> Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great.
For now. Fortunes change pretty quick in the console world. One generation you are on top, the next you are struggling for second place.
MS buying Activision is bad. This gives MS a long term advantage. It signals to companies like Sony and Nintendo that they shouldn’t bother competing since they can never counter the buying out of huge publishers as they aren’t worth 2.47 trillion USD like Microsoft.
That just isn't true though. Sony and Nintendo have no problem competing at all by the quality of their first-party and exclusive games. For every Call of Duty there is a Horizons or a God of War or Zelda or whatever. Xbox is the worst of all the platforms in terms of that. Even PC and mobile have more (good) games that aren't available on Xbox.
Has Microsoft has any major successes since Halo and Fable, years and years ago? They're desperate for games. Activision isn't going to suddenly make the dominant overnight. If anything, it would barely help stop the bleeding. Microsoft is so far behind right now it's not funny. I'd be way more afraid of competition dying because Microsoft gave up on it rather than buying Activision.
The huge concern here is not that Microsoft can’t compete, because they can as they have far more studios than Sony does. The issue is their strategy overall which is top earning multi-platform companies, like Bethesda and ActiBlizz, to cut off revenue from competitors. Meanwhile Sony’s biggest acquisitions were studios that mainly focused on their platform to begin with.
MS is playing the long game. They don’t care about this generation. They want to win all future generations.
3rd party support plays a big part in a console’s success. MS is effectively buying out one of the largest 3rd party studios denying its competitors their support.
Does Activision have any major titles on the Switch right now? Nintendo seems happy to be doing their own thing. It's not like they need to buy huge publishers, since they own all the important IP (Mario, Zelda, 1/3 or 1/2 of Pokemon, etc)
If Microsoft caught up by building up 1st party studios nigh from scratch - which is what Sony did - I would have no complaints because anyone could do that. May the best company win.
Buying up one of the biggest publishers though. What’s Sony and Nintendo, whose combined market cap is less than 7% of MS’s, suppose to do? I don’t see how allowing “big money Pay 2 Win without a fight” in anyway benefits the consumer.
I don't think Market Cap is an honest metric to use here. Microsoft's Market Cap is that high comparatively because theyre diverse products in computer, cloud, and tech.
How much of that MC is solely X-box and how much do MS , Sony, and Nintendo own of that respectively? MS studios has been struggling. Activision also has been struggling to land some hits and only recently with Diablo 4 they have got some relief. So buying Activision is not a golden ticket.
For now. Fortunes change pretty quick in the console world. One generation you are on top, the next you are struggling for second place.
MS buying Activision is bad. This gives MS a long term advantage. It signals to companies like Sony and Nintendo that they shouldn’t bother competing since they can never counter the buying out of huge publishers as they aren’t worth 2.47 trillion USD like Microsoft.