Nintendo doesn’t “personally” do anything. They are a corporation.
And they do purchase both IP’s and studios. Just off the top of my head they bought Monolith from Bandai-Namco and Bayonetta has been exclusive ever since the second one.
Microsoft has been way worse than Sony. Zenimax alone was might have been bigger than Sony’s entire portfolio depending on how you measure. Activision-Blizzard was far, far bigger. And at least with Zenimax, it seems like most of their studios have gotten worse since acquisition, with a lot of them being shut down.
I don’t mean to overly defenf Sony, but just paying publishers for 1 year of exclusivity seems pretty mild in comparison. I’d prefer they didn’t buy studios like Bungie, but at the same time the acquisitions of Naughty Dog and Insomniac seem to have worked out pretty well.
ysjet@lemmy.world 2 days ago
As for Bayonettas since 2, Nintendo’s publishing it for PlatinumGames, who used to be a Nintendo second party. They started working with Sega in 2008 iirc because Nintendo literally pointed Sega their way (This is the same time period when Nintendo was giving Sega work to try to dig them out of their hole, e.g. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games). My understanding is that internally Nintendo still considers PlatinumGames a second party dev, despite Sega publishing several games for them.