you random games every month, but its still a subscription service that gives you games. Things don't have to be clones of each other, else you are being extremely stubborn about what separates markets from each other in an attempt to gain some sort of favor (like pretending that Nintendo is not part of the gaming market 🙄)
Sony fighting this benefits no one and only damages both parties and the industry. They should have just accepted Microsoft’s ten year deal or however long it was.
To be fair, they don't have to accept the deal. Microsoft plans to honor it regardless if anyone sings it, so why make things easier on Microsoft?
Good luck with that bit, this deal harms sony in a major way with the amount of titles they will lose such as diablo, crash, spyro, potentially in the future call of duty games and overwatch 3.
Even Sony themselves have made it clear they only care about CoD. I would myself argue that was a mistake, and they should had always included everything else in their complaints, but they only ever complained about the one game, giving MS the very easy path to just say that that one IP would remain on all competitor's platforms the same exact way they have kept Mine Craft IP on all competing platforms.
such as making zombies an xbox exclusive mode or having all dlc xbox exclusive etc
They already promised parity, but hey, if XBox survived in the past when Zombies mode was exclusive for a year on PlayStation, I don't think that reasoning would hold up in court.
At the end of the day, yes, it makes sense for Sony to be against the acquisition, but that making sense has nothing to do with what is legal.
The focus of this acquisition shouldn't be on Sony as the victim, but rather putting a stop to huge corporations like MS gobbling up big publishers like Activision Blizzard.
This is unlikely to ever happen. You need to first understand what you are asking for. There wont be a law like this made for any specific industry, it would be a nation-wide law that applies to all corporations.
The way modern capitalist economies work, you create a company, likely take it into public trading, and make it grow as much as possible before you find further significant growth is no longer likely, at that point you try to find a buyer that finds value on growing their own market coverage.
The only way this can occur, past certain size, is by allowing even larger corporations the ability to buy you out.
Right now, Activision shareholders feel they reached the point where they want to sell, before they find themselves in a position similar to Ubisoft's (where potential buyers laugh at your face when you approach them.) The only ones with pockets large enough to acquire them are mega-corporations like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Tencent and Amazon... unless Saudi Aramco decides to diversify away from petroleum and natural gas into gaming...
So, no, it's unlikely you will ever stop large companies from being acquirable by even larger ones, and even less likely to see a law that specifically targets Microsoft simply because they happen to already have a presence in gaming.
Based on US laws, the only way to stop this is if they find actual competition issues, and that is rarely doable if, within the relevant market, we are not talking about the biggest or the second biggest companies (MS is conveniently third place here, its going to be hard to legally stop this acquisition in the US.)
Under a subpoena, they don’t get to pick the details they reveal, they have to give all information requested. The discovery phase of this is going to be so tasty!
@NEStalgia oh I forgot about the two year deal. How many of these failures has Sony forked money for this generation? Babylon Fall (turned out to be a lifetime-exclusive I guess) and Forspoken, they also forked money for Spider-Man exclusive in Avengers. Not a Square game but they also forked money for Godfall.
I feel Sony went way too aggressive on money-hatting these experiments.
As far as DQ goes, I doubt they care much for it either. It’s not big outside of Japan, and Sony has basically abandoned “Japan niche” games.
@Ooccoo_Jr Opinion around the web is they intentionally gave review codes early only to sites they saw as the most likely to give them the most favorable coverage. If even so the best they got is a 6, it’s going to be ugly once everyone else gets their word, and I doubt any of these sites is going to be knocking points simply because of getting review codes late.
I am playing both of them on Game Pass as I did with P5R, and will buy them on Switch if there ever is a physical release (I love those tiny red boxes stacked up on my shelves.)
If the price differential is the same, I would much rather have an extra controller bundled in than a game. Dual Sense controller battery life sucks, and for me a digital code to a PS game is worth less than the paper it's printed on since I will regardless, sooner or later, buy the physical copy of that game (perhaps already did.)
@Uncharted2007 Destiny wont be exclusive, but they will be making more games, and I dont expect any of them to be showing up on XBox or Nintendo platforms.
They are also being tasked with helping every other Sony service game be good. What is SE going to bring to Sony? NFTs? the FF IP? Lessons on how to make one good service game and thousand bad ones?
I do personally agree that Bungie was overvalued, but still can see why Sony would rather buy them.
BTW my earlier 6-7 billion price tag on Square-Enix is based on current market cap of 5.5 billion, any acquisition is likely going to be way higher than the market cap if it expects investors to depart with their stock. I think I'm still lowballing it.
Also, I do think it makes sense for some to buy SE, just not Sony, not the way they do business. If they did buy SE, they will slaughter it to pieces and only keep DQ and FF alive. That would be a very sad outcome.
I will simply point you in the direction of the Bungie acquisition. A severe waste of money if I've ever seen one.
I too will point you to Bungie: a studio with a single product, and a highly successful and profitable one at that. Bungie did not have a ton of dead weight, it was as lean an operation as it could be, and thats how Sony likes their operation to run.
Edit:
For the record, I dont care if Sony buys SE. In fact, I always prefer acquisitions over paying to lock games away from other platforms. If you want the game for yourself, take full responsibility for it then, IMO. I just doubt Sony is going to buy SE given how they are obviously in shaky financial grounds.
Still doesn’t really make any sense in my eyes. Sony already has a significant advantage with Square Enix in that they already have their favor & get a lot of their AAA games exclusively anyway.
This. A thousand times this. A lot of people forget the huge burden you take onto when you entirely acquire a studio/publisher. You are not just getting the goodies, but also all the responsibilities, bills, and risks.
At least someone like Bandai-Namco is much more set up to take some risks in publishing, thanks to a highly diversified portfolio. They can take the chance to take some risks. But Sony? They run a lean ship, and they hate being in a position to produce anything but high profit margin, high budget, games.
I generally don't pay much attention to many Square projects but with the FF games seemingly PS console exclusive, I could see it happening.
This is precisely what makes me think it will not happen. Why spend between 6-7 billion acquiring the entirety of Square-Enix when they can just keep paying a few million for Final Fantasy exclusivity deals and not have to carry the burden of risk should their games flop? Square-Enix is obviously struggling to stay afloat as it is, and Sony appreciates profits above anything else.
Only situation I could see Sony trying to buy Square-Enix is if they ever feel it's likely that either Microsoft or Nintendo are trying to acquire them, and at that point, I doubt Sony would be able to out-bid Microsoft.
Chances are if SE is sold, it wont be to the likes of Sony, but to the likes of Bandai-Namco.
I understand the wish to republish reviews of games coming to PS Plus, but this game has changed so much since launch, that it’s as useless a review as republishing a review of Destiny 1.0 for anyone deciding to play today.
I don’t play the game myself, but some RL friends do, from their stories and recent coverage of updates, this game is not the game that you guys reviewed back in the day.
Only thing I’m actually think Sony to deliver in 2023 is Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us multiplayer thing, and likely a the rumored Horizon 1 “remake”. Sony has been really padding their first party offerings with remakes and remasters, and I don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.
Really don’t expect Wolverine next year.
Of these just care for SM2, might be the only Sony first party title I don’t wait for a sale to get, might, I do have a huge backlog.
I’ll likely get FF16, since Sony has decided to pay to keep it away from other consoles for likely as long as they did with FF7 remake (basically forever.)
I have zero interest on anything VR, even at a philosophical level.
@Th3solution yes its like remote play but the "console" that's hosting the game is on Microsoft servers, similar to PlayStation Premium streaming (formerly PlayStation Now)
The xcloud streming tends to be better than remote play because there is additional hardware in the server to make the encoding faster than your console can locally.
Anyways, given that Kojima originally wanted this to be a Stadia game, it comes to reason what he wants is specifically the aspect where the game can be streamed to any screen and not be bound to a specific piece of plastic.
What kind of game design reason he has for that is anyone's guess. Kojima think in mysterious ways.
@Th3solution XCloud allows for games to be played on mobile phones via streaming, and I hear it’s not uncommon for developers to leverage the system for demos during development.
Comments 1,002
Re: PS2's Best-Selling Console Crown in Jeopardy As Nintendo Switch Passes PS4
@get2sammyb
Hard to know world wide but Japan does report model sales. Last week's charts listed:
Switch OLED Model – 28,787 (3,816,361)
Switch – 12,564 (19,150,623)
Switch Lite – 9,757 (5,185,166)
This means, at least in Japan, the lite accounts for 18% of total unit sales. That boost, in Japan alone might make the difference between the Switch outpacing the PS2 or not.
On the multiple console per household thing, though... I had 4 PS4 consoles in my house, gave away one when I got a PS5.
Re: PS2's Best-Selling Console Crown in Jeopardy As Nintendo Switch Passes PS4
Well, Nintendo is expecting to sell 30 million units this year no? That will put them ridiculously close.
Re: Talking Point: Should Sony Be Worried by Live Service Implosion?
I Don’t play multiplier games outside classic MMOs (mostly FFXIV.) I know they claim this investment on service games won’t hurt their single player offerings, but this year we only have Spider-Man 2 in the calendar. They can try to pad the year(s?) with exclusivity deals like FF16, but that is not a replacement for actual first party games.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) - A Harry Potter Dream Come True
@theGoodChap I read that before, it’s far from a comprehensive take on the topic. Tangentially, I find the burning/destroying/etc things they love and already own is an absurd practice, regardless how problematic a creator involved on it might be. Self-depriving of things you already own does nobody any service.
Anyways, there is plenty more out there if you care to actually find out, but I can tell you the article you list (intentionally or accidentally) didn’t bother showing most of Rowling’s anti-trans statements.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) - A Harry Potter Dream Come True
@theGoodChap if you really want to know and understand, there are plenty of outlets covering it. I’m not going to highlight that here. Google it up.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) - A Harry Potter Dream Come True
@Westernwolf4
I wish I could heart your comment multiple times.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy (PS5) - A Harry Potter Dream Come True
As I stated on Pure Xbox: I for one am very glad Pure Xbox and Push Square have opted not to ignore the issues at hand. If Rowling gets to use her platform to spread hate, it’s fair to use this game reviews to spread awareness.
As for the game, I’m actually glad it turned out good. I’ll likely give it a shot at some point in the future, even if there was nothing making me feel dirty about spending money on it, I refuse to pay $70 for games I’m not 100% hyped about. But I’ll likely play it, eventually.
Re: PS5's Market Share Is Expanding Significantly in Xbox's Backyard
@Intr1n5ic fair enough, my reply was very much in the topic of US sales since that’s the theme of the article. Even then I feel not even discounts will change the perception for Xbox in the UK or Japan. For the console to gain additional momentum in those markets, Xbox needs strong highly desirable exclusives. The lineup so coming this year might help in the UK but doubt it will do anything in Japan.
Mind you, I don’t expect Xbox to even get close to overtaking PS in any market other than potentially the US, provided they deliver games in the next few years and can stock up in the US.
Re: Rumour: Marvel's Wolverine on PS5 Targeting Mature Rating in Fall 2024
Sounds good, but 2024, potentially 2025 sounds very very far away. Anxious to hear what else we going to get from Sony this year, but don’t expect much. It’s very rare for them to announce a big Triple A title and release it the same year. But maybe we can get something akin to Sackboy Big Adventure 2?
Re: PS5's Market Share Is Expanding Significantly in Xbox's Backyard
@jcvandan Bethesda will start delivering for Xbox this year. They already delivered Tango’s HiFi Rush, Arkane‘s Red Fall is coming next, and then there will be Starfield, all this year. The years of waiting for the acquisition of ZeniMax to delivering are over, now we are talking about months.
That alone might not be enough to push the needle competition wise, other studios need to start delivering, but as far as the topic of Zenimax goes, we no longer talking about years.
For what it’s worth, I was a PS4 first player, I own 166 physical PS4 games, and this Gen I have gone Xbox first for all things. I did get a PS5 but I only use it for exclusives, and those I only buy when they go on deep sales.
Re: PS5's Market Share Is Expanding Significantly in Xbox's Backyard
@GamingFan4Lyf both, the series s and x are sold at a loss, but I think we can safely assume the S is sold at a lower loss.
Your point of ads and discounts, though, is a bit mute. For one I disagree on ads, almost every Xbox series ad i seen advertises both. As for discounts, the series X does not need discounts to sell, it needs stock.
Re: PS5's Market Share Is Expanding Significantly in Xbox's Backyard
In the US, it’s all about supply, both consoles still sell ridiculously fast, even the Series S sells relatively well, although it might take a few days to sell out of stock after resupply.
Hell, the statement quoted in the article itself states it’s all about supply in the US.
What is interesting, if anything, is that last summer Series X was way more available than PS5s, but that has shifted. MS seems to be having a hard time supplying Series X, this last Christmas it was easier to bump into a PS5 than a Series X, and Microsoft heavily relied on Series S to sell units.
Question is: why? Is it a poor cost saving decision on Microsoft’s part? Did Sony use the price increase on PS5 to flip the tables on MS outbidding for supply? Or did MS simply predict they would not be able to move the Series X in higher numbers without first party Triple A games, so held back on manufacturing?
Re: Final Fantasy 14 World First Raiders Stripped of Achievement, Naoki Yoshida 'Extremely Disappointed'
Strip them of their achievements??? I say they should be entirely banned!
Re: PS5 Powers PlayStation to Record Breaking Financial Results
@carlos82 what? I’m not sure what you mean by “into their stride”, but Uncharted 2 is still the highlight of the series, and TLOU 1 on the PS3 was the moment the Sony brand became basically synonymous with Cinematic Experiences.
Now if Sony would stop remastering PS4 games that we already can play and would work on remastering the top tier PS3 games…
Re: Rhapsody: Marl Kingdom Chronicles Brings Light-Hearted JRPG Adventure to PS5 in 2023
Looking forward to it showing up on Amazon so I can preorder it for Switch.
Re: Poll: Did You Buy the Dead Space PS5 Remake?
@belmont I guess I would consider that if I was hyped for the game. Maybe for Mass Effect 4, but then again that’s one I might want to truly own.
Re: Poll: Did You Buy the Dead Space PS5 Remake?
@belmont I have EA Play via Game Pass Ultimate, so just the “one year later” stuff.
Re: Poll: Did You Buy the Dead Space PS5 Remake?
Never played the original so no nostalgia factor for me. If I decide to give it a try, I’ll wait for a year for it to hit EA Play.
Re: Disappointment as DualSense Edge PS5 Controller Sports Smaller Battery Lasting Six Hours
@ShogunRok They could have made the back a bit thicker, put a thicker battery there, even if it ended up having a bit of a hump.
Hell a hump might had helped guide your fingers on the back towards the paddles.
Re: Disappointment as DualSense Edge PS5 Controller Sports Smaller Battery Lasting Six Hours
@ShogunRok Right now the only way I can see the "does more" justification work is because they wanted to keep the same size but needed the room for the back paddle hooks, so the battery had to be smaller, that's not exactly the story implied by the wording they used. I think everyone assumed it would simply need to consume more power (something I think made no sense to anyone then.)
Re: Disappointment as DualSense Edge PS5 Controller Sports Smaller Battery Lasting Six Hours
Wait what? Wasn't the official word that it's battery life was shorter due to all the additional things it does? Now it turns out its because they put a smaller battery in the thing??? 🤦
Re: Poll: Did You Buy Forspoken?
Despite what I have read, I will likely buy it once its on a decent physical sale. The cringy sit-com humor that some reviewers have criticized is actually right down my alley, if I'm in the right mood. But given the performance issues, I'll likely wait until there are a ton of patches and for a Black Friday sale.
As for how it will sell... I think it will be a disaster and will push Sqaure-Enix in some sort of emergency mode. I want to see who they blame now, they can no longer claim it's the fault of poor performance by western studios they will then sell off, or of a third party (Platinum) doing a poor job. This is all in-house, by the FF15 team.
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
@thefourfoldroot1
This subscribes to the idea that because a game is day one in Game Pass, it just does not sell a single unit, something that is very easy to prove to be wrong. You can simply go to XBox store list of top paid games and see that Minecraft, Among Us, High on Life, Skyrim, Forza, and Ark are all on the first page, and that is way past their prime.
Its the conundrum of adding games day one:
A) You face the risk of "no one" buying the game, but everyone subscribing to the service and giving you $10 to $15 a month for a whole year....
B) Or just a handful of people subscribe and you still sell a ridiculous number of copies of games...
C) Or something in between.
It was easy for Xbox to do this because at the time they started, they were basically rock bottom, so they had less to lose if things went south.
PlayStation is at its peak, and they are terrified of disrupting things in a way that might give them even a single bad quarter.
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
@CielloArc
Easier than you would think. There are ways to run windows software inside Linux, and there are also plenty of native alternatives, it all depends what you are doing and what tool you want to use, but there are likely ways to do it. I still personally choose to run Windows myself, but this is not 1998 anymore, Linux is a viable alternative.
But that's nitpicking, its rare for the common person to go buy a laptop with Linux pre-installed. But you know what you can buy easily? A laptop with Chrome OS or OS X, or a Steam Deck running Steam OS.
Edit: According to Stat Counter, these are the current OS market shares:
44.6% Android
28.41% Windows
17.29% iOS
5.53% OS X
1.88% Unknown
1.11% Linux
Normalized to remove mobile OS:
76.93% Windows
14.97% OS X
5.09% Unknown
3.01% Linux
Edit 2
At the end of the day, Windows did not become the dominant OS via acquisitions. The go-to apps that everyone needs either were already "first-party" (Microsoft Office) or multi-platform (Photoshop, etc.)
Windows became dominant because they were the only OS producer to have a relatively open license for its OS. While Apple was trying to sell every Mac OS device themselves (and still do) Windows gave other manufacturers the chance to sell computers and compete with IBM without having to create their own OS. THAT is how Windows became dominant, by partnering with anyone that wanted to make compatible hardware. Hell, users could just buy parts off the shelf and put together their own frankenstein custom PC and then buy a copy of windows to throw in there.
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
@NEStalgia
This is possibly open for interpretation, but for me, that argument gets to my nerves. A business model does not create a whole new "market". A business model is simply the way you choose to participate within a market. Selling, vs renting, you still in the game distribution and game platform markets.
If we go in the direction of "subscription services" being a market, how you start narrowing it down? Because PSN basic is larger than Game Pass. Sure, it only gives you random games every month, but its still a subscription service that gives you games. Things don't have to be clones of each other, else you are being extremely stubborn about what separates markets from each other in an attempt to gain some sort of favor (like pretending that Nintendo is not part of the gaming market 🙄)
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
@Toypop
To be fair, they don't have to accept the deal. Microsoft plans to honor it regardless if anyone sings it, so why make things easier on Microsoft?
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
@UltimateOtaku91
Even Sony themselves have made it clear they only care about CoD. I would myself argue that was a mistake, and they should had always included everything else in their complaints, but they only ever complained about the one game, giving MS the very easy path to just say that that one IP would remain on all competitor's platforms the same exact way they have kept Mine Craft IP on all competing platforms.
They already promised parity, but hey, if XBox survived in the past when Zombies mode was exclusive for a year on PlayStation, I don't think that reasoning would hold up in court.
At the end of the day, yes, it makes sense for Sony to be against the acquisition, but that making sense has nothing to do with what is legal.
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
@Perturbator
This is unlikely to ever happen. You need to first understand what you are asking for. There wont be a law like this made for any specific industry, it would be a nation-wide law that applies to all corporations.
The way modern capitalist economies work, you create a company, likely take it into public trading, and make it grow as much as possible before you find further significant growth is no longer likely, at that point you try to find a buyer that finds value on growing their own market coverage.
The only way this can occur, past certain size, is by allowing even larger corporations the ability to buy you out.
Right now, Activision shareholders feel they reached the point where they want to sell, before they find themselves in a position similar to Ubisoft's (where potential buyers laugh at your face when you approach them.) The only ones with pockets large enough to acquire them are mega-corporations like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Tencent and Amazon... unless Saudi Aramco decides to diversify away from petroleum and natural gas into gaming...
So, no, it's unlikely you will ever stop large companies from being acquirable by even larger ones, and even less likely to see a law that specifically targets Microsoft simply because they happen to already have a presence in gaming.
Based on US laws, the only way to stop this is if they find actual competition issues, and that is rarely doable if, within the relevant market, we are not talking about the biggest or the second biggest companies (MS is conveniently third place here, its going to be hard to legally stop this acquisition in the US.)
Re: Microsoft Summons Sony to FTC's Activision Blizzard Court Hearing
Under a subpoena, they don’t get to pick the details they reveal, they have to give all information requested. The discovery phase of this is going to be so tasty!
Re: Site News: Where's Our Forspoken PS5 Review?
@NEStalgia oh I forgot about the two year deal. How many of these failures has Sony forked money for this generation? Babylon Fall (turned out to be a lifetime-exclusive I guess) and Forspoken, they also forked money for Spider-Man exclusive in Avengers. Not a Square game but they also forked money for Godfall.
I feel Sony went way too aggressive on money-hatting these experiments.
As far as DQ goes, I doubt they care much for it either. It’s not big outside of Japan, and Sony has basically abandoned “Japan niche” games.
Re: Site News: Where's Our Forspoken PS5 Review?
@Ooccoo_Jr Opinion around the web is they intentionally gave review codes early only to sites they saw as the most likely to give them the most favorable coverage. If even so the best they got is a 6, it’s going to be ugly once everyone else gets their word, and I doubt any of these sites is going to be knocking points simply because of getting review codes late.
Re: Site News: Where's Our Forspoken PS5 Review?
SE isn’t going to be around long if they keep pushing bomb after bomb like this.
Avengers, Babylon Fall, and now this…
Re: Poll: Did You Buy the Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden Remasters?
Honestly, despite me stating I'll play it on GamePass, I agree it should not be an option in the survey, since this is a PlayStation centric site.
Re: Poll: Did You Buy the Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden Remasters?
I am playing both of them on Game Pass as I did with P5R, and will buy them on Switch if there ever is a physical release (I love those tiny red boxes stacked up on my shelves.)
Re: Trails from Zero on PS4 Misses Out on New Improvements Coming to PC, Switch
For me, this is the kind of game I want to be able to play portable, so this is definitively either Switch or PC/SteamDeck for me regardless.
Re: Rumour: New PS5 Bundle Includes Two DualSense Controllers
If the price differential is the same, I would much rather have an extra controller bundled in than a game. Dual Sense controller battery life sucks, and for me a digital code to a PS game is worth less than the paper it's printed on since I will regardless, sooner or later, buy the physical copy of that game (perhaps already did.)
Re: Square Enix Commits to Business Consolidation in 2023 as Sony Buyout Rumours Start Again
@Uncharted2007 Destiny wont be exclusive, but they will be making more games, and I dont expect any of them to be showing up on XBox or Nintendo platforms.
They are also being tasked with helping every other Sony service game be good. What is SE going to bring to Sony? NFTs? the FF IP? Lessons on how to make one good service game and thousand bad ones?
I do personally agree that Bungie was overvalued, but still can see why Sony would rather buy them.
BTW my earlier 6-7 billion price tag on Square-Enix is based on current market cap of 5.5 billion, any acquisition is likely going to be way higher than the market cap if it expects investors to depart with their stock. I think I'm still lowballing it.
Also, I do think it makes sense for some to buy SE, just not Sony, not the way they do business. If they did buy SE, they will slaughter it to pieces and only keep DQ and FF alive. That would be a very sad outcome.
Re: Square Enix Commits to Business Consolidation in 2023 as Sony Buyout Rumours Start Again
@Uncharted2007
I too will point you to Bungie: a studio with a single product, and a highly successful and profitable one at that. Bungie did not have a ton of dead weight, it was as lean an operation as it could be, and thats how Sony likes their operation to run.
Edit:
For the record, I dont care if Sony buys SE. In fact, I always prefer acquisitions over paying to lock games away from other platforms. If you want the game for yourself, take full responsibility for it then, IMO. I just doubt Sony is going to buy SE given how they are obviously in shaky financial grounds.
Re: Square Enix Commits to Business Consolidation in 2023 as Sony Buyout Rumours Start Again
@theGoodChap
This. A thousand times this. A lot of people forget the huge burden you take onto when you entirely acquire a studio/publisher. You are not just getting the goodies, but also all the responsibilities, bills, and risks.
At least someone like Bandai-Namco is much more set up to take some risks in publishing, thanks to a highly diversified portfolio. They can take the chance to take some risks. But Sony? They run a lean ship, and they hate being in a position to produce anything but high profit margin, high budget, games.
Re: Square Enix Commits to Business Consolidation in 2023 as Sony Buyout Rumours Start Again
@Uncharted2007
This is precisely what makes me think it will not happen. Why spend between 6-7 billion acquiring the entirety of Square-Enix when they can just keep paying a few million for Final Fantasy exclusivity deals and not have to carry the burden of risk should their games flop? Square-Enix is obviously struggling to stay afloat as it is, and Sony appreciates profits above anything else.
Only situation I could see Sony trying to buy Square-Enix is if they ever feel it's likely that either Microsoft or Nintendo are trying to acquire them, and at that point, I doubt Sony would be able to out-bid Microsoft.
Chances are if SE is sold, it wont be to the likes of Sony, but to the likes of Bandai-Namco.
Re: Elden Ring Dominates God of War Ragnarok in GOTY Awards, Breaks The Last of Us 2's Record
Well deserved, it was indeed the best game of the year, by a long shot.
Re: Fallout 76 - A Shockingly Bad Attempt at Multiplayer Survival
@brazzios_84 not with live service games.
Re: Fallout 76 - A Shockingly Bad Attempt at Multiplayer Survival
I understand the wish to republish reviews of games coming to PS Plus, but this game has changed so much since launch, that it’s as useless a review as republishing a review of Destiny 1.0 for anyone deciding to play today.
I don’t play the game myself, but some RL friends do, from their stories and recent coverage of updates, this game is not the game that you guys reviewed back in the day.
Re: Opinion: Why 2023 Will Be PS5's Biggest and Best Year Yet
Only thing I’m actually think Sony to deliver in 2023 is Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us multiplayer thing, and likely a the rumored Horizon 1 “remake”. Sony has been really padding their first party offerings with remakes and remasters, and I don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.
Really don’t expect Wolverine next year.
Of these just care for SM2, might be the only Sony first party title I don’t wait for a sale to get, might, I do have a huge backlog.
I’ll likely get FF16, since Sony has decided to pay to keep it away from other consoles for likely as long as they did with FF7 remake (basically forever.)
I have zero interest on anything VR, even at a philosophical level.
Re: Final Fantasy 16 Will Showcase the Power of PS5, Says Developer
@Sam_ATLUS yea, yet the game will hit PC and undoubtedly not require NVME drives.
Show the power of the PS5 and of low budget gaming PCs!
Re: Final Fantasy 1-6 Pixel Remaster Confirmed for PS4 in Spring 2023, Separately and Bundled
That’s an ugly box…
Re: Phew, Moogles Look Like Classic Moogles in Final Fantasy 16
Nice. I was extremely disappointed they were just items in XV and just a kid with a costume in VII remake.
Was saddened the new age of realistic FF dimmed Moogles to be too “immersion breaking”.
Re: Hideo Kojima Teases a 'Brand New Game', More Information Next Year
@Th3solution yes its like remote play but the "console" that's hosting the game is on Microsoft servers, similar to PlayStation Premium streaming (formerly PlayStation Now)
The xcloud streming tends to be better than remote play because there is additional hardware in the server to make the encoding faster than your console can locally.
Anyways, given that Kojima originally wanted this to be a Stadia game, it comes to reason what he wants is specifically the aspect where the game can be streamed to any screen and not be bound to a specific piece of plastic.
What kind of game design reason he has for that is anyone's guess. Kojima think in mysterious ways.
Re: Hideo Kojima Teases a 'Brand New Game', More Information Next Year
@Th3solution XCloud allows for games to be played on mobile phones via streaming, and I hear it’s not uncommon for developers to leverage the system for demos during development.
Re: Rumour: The Last of Us 3 Is In Development at Naughty Dog
Will make a fantastic PS6 launch title.