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Microsoft acquired Bethesda after hearing Starfield would be exclusive to PlayStation
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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I understand the point you are making, but combating market consolidation with more market consolidation doesn’t help consumers in the long term.
I agree, but short of legislating out the ability for exclusivity deals, I don't know what else could be done.
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.
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.
That’s so short sighted.