Again, there ISN'T 'high end console' market.
If you don't like then call them "home consoles". PS5 and Series X aren't the same than Switch.
People don't buy a PS5 or Xbox as secondary gaming device because it's a portable as they do with Switch.
Unlike in the Switch, most PS and Xbox games are the same and their demographics are the same because they compete for the same market. The overlap between them is huge because they are direct competitors, while with Switch is way smaller.
Not only that but how do you then retroactively segment the market for all the previous generations? Did anyone stop to ask if Nintendo purposefully created the Wii to be lower-end compared to PS3 & 360 to explicitly compete against them as a low-power alternative, or did they actually create it to go after a different market segment with their own market targets? Did anyone ask Sony if they designed the PS5 explicitly as a "high-end console", or did they just happen to try developing a logical step forward from the PS4 meeting power & price requirements to satisfy needs of 1P & 3P developers?
I think Nintendo underpowers their consoles on purpose because their fans will buy any shit Nintendo throws at them, so they prefer to release underpowered and cheaper (but overpriced) consoles and games to have a higher profit margin.
At the same time, both with Wii and Switch they tried to chase a different market than PS and Xbox: with Wii they trageted to expand themselves in the casual market. With Switch they abandoned the home console market because Sony defeated them and moved all their resources to the handheld market, where they were stronger and where they now they had a monopoly.
And your 3rd point, I don't necessarily agree with either for two reasons. #1 because it reduces the 3P exclusives to 'moneyhats', which ignore the multitude of other benefits 3P exclusives bring such as targeted optimization, maximized marketing & distribution efforts, access to certain 1P tech resources, brand coupling association, etc. As for big 3P acquisitions not being allowed by regulators, that really depends on what we mean by "big". Something within the realm of $10 billion valuation (just as an example) would be possible because Sony's market share advantage was earned through being a better competitor to significantly larger, resource-rich companies like Microsoft.
For a 3P exclusivity only means less sales/revenue compared to multiplatform. So they only remain exclusive if the 1st party moneyhats them (or if they are a tiny indie studio with no money or time to do ports).
Generally, regulators don't have a problem with market monopolies as long as they were not illegally acquired. Sony/SIE have earned theirs through legitimate competition and showing consistent understanding of the market, and offering superior solutions for developers, publishers, and end customers (console gamers). So if they would want to, they could go for a Square-Enix, or a Capcom (again, I'm just listing as examples), etc. and get approval for them on those grounds alone. Or even somewhat larger publishers than those, if that was something they were interested in.
For regulators monopoly means that someone who has enough market power (meaning to have all or almost all the market share of a market, not only a majority) acts as gatekeeper blocking others with monopolistic actions that may prevent others to compete against them. Regulators block these monopolistic actions.
Meaning, they could say Sony already dominates by far the home consoles, VR gaming in consoles and gaming subs markets, and to acquire big publishers would further increase the domination in these markets to the point it would be impossible for MS or other potential new actor to compete against them.
Potentially, but that depends on what "totally dead" means. If it means Xbox console hardware continues to exist and get new generational refreshes, but rolls along in a zombie state, that actually still doesn't help Microsoft with getting Game Pass on PlayStation, IMHO. The act of the console hardware still existing whatsoever is the potential problem for platform holders like Sony (and Nintendo), because it would still mean Xbox is effectively operating as a traditional console business-wise. Just, a barely-alive one.
Unless regulators force them to do it, Nintendo and Sony won't allow to have Gamepass in their platforms if:
- MS continues having their own console
- It features non-MS 3P games on their console's GPP
- Doesn't pay them the 30% or whatever Sony and Nintendo ask for in case of game subs
You can't really just focus on the "main" MS titles tho; it's all the titles, same for Sony. And games like Song of Midnight, Hellblade 2, HiFi Rush, Pentiment, Clockwork Revolution, Avowed, Tango's rumored JRPG...at least AFAIK, none of those are GaaS titles. So I'd say it's actually rather balanced on Microsoft's side of things.
All these are minor games for MS. Look at all the recent entries of the main MS IPs: Halo, Forza, Forza Horizon, Sea of Thieves, Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, WoW, Overwatch, Diablo, Heartstone, CoD, Candy Crush... all are GaaS. Yes, they have non-GaaS titles but most of them are minor games.
Regarding future entries of IPs who could fit as Starcraft, Doom, Quake or Gears make sure they'll go GaaS too.
With Sony, perhaps it's been balanced all along but the choice of information for 1P titles they've decided to share the past few months, plus the lack of reveals for new titles from a lot of their studios, have created the perception that they were trending heavily into GaaS with "some" focus on non-GaaS titles. That's on Sony for leading people into feeling that was the trajectory.
It's why the news of them scaling back on the 12 GaaS to 6 GaaS was such welcomed news well, basically, everywhere.
They didn't scale back from 12 to 6. With Helldivers 2 they'll have released 4.
What they said in the fiscal report QA was that they continue with the 12 GaaS but that now they only were sure that 6 of them will be released before April 2026 as previously estimated, meaning that some could be released after that date, leading to think multiple of them were delayed or were likely to be delayed soon because they were looking into it.
Some time later they canned TLOU Online. Plus the 4 ones soon to be relesed with Helldivers, means there are 6 GaaS to be released (5 if they count Destiny), being the next ones very likely Concord in late 2024 and Marathon early 2025. After them there would be 4 (or maybe 3) remaining, being one of them Fairgame$ also pretty much locked to be relesaed before April 2026.
Yeah, you have in ways. But when stuff like the funding percentages for GaaS eating up 60% allocation vs. traditional 40% by FY '25 came out, I don't think you were too considerate of the concerns of increased AAA dev costs for budgets, or inflation, factoring into a potential drop in # of games covered by those budget splits.
Although TBF, we also don't know the absolute dollar amounts in funding that were planned for those fiscal budgets. 40% of say $1 billion gets you a lot more than 40% of $250 million.
We don't have the absolute dollar amounts, but we have the heights of the bars of the charts that represent the investment in dollars every year and we see how the investment grows. Money funded pretty likely with the released games, and that big increase would be due to the money earnt in previous years having this big growth thanks to the release of more successful GaaS.
We see in the graph that the investment highly grows in general a lot, mostly to invest more in GaaS, but the investment on non-GaaS also grows.
There kinda is with how public it's been. What you're describing, usually we never even hear about it. But there's been a clear chain of events in announcements and now cancellations for some of the GaaS stuff, that's been very public.
That's the "unusual" part, at least compared to how it normally seems to go.
Sony debunked the cancellations saying their 12 GaaS were still there. Some time later TLOU was cancelled, that's all.
Kinda depends on if ABK can keep COD from declining in relevance. So there might be a lot riding on next year's entry in all honesty.
As I remember CoD has been top 1 every yeaar in PS. And the most recent one had some kind of record. People may complain but they keep buying it.
True in theory, but like some others were saying in one of the other threads (IIRC), going full 3P might not be so lucrative if the quality of certain games doesn't significantly increase. Like, Forza Motorsport has some degree of relevance on Xbox as the premier racing sim of the platform holder. But if you take Xbox away, and released it in its current state on PS5, it now looks even more like the second-rate GT clone that many already feel it is. And it's perhaps more stark than ever comparing the recent Forza with GT7 in particular.
It's highly probable in that scenario, Forza actually performs worst than it currently has already, unless the quality were to take a massive leap forward to be more competitive with games like GT. And that's just one example. So it's either that, or MS cull back on the total number of games they develop & publish (something they'd likely have to do anyway, just like how we saw Sega do when they stopped making consoles), because a few of those games, like the Pentiments, you no longer need as "variety spices" to the 1P catalog to increase the value proposition of the console...because there is no longer a console, period.
Independently on their quality, if their games also get released on PS5 (and the ones that fit in Switch/Swich 2, there too) will sell way more just because of install base.
If they remove the money sinks that are the hardware and 3P moneyhats they'd be able to spend all that money instead on improving their games.
Regarding Forza, I'm pretty sure that if Series S wouldn't exist the game would have been better, more comparable to GT7. If I was after going full 3rd party I'd remove the requirements of supporting Series S for new curent gen games, including the MS ones. It would butthurt the 4 people who bought it because they'd miss some games even from MS, but the MS games would be better and would sell more.
