Last I read, Microsoft had $80 billion in cash on hand. I’m pretty sure they have the resources to run whatever the fuck they want.
I think the “Microsoft dilemma” is between Making Some Money vs. Take All The Money.
If they publish a bunch of successful games on Steam or on Playstation, they will make Some Money, compared to games published exclusive to Xbox, where they can make All The Money.
By acquiring studios they are making sure that good franchises “don’t make all the money… yet” (on competing platform like Steam, Playstation or Switch, but also Android/iOS)
They could make good games exclusive for Xbox, but given how relatively unsuccessful is the Xbox platform, compared to Switch and Playstation, it would mean that very expensive (to make) games will bleed money
So it’s almost like the smart business decision would be to make some multiplatform games, huh
Get out of here! Microsoft doesn’t need this! They needs the mooney? Please won’t somebody think of Microsoft?!
I think the “Microsoft dilemma” is just called capitalism. If you’re not making all the money, you’re losing the game.
I wonder if regulators will bring this up the next time Microsoft wants to buy another publisher. They fought tooth-and-nail to buy Activision Blizzard and like a child that got a new toy they’re throwing out the old ones.
Well of course not. These game studios were selling games at 60-80$ each. Microsoft bought them, then started providing the all the games for a flat fee of 15$ per month.
I assumed their strategy was to lose money in the medium term while they worked on getting people used to playing games on subscription. Where they make their money back is when they stop outright selling games at full price and make them only available on subscription, and then they slowly start increasing that monthly subscription cost.
In order for that to work they need a large library and like 5-10 years.
Turns out corporations can manage long term planning when the plan reduces quality of life for customers. Crazy!
No joke, their plan was to have 100m subscribers so the economics start making sense
It’s $9 for the standard Game Pass, and was $1 a month until they stopped that last year sometime.
Well then, maybe they shouldn’t have bought them to begin them?
Yeah, they needed a shitload of money to pay Bobby Kotick apparently.
And the studios didn’t run themselves before the purchases?
Is Microsofts PR AI that bad at dumb excuses?
