Not a fan of this thinking and it's so prevalent. It's a pretty lazy and misjudged reading of what actually takes place. The financial realities of weak competition actually stifle and restrict innovation rather than ensure it. Along with the whole
But we need Microsoft to keep Arrogant Sony from rearing its ugly head line it's such a feeble, nonsense excuse for an argument under just the tiniest drop of scrutiny.
Weak, inneffective competition is bad for everyone - bad for the innovators themselves and the end users of their innovations. It enforces restriction, stifles creativity and ensures mediocrity. It has the potential to screw everything for everyone. Different ways fiscally-doped competition actually stifles innovation and fucks the wider industry:
- The ps4's trackpad was innovation, but nobody was every going to support it. Not because it was useless or crap, but because the competition didn't have it and creators simply went for the easy and sensible business case solution of effectively ignoring its existence else face wasted resources making 2 interfaces/interaction solutions for their games. In a world where xbox does not exist the trackpad is ubiquitous and so analogous to mouse that it's a given to support it. We have better games with better interactions bringing desktop and comfy couch experiences closer to each other. Instead we end up with nothing more than a big dumb wobbly button of two halves. It actually sees better use and implementation in the way it was intended as a PC peripheral. This is innovation and progress stifled by the very existence of paper "competition".
- On the flip side here's innovation born from an inability to effectively compete on equal terms. The 8th generation. MS releases a comparatively slightly weak xbox one and struggles for years competing with the ps4, so next time out maybe they need to innovate. Do they learn to never again end up on the lowest rung of the ladder and do we end up with a power struggle that sees platform holders competing for an advantage? To an extent we do with the Series X and ps5, but here's the innovation - they embrace their prior basement tier offering status and instead redefine what that very lowest rung on the ladder can look like in the shape of the Series S. How does the gen play out with such competitive innovation keeping costs in Check Your ACFT Score Now? It doesn't matter how good Series X and ps5 are, despite MS's promises and despite superfans' insistence, it's a piss-poor millstone around the neck of the entire generation (and perhaps even beyond); forever tethering possibilities of what 9th gen games can ever hope to be with a baseline so low it guarantees and enables the longest cross-gen deadzone wilderness imaginable. This is shit competition doing their own "innovating" while keeping costs in check.
- Innovation doesn't have to be hardware-based. Xbox live innovated a way to get people to pay a monthly fee to make use of their own paid internet service to play online. Genius. But that golden goose wasn't enough as there was far more room for innovation in this space. Game Pass. The sustainable subscription that boosts discoverability and bulks engagement figures for poor, struggling Indies and occasional day 1 3rd parties. Except that's exclusively for the chosen few, and only while MS is throwing around cash to pad out the service early doors to bulk subscriber figures when their own offerings can't hope to come fast enough. Shoulder shrugs to those guys who didn't get an invite to the party back then and instead got saddled the ever more difficult task of selling games to a userbase increasingly conditioned to laugh at the idea of purchasing anything because there's always the chance it'll be "free" one day or they're just too busy gorging on more games than anyone could reasonably ever hope to engage with anyway. But then also, actually, nah... screw those original guys too years later 'cause MS buys half the industry and can do in-house padding for less. The true end game, Game Pass final form. Burn millions now, earn billions and billions in perpetuity. And back then they actually had the brass balls to gaslight developers and the gaming public into thinking Game Pass actually led to increased game sales (which it probably only ever did for a miniscule number of games very early on when subs were low to begin with). Beautiful. This was neither true competition nor real innovation. just a desperate play for one last crack at domination while leaning once again on the wider company's financial position. But it's thE bEst vAlUE In gAmIng!!11 Sure, Philanthropist Spencer doing gaming a favour, you only had to check his cool Gamer™ T-shirts under the jacket or the contents of his shelves to know this relatable multi-multi-multi-millionaire was truly one of us. The service erodes. Tiers appear. Prices go up and up. Pushing innovation and keeping prices in check...
Limp-dicked, artificial, cash-pumped pseudo-competition is the sort the games industry doesn't need and end users don't need, even if it feels like a free ride for a few years. Think about it, while MS has been around the console space this past quarter of a century they've actively prevented other more genuine and worthwhile competition even entering the ring... very few entities could even have considered it in the face of their past warchest antics. They might have actually innovated in a positive manner that first decade, but this past 15 years they've 180'd that.
Their next disruptive task is clear - to dismantle all walled gardens and put an end to the very existence of platforms. They see little future in having their own anymore, so tearing down those of everyone else is practically guaranteed to destroy the competition's viability and leave them free to Katamari Damacy what's left of the industry in the aftermath. That's the only reason Nadella's entertaining any of Phil's shit these past years. Real innovation and sure to keep costs in check... lol.
If MS truly is in the business of making great games, their presence on PSN should only seek to increase competition for spend. What's more effective competition for a PS owner's cash: a 1st party exclusive on xbox that they can't even buy as a PS owner, or a 3rd party Forza or Halo or Gears or Flight Simulator or Minecraft or Indiana Jones on PSN than they can?
Don't buy into that faux-competition gaslighting bullshit. Xbox is the console. Those are Microsoft games. The only way MS balance gaming side books right now is by selling everything they have in as many places as possible. Activision/Blizzard/King is the framework for their path forward. MS didn't buy ABK so it could just become part of xbox and fuel GPU, that's never made financial sense on any level, simply fanboi-tier wishful thinking. They bought ABK to lead a MS gaming subscription services future, they just have yet to formulate a suitable offering when so many walled gardens still exist and can resist.
