Comment on Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal approved by UK regulators
simple@lemm.ee 8 months agoBecause Nintendo and Sony are doing it too, but at least Microsoft is putting their games day one on PC… They’re going to make their games exclusive one way or another, but this is preferable to the way other companies are doing it.
yes, this is the part where I gave up trying to say
“Hey it’s bad these guys make their games exclusive, pc players and xbox players and whatever should all be able to play these games”
because now fuck it, why bother. pc players and xbox players do not care as soon as they got theirs. they won’t show the same support as soon as they get their games.
pc players and xbox players do not care as soon as they got theirs.
Sony players don’t care as long as they get theirs
Nintendo players don’t care as long as they get theirs
Who cares? Fans will be fans.
Sony players don’t care as long as they get theirs
I used to, you generally saw the sentiment of “this isn’t good for us, we dont’ want this”, now everyone is suddenly okay with one company owning all this stuff because it comes out on pc.
It’s hard to care about people complaining about exclusivity anymore, because they only care when it affects them personally.
It won’t fulfill your apparent need to have people pat you on the tummy and say you are a good boy but:
PC more or less is THE second platform (or first, with console as second) for a lot of people at this point. So if the option is:
I’ll always pick 3. Because as console prices increase? A “couple years old” gaming PC is not horrifically expensive (so long as crypto stays in the shitter…).
But also? Shit like Geforce Now and other streaming solutions means that people (who don’t live in the ass end of nowhere and have such horrible internet they wouldn’t be able to download the day one patches anyway) can play these games on their macbooks or even their chromebooks.
It won’t fulfill your apparent need to have people pat you on the tummy and say you are a good boy but:
Okay, we know where your head is. but i’m going to engage anyway just to say that i’m looking for solidarity, and not finding it. I’m finding selfishness. Previously I was in support of not having things exclusive, I didn’t want it, It didn’t benefit me. but I’m not seeing that support back from pc gamers like you.
Where is the “solidarity” with the devs?
People will constantly point to grey market sites like g2a and even gmg (g2a is really more of a black market site but…) and smugly mock anyone who DARES to buy a game new. Everyone cheers for (one of the daddies of gamergate) Total Biscuit’s mantra of never preorder and will insist that publishers and devs are trying to nickle and dime/steal from them for daring to release DLC for a three year old game.
And then we wonder why studios shut down.
So no, you aren’t looking for “solidarity”. You are so self obsessed with not getting what you want that you are recontextualizing it as everyone else is taking things away from you to get what they want.
Because: I would love it if there weren’t giant conglomerations of studios. But then I remember how some of the best studios out there, such as Digital Extremes and Larian, have stories of “Yeah, it was make or break and we really lucked out with getting in on the ground floor of some new concept or marketing gimmick”. Like, we would not have Baldurs Gate 3 if Larian had waited even a year or so longer before starting the D:OS kickstarter. Because rather than people saying “oh shit, we can get a new classic CRPG” it would have been “Fuck kickstarter. It is all vaporware. You are a fucking mark if you give them money”.
And if the choice is between having a different publisher on a game and hoping that enough folk from Obsidian end up in the same place to make another Pentiment or Tyranny? Fuck it, I’ll gladly let whoever keep the lights on.
Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This whole thing has confused the ever loving balls out of me. Xbox and Microsoft having been getting MURDERED over the last few years and ridiculed by pretty much everyone for one reason and one reason only, they have no games. Why get an Xbox? PlayStation and Nintendo have all the good exclusives. Xbox has nothing.
Now, Microsoft goes out and buys up some IP’s and studios that have games they can make exclusive if they want (even tho they’ve said over and over they won’t for the ones that currently aren’t console exclusives but we’ll see on that one). So, for the first time in pretty much forever they’ll have the opportunity for console exclusives other than Halo and now everyone is complaining that they’ll make the games console exclusives. It’s like the biggest damned if you do, damned if you don’t for them lol.
“Fuck Xbox they don’t have any good exclusives.”
Microsoft goes out and gets good exclusives
“Fuck Xbox they’re making the good games exclusive.”
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 8 months ago
There’s a third way here though, MS could make good exclusive games themselves and leave Activision available for everyone.
Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s not quite how this works tho. Microsoft doesn’t make games. Sony doesn’t make games. The only exception is Nintendo but even they outsource a ton of devopment to studios like 1-up studios, monolith soft, retro studios etc. These companies just make a console that plays games and then they try to buy rights to good games or studios so they can make their games exclusive to that console to bolster sales. Sure, sony and microsoft could pour tons and tons and tons of money into creating their own studios i guess that make their own branded games but they have decided to focus on hardware sales instead. This is especially true for microsoft where the xbox is just a small part of the business where the PC market is their focus.
From a business standpoint, it makes 10000% more sense to just try and acquire other businesses that do the work under you and you just publish their games. Which is why nintendo, sony, and microsoft all try to do it so much. I mean Sony alone has bought 14 development studios since last year.
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Both MS and Sony absolutely produce their own games with wholly internally established studios. MS game studios existed before Xbox even.
I’m not sure what the rest of your point is even about, of course it makes sense for MS and Sony to short circuit work and risk, that doesn’t make anything better for consumers. The better option for consumers is for MS and Sony to build their own franchises and have good exclusives that way rather than taking existing third party franchises and limiting access.
EveningNewbs@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Astroturfing is a very real thing that major companies participate in to sway public sentiment.
drekly@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Especially if they released a really successful game and then they released a really bad one that got them sued by their shareholders and they had to issue a public apology but internet sentiment is somehow still positive. Especially if that game had a $142 MILLION marketing budget.