Considering that Bethesda doesn’t seem to have enough people to work full time with two major releases simultaneously, giving Fallout to other studios wouldn’t be that far fetched. Otherwise Microsoft would have to wait for Elder Scrolls 6 release to have a full team working on a Fallout game, and that release window is rumoured to be 5-6 years from now. So 8+ more years without a real main series game in one of their big franchises seems like bad business…
Interesting thing is that Microsoft has the key building blocks from Interplay era under their banner already. Through Obsidian they have Tim Cain, Chris Jones and Feargus Urquhart, who lead the first two Fallout games. inExile has Brian Fargo, the original idea man of the series. And Bethesda has the IP. They could really get the original team together to cook up a new game.
They could really get the original team together to cook up a new game.
I shit you not, that was likely an idea MS had when they started buying up all the studios. But the boys are slowly starting to retire from game development or have moved on to greener pastures and other ideas, so good luck on the prospect of some OG Fallout/Wasteland stuff coming.
Plus, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking MS gives a shit about the customers, the franchises or anything other than their own wallets.
And Bethesda has been a shitshow for a while now and it shows in their games. Poor management leads to poor development and poor products. If they have 3000+ employees and only releases one game every 5(+/-) years. And the games are still so alpha-levels of broken upon release that the Modding Community have to fix every release, every time, you’re doing something wrong.
I’m not trying to be super negative here. Cynical? Sure. But mostly just trying to give another perspective.
I believe something is coming. But don’t get your hopes up too high. In the end, it’s more that likely just about milking something that maybe should have remained dead.
Not necessarily. Sony pays them enough to offset the loss of sales for a year, and they can then go multiplatform after. Usually with a GOTY edition or some bonus content. The recent Tomb Raider games ar a good example of this.
What numbers are being tossed around I could only speculate, but that's the idea.
I wish it was illegal to do that. It's blatantly anti consumer. Exclusivity does absolutely nothing good for consumers and only harms them by pushing them to have to own multiple, otherwise redundant consoles.
Lately, PS Plus has felt like a better GamePass than GamePass. That almost certainly wouldn’t be the case if there is further market consolidation.
So I get Microsoft’s angle but ultimately I want to see them both compete for value and monopolies don’t do that. Also we’ve seen what Microsoft do with monopolies…
The PS5 is still difficult to even purchase in the first place, isn't it?
And if Playstation wanted to make inroads on PC, Microsoft has a leg up in the PC market as well by dent of being Microsoft and making the OS, so Xbox controllers are more plug and play than Playstation ones, they can optimize performance better, etc.
Overall I don't think Microsoft becoming even more of a monopoly would help anybody but Microsoft.
Not the other person but no. Microsoft really needs more exclusive games to their system. I
Want the three major systems to do well because that means there's lots of good games to play. But it seems microsoft have forgotten about making good games leading consumers to choose Sony.
I don't think they forgot, but to get the throughput that Sony has takes a lot of studios...that they're trying to buy right now. I'm not a fan of it, but it's too hard for someone else to enter the console space, so I don't see another way for that gap to close.
They have and had studios. They just put all their funding into milking franchises that peaked in the 360 generation.
Sony didn’t gain the lead because of quantity. It was through quality and good variety, starting at the end of the PS3 lifecycle that carried into the last generation.
Microsoft should improve their ability developing quality games. Their last showcase showed maybe they have some coming.
I have to agree with the other comment… it’s not a quantity thing. Sony’s first party games have just been a far higher quality than Microsoft’s for a while. I can’t think of many Must Have Xbox games, but all the big exclusive games Sony releases are top of the chart must have games.
Eh, I don’t think so. I don’t play PC games so they weren’t on my mind, and I wouldn’t consider PCs games in the console wars discussion anyway. Could be wrong but could you give some examples of major must have Xbox exclusives?
It sucks, but gamers buy consoles for the exclusives. PS has way better exclusives and look how much better it sells.
If Xbox doesn't start doing decent exclusives, it'll cease to exist as a platform and we'll only have PS and Switch left.
Basically, if Microsoft doesn't do anti-competitive things, they get punished by the free market. It sucks, because I LOVE the fact that Xbox games come out on PC day 1 now, buuuuuuut that's gonna be no good for Xbox market share.
Monopolies are also bad for gamers. Playstation can engage in more anticompetitive behaviour when Xbox ceases to exist.
Only way to improve the situation would be something like a contract where they each agree not to do exclusives for X years or something, then revisit it when the contract expires.
Without something significant to move the needle back toward Microsoft, Sony will be the de facto high-end console manufacturer, which isn't good for consumers.
I don’t like exclusivity deals and platform fragmentation either, I think it’s anti-consumer. But to be fair I don’t think the Microsoft deal is just about that.
Microsoft’s market cap is something like 23x that of Sony’s; the reason they are in 3rd place is entirely down to mismanagement. It’s pretty typical for Microsoft to find themselves in this position in many of the markets they have chosen to occupy over the decades, and so they instead use their deep pockets to buy their way to being market leaders. Microsoft have a long history of using acquisitions to buy out or block competitors, to the detriment of the market.
We saw what happened when Microsoft got a whiff of success in the 360 era. The Xbox One was anti-gamer and anti-consumer, and it didn’t happen by accident: that’s straight out of Microsoft’s playbook.
The increased competition might be nice in the short term, but it gives Microsoft an opportunity to disproportionately influence the gaming industry for decades into the future imo.
We saw what happened when Microsoft got a whiff of success in the 360 era. The Xbox One was anti-gamer and anti-consumer, and it didn’t happen by accident
That's not an accident. That's exactly what happens in a functioning market, and it's why it's not desirable for Microsoft to fall too far behind, even if it was by their own mismanagement. The things they'd need to produce to compete with Sony at this point would be produced on something like a 5-7 year lag, so even if they had the perfect plan right now, it wouldn't manifest until 2030.
Well ya, Sony is actively trying to block Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard.
I also kind find this whole thing funny because Microsoft keeps enough cash on hand to just outright buy Sony without having to liquidate any assets so I'm willing to bet that'll be the eventual power move
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