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Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal approved by UK regulators
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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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."
There's a third way here though, MS could make good exclusive games themselves and leave Activision available for everyone.
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.
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.
Astroturfing is a very real thing that major companies participate in to sway public sentiment.
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 $163 MILLION marketing budget.
It's modern advertising. Just start a friendly discussion on social media about your product or service with some purchased or fresh accounts, or just upvoted anything positive and downvote anything negative! Imagine the effect you could have on discussions if just a single person focused on this 8 hours a day for weeks, compared to organic discourse.
People worry about Russian or Chinese botfarms but don't stop to think that corporations are the ones with the most to gain from altering public perception worldwide.