Capture and kill…
The only thing better than owning the competition, is putting them out of business.
So they buy studios that compete, fire all the workers, keep the IPs, and call it a day.
If we enforced anti-monoply laws this wouldn’t be a thing. But monopolies dontate a lot of money to politicians so they say monopolies aren’t a big deal.
Parasites do be like that… I don’t get how peasant class got so complacent though.
Have you met our political system?
Primaries literally don’t have to be fair, because the results are nonbinding, the party can just pick someone else.
And the people in charge keep loosening regulations so they can get bigger donations.
They’re openly running a PAC that coordinates with Biden and the DNC that individuals can legally donate a million a year.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-2024-democrats-dnc-state-parties-ac8fba0ab1117ebf75cc16ebe0c735e4
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00744946/
Average Americans are being priced out of democracy by both parties. The candidate for both will be who the wealthy pick, and everyone will have to vote if they want to keep who they hate most out of office.
If you’re wealthy there’s no way to lose, if you’re the other 99.9% you can’t win.
Regular people can’t out lobby Microsoft and Disney, and unless a progressive third party emerges the system will keep getting worse.
unless a progressive third party emerges the system will keep getting worse
If a progressive third party emerges, they’ll split the vote with Democrats, making both of them weaker. That’ll just give every election to Republicans and make the country get worse even faster.
The only way to get progressive candidates is by moving the Overton window to the left, and the only way to do that is by voting for Democrats.
While political system is captured… I am talking about gen pop discourse. Vast majority got nothing to hide, it is convienient, poor people suck, shoulda worked harder, quit being poor, there is nothing can be, we just really don’t know.
This rhetoric is pathetic for any self respecting adult yet here we are.
Sure if everybody got educated about their lot in life they could theoretically vote in a third party but let’s be real here, we got some app to circle jerk for engagement slop that induces you to buy plastic shit to make feelz
INVESTORS INVESTORS LOOK AT HOW MANY STUDIOS WE CAN BUY LOOK LOOK WE’RE SOOO PROFITABLE
WERE REMOVING SO MUCH DEAD WEIGHT INVESTORS LOOK WE’RE GOING TO BE SO PROFITABLE AFTER THIS
Reduce the number of studios. The number of sold copies of games stays constant. Therefore, the money going to the remaining studios goes up.
If the cost of purchasing the studio is less than the number of diverted sales, its in your interest to buy up and shut down competition. The only reason this math would change is if people exclusively purchased from the shut-down studios. And we all know why they don’t.
As a kicker, you can wring some extra cash out of old properties by turning them into shitty reskinned Pay2Win mobile games covered in the flesh mask of the old IP.
Microsoft has been a fucking blight on gaming. Paid online, and timed exclusives both started there. No resale if we didn’t throw a massive fit about it. Buying up studios to kill them. I mean Sony has their share of being fucks as well, but at least they’re making good games. Microsoft has barely any decent games the last 2 generations, and hellblade 2 which is looking great was a Sony game that they had to buy and make exclusive.
Looks at ballot.
“Is carbonite, like…an actual thing? Can I be frozen like Han Solo? I have a little bit of money saved up. Which stupid tech bro startup can do this for me?”
In a sane country there would be laws to prevent this monopoly shit.
The problem is that Microsoft is no monopoly in gaming.
They have the money to basically buy any studio they want if they could, Nintendo and Sony included.
Their gaming division isn’t a monopoly, but with their parents funding yeah they could be and that’s the problem. They could buy everyone up and leave them selves alone in the market.
HB 1 was a Sony exclusive initially. Launched on xbox later. Microsoft then bought the developer making 2 Xbox only.
its clear in hindsight that there needs to be more regulation to prevent buyouts of competitors and more protections for workers under buyouts/mergers such as paying workers for at least 3 years after the sale of a company.
Why did you decide on the arbitrary number of three years? Why not ten years?
3 gives people time to wrap up projects, move etc, basically any life most folks could have reasonably scheduled can be shifted in 3 years, it gives new parents time to take care of their kid and transition back to normal work. And the way to do it would be to have the companies pay the wages whether they lay them off or not (encouraging retraining rather than layoffs.)
Although if what you wanted to do was was absolutely ruin the incentives that mergers create for layoffs the average appointment length of a CEO might do it.
get bought out
never show up for work again for a decade
still getting paid
😎
It’s UBI with extra steps, but I honestly think ten years is a great idea for no reason.
Microsoft is buying up companies to stockpile IP. Simple as that.
Then they have a lot of redundant workers so they let them go, leaving the IP in their hands to be filed away for potential lawsuits against infringers.
Unless and until new game studios start snapping up these suddenly out-of-work talent.
I don’t think they are very keen on wanting to keep talent, especially at their scale.
Microsoft is buying up companies to stockpile IP. Simple as that.
And then they do nothing with that.
Oh they can do worse than nothing. Their history is full of hold my beer and EEE.
Their history is full of hold my beer and EEE.
Is it still EEE when they’re shooting themselves in the foot all the time? Xbox 360 had a good run but then during the cycle they dropped the ball and even got overtaken by PS3 late. One and Series S/X don’t matter that much.
