• TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
    184·
    6 months ago

    IP hoarding.

    1. Buy studio that already made successful game

    2. Delete studio

    3. People still buy game

    4. Profit

  • thesporkeffect@lemmy.world
    123·
    6 months ago

    Eliminating the competition

    When there are no other games at all, the company with one shitty live service game will be king!

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
      69·
      6 months ago

      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.

    • _NoName_@lemmy.ml
      2·
      6 months ago

      If this is the name of the game, it’s dumb. It’s not like they lined the Devs up along a wall. They’ll still be able to serve other companies with their talent since Microsoft just cut their leads.

      • thesporkeffect@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 months ago

        1. Even game devs have mortgages to pay and many in the industry are struggling

        2. I didn’t mean to imply the strategy was smart, just that is the end goal of the MBA parasite hive mind

  • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
    72·
    6 months ago

    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

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
        18·
        6 months ago

        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.

    • tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de
      17·
      6 months ago

      Played Horizon Forbidden West on PC and it’s such a grind fest. What’s even the point. Not sure why it gets such good reviews, except for how pretty it is. High hopes for God of War Ragnarok, though.

      • summerof69@lemm.ee
        6·
        6 months ago

        It gets good reviews because it’s fun to play. The game is good at its core: you have to scan machines, aim at weak spots, move a lot in the battle to avoid damage, choose right weapons, or you can override a machine and enjoy the show, there are so many options and challenges. Besides, let’s not underestimate the value of good graphics. They make the world nicer, more enjoyable, make you want to come back and play again. I understand that this game is not for everyone though.

        • tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de
          2·
          6 months ago

          Yeah, but I get tired of this like halfway through the game. I don’t want to lower the difficulty, I just want fewer enemies and more frequent drops so I don’t have to grind so fucking hard. There should be a percent slider for filler content so players like me could set it to 10% or so. I’m currently short on small machine cores to upgrade armor. Come on! What’s that bullshit? Considering how many watchers I’ve killed I should never ever be short on that.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          I don’t underestimate “good graphics” (usually used to refer to realism) in selling games, but it’s heavily overrated. For example, Elden Ring was not the game with the best graphics technically, but damn does it not look gorgeous. A good art style trumps realism any day. Realism sells more copies, because people are told to compare to realism, but it usually sucks. It has its uses, but it’s mostly a resource hog to make something that looks generic.

          • summerof69@lemm.ee
            3·
            6 months ago

            I wouldn’t say that Horizon aims to be super realistic. I mean, it’s not far away, especially if we compare it to Elden Ring. But in Horizon colors are saturated, the game looks too beautiful and vibrant to be realistic in my books. I would say Hogwarts Legacy is a better example of a too realistic game: colors are bleak, objects and textures are much closer to what we can find in real life, it does look generic as you say (at least IMO).

            • tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de
              1·
              6 months ago

              The building models in Hogwarts are amazing, though. Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are both gorgeous. It heavily leans on the work done for the movies, of course, but it’s still amazing looking.

  • Yeller_king@reddthat.com
    45·
    6 months ago

    Everyone seems to think there is some master evil plan behind all this, but I think there’s a simpler explanation. They fucked up.

    • sickhack@lemmy.world
      9·
      6 months ago

      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”.

  • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
    39·
    6 months ago

    It’s stripping out the copper wiring for cash. Buy a game studio, fire all the employees. Now their paychecks can be served up as profit to shareholders. Move all the files to your servers, it’s your “Intellectual Property”. Sell off the computers and the desks and anything else not nailed down. Do they own the building? Great, sell that too! Or, better yet, rent it out!

    • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      6 months ago

      Only works if the liquidated assets are worth more than the money spent acquiring them, which usually is not the case.

      • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
        10·
        6 months ago

        The liquidated assets are just a cherry on top, what they’re going for is getting rid of the competition and hoarding IP for usual capitalist hoarder mentality reasons.

  • tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de
    38·
    6 months ago

    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?

    • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      11·
      6 months ago

      Gamepass is great. It’s nice to sit down on the couch and boot up a random game via streaming. Reminds me of Blockbuster in a sense.

      You can do the same thing on PC, but Xbox is idiot-proof and at the end of the day I just don’t have the energy to deal with anything more difficult than that.

      • vanderbilt@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 months ago

        I’m agree, but game pass has been offering meh value in the long run for me. Sure there are a few new titles, but once your run through your backlog it’s just ok. Problem is that Xbox lacks the blockbusters that appeal to the masses this generation, coupled with an utterly confusing naming scheme that I still don’t understand. What Xbox should I buy? No idea, because the names mean nothing.

        • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          6 months ago

          Casual gamers see it differently, and I imagine that’s a huge chunk of their player base. My boyfriend rarely games but gets so stoked to boot up a random no-name game and play it for a few hours at night on cloud streaming.

      • agegamon@beehaw.org
        7·
        6 months ago

        “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.

    • Cricoo@lemm.ee
      1·
      6 months ago

      I absolutely love Starfield. I have something like 300 hours in it and keep finding new things to do and explore all the time.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    6 months ago

    Its called being a fucking dumb cunt. These executives and shareholders don’t understand what brought people to the Xbox. So there’s no way in hell they can ever keep people there. If they wanted to keep the Xbox in the spotlight you should have kept Lionhead alive and not let 343 fuck Halo (which is now on PC anyway so why would I get an Xbox?). There’s simply no reason to have one unless you’re scared of PCs and want to play some games with your PC friends.

    • warm@kbin.earth
      18·
      6 months ago

      They are buying studios and their IP so no one else can use it, even if they don’t use it themselves. It’s a strategy to remove competition, they don’t care about the industry and the players, they care about money. All these big companies are the same, Microsoft just have the wallet to act on it, avoid them all and buy indie games.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        6 months ago

        This strategy eventually transforms a company into an ouroboros. Consuming itself until the shareholders and c suites have all claimed their parachutes. Its total self destruction in the long term.

        • vanderbilt@lemmy.world
          7·
          6 months ago

          Ding-ding. It so long as the shareholders of today get their gains, they could care less. The Ford lawsuit absolutely destroyed free enterprise in this country.