Microsoft might have purchased someone, maybe

In my 40's I just find it hard to justify paying £70 for a videogame, especially one that might only last the weekend.

I wanted Callisto Protocol, even just to support the devs for even making it, but at £70 (on console at least) It got weighed against a nice meal and drinks with the Mrs and funds towards other hobbies and lost out.

Worth is relative depending on the person obviously and the way prices seem to being up rather than down tells you someone is paying those prices. These days I think if it wasn't for the likes of Gamepass I'd likely play a handful of games a year tops.

See I'm the opposite. As I get older I'm a lot more choosy with what I want to play, and I'm happy to pay for it if it's a top tier game. The days of me piling through endless 6/10 games just to pass the time are over, I'd rather just go to the gym or get out on the bike or something. 5 or 6 years ago I'd probably be as big a Game Pass cheerleader as some are on here, now Xbox just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest until they start making game I actually want to play again.

The value for me, I suppose, is that I’ve played and really enjoyed games I would rate pretty highly that I never would have staked money on usually.

And the flip side of that is that I’ve also binned just as many fairly quickly because I’m not chasing a sunk cost.

I’m just describing Netflix, aren’t I?

And, yeah, I’d rather use the PS5, too.

No. Never. I buy one console per generation, always have. I have no brand loyalty, I want the companies to fight to the death for my money. I didn’t buy a PS1, 2 or 3 because I thought they were shoddily made and Sony was using it’s diversified portfolio to sell hardware at a loss, which I take to be anti-competitive/ monopolistic behaviour.  But they took a massive punch to the face with PS3 and learned from it. They aren’t faceless, there’s actual people in there, you are just too eagerly reaching for the shiny keys to care about it. I thought Mark Cerny did a great job explaining the PS4 and philosophy behind its design, the PS5 as well, as opposed to the hubris of Ken Kutaragi and Don Mattrick. It’s people. They make decisions. They make assumptions about the consumers. And when they fuck it up, I don’t want to reward that.

If you don’t want to take part in a discussion as to whether this industry-changing event is good or bad, or pick a side, no one is blocking the exit.

Xbox still offer AA games, as opposed to Sony with the GIGAAAA.

True though.

aubergine definitely isn't picking sides when he chooses one console and sticks with it for the entire generation.

It's relevant in which field it's in. Google are monster but the money didn't make stadia popular. Sony control the gaming market to an extent and ms buying act/blizzard doesn't change that much. All it does is make it more competitive.

Consolidation does not create competition, it reduces it.

That's the point exactly. 

No one is calling Microsoft an underdog aubergine, it's a smaller player in the gaming industry. This is merger focused on the gaming industry. 

Does Sony give a shit about, cloud servers, Operating systems, productivity software, search engines etc? No.

Does Microsoft give a shit about , TVs, AV equipment, Cameras? ( I left out mobile hardware cause you could argue MS care about that) No.

It doesn't though, not in any meaningful way that the consumer will benefit from. They're taking something that already exists and either leaving it the same, if titles stay multiplat., or walling it off to people that were going to previously have it.
It makes MS a bigger player but doesn't actually change their process or output. They still aren't building new games.

If they took their vast sums of cash and supported their studios better, or created new ones, and built new IP and experiences to challenge Sony's dominance of 1st party output, that could create actual meaningful competition.

edit: And I'm aware that Sony have bought studios too. Acquisitions aren't bad in isolation, especially when they're fully supported to build interesting things. MS don't really seem to be doing that though outside of one or two cases. It's the missing piece.

They could do that without owning the studios and taking them away from 80% of the console market. Y'know, because they want more people to play games and that.

The only reason they made a song and dance about Nvidia and Nintendo was to make themselves look good and Sony look like they were dragging their heels.

That never would've happened if Sony hadn't tried to put a stop to all this.

Again, GP exists without them owning the studios and pulling the content away from the established base.

They both do it, scale is important yes but they're both businesses trying to get your money, there are no underdogs just massive corporations vying for your support and trying to act as if they're your friend by creating a parasocial relationship and instill "loyalty". But yes let's pick sides.