This was a ps3 meme iirc
Correct
Yea but PS3 can Linux, the ultimate game.
IP hoarding.
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Buy studio that already made successful game
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Delete studio
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People still buy game
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Profit
- Massive tax write-off because of the studio’s “failure”
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Embrace, Expend, Extinguish.
It’s Extend. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate.
Learn the terminology, Nate.
I mean, technically, “expend” is exactly what Microsoft is doing in this situation
I don’t think MS doing any expand related with games
That’s why I said “expend” rather than “expand”.
It’s called “monopolize gaming without paying for developers”. The beauty of it is, if you ruin all of modern gaming and buy out all the existing hits, you can shove in monetization and project insane profits
At least until indie gaming takes over, your stock price will go to the moon
until indie gaming takes over
People want to play what’s popular, to feel part of a group.
And there’s thankfully usually a popular indie darling of the season to do that. Valheim, Vampire Survivors, Lethal Company, Among Us, Dave the Diver, etc. etc.
Something unique that can be easily streamed in most cases.
Eliminating the competition
When there are no other games at all, the company with one shitty live service game will be king!
It’s also a tried and true strategy that brought Microsoft to the spot it is now. Evil and corrupt, but very effective. Only eee (embrace, extend, extinguish) is even more insidious because it requires companies to play the long con.
Then again in 2024, I automatically assume “con” first until I see evidence to the contrary.
Everyone seems to think there is some master evil plan behind all this, but I think there’s a simpler explanation. They fucked up.
Microsoft made $158b gross profit year, which was a 14% increase over the previous year.
As a comparison, General Motors’ revenue was $170b. Microsoft made almost as much in profit as GM took in totality.
Closing the studios maybe will save Microsoft $0.1b, so potentially increase their profit line by 0.05%.
So hard to think of it as anything other than a middle finger to the devs. Even if it were a mistake, they could afford to let it cook longer like with Rare and redeem the “mistake”.
Unlimited bacon
The reasons you’d ever want an Xbox used to be Halo and Fable. Now it’s, uh, I dunno, does anyone care about Starfield?
Now the reason is that you’re too broke for a PC but still wanna play new games that are on PC, but not dirty Nintendo or Playstation games.
“Too broke to play PC” is a vanishing argument IMO. People have been saying that forever, to be fair, but given how bad Xbox and Playstation have gotten I don’t anyone who’s actually into gaming purchasing a new one today. Maybe used, that might make sense if it was really cheap.
A budget gaming PC can check out at slightly over 600 now. PcPartPicker has two recommended builds priced right at 600, though honestly there might be even cheaper ways to arrive at that level of perfromance. Compared to 300-400 for the less garbage Xbox, and there’s not much argument to lock someone into the xbox’s ecosystem vs something you can upgrade for much less.
Now I think it’s a different matter if it’s a hand-me-down or given for free. There’s no reason not to do that.
I gave my last console away and got a friend of mine into gaming, then helped them build a decent PC when they actually wanted something new.
Its okay because the PS5 also has no games
This is why the Switch is superior.
It has bad games 😎
steam deck is the supperior, plays every xbox game, emulate Switch and play PS games