Microsoft Exec Was Ready To 'Go Spend Sony Out of Business' To Strengthen Xbox (theverge.com) 38
Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios chief, Matt Booty, was encouraging Xbox CFO Tim Stuart to spend big money on acquiring game content in 2019 to set the company up to battle Sony in subscriptions. From a report: The revelation comes in an email thread that's part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing. "We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business," said Booty in a December 2019 email, referencing spending $2 billion or $3 billion in 2020 to avoid competitors getting ahead in content at a later date.
"It is practically impossible for anyone to start a new video streaming service at scale at this point," said Booty, referencing competitors like Google, Amazon, and Sony. Booty described content as a moat and that only Sony could really compete with Xbox Game Pass: "In games, Google is 3 to 4 years away from being able to have a studio up and running. Amazon has shown no ability to execute on game content. Content is the one moat that we have, in terms of a catalog that runs on current devices and capability to create new. Sony is really the only other player who could compete with Game Pass and we have a 2 year and 10 million subs lead."
Microsoft argues the email is old and that it never pursued such a strategy anyway.
"It is practically impossible for anyone to start a new video streaming service at scale at this point," said Booty, referencing competitors like Google, Amazon, and Sony. Booty described content as a moat and that only Sony could really compete with Xbox Game Pass: "In games, Google is 3 to 4 years away from being able to have a studio up and running. Amazon has shown no ability to execute on game content. Content is the one moat that we have, in terms of a catalog that runs on current devices and capability to create new. Sony is really the only other player who could compete with Game Pass and we have a 2 year and 10 million subs lead."
Microsoft argues the email is old and that it never pursued such a strategy anyway.
MSame as it ever was (Score:4, Insightful)
That has always been MS's M.O. since they got big: subsidize the MS product until competition folds or delipidates due to lack of sales. They used it on Paradox, Delphi, Lotus 123, Quatro-Pro, OS/2, and countless others.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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> Both were dirty tricks, and neither had anything to do with outspending.
MS did subsides MS-Office for a while. I will agree that subsidizing isn't their only trick, though.
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Correction, "subsidize".
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hardware.
xbox has better hardware than sony.
check speed bench marks.
sony has just done a better job with their hardware.
if sony bought xbox.
ya
DR Dos (Score:1)
Re:DR Dos (Score:4, Informative)
I remember reading about an attorney that went to a computer store to get the latest version of DR-DOS for his business. The shop owner offered him MS-DOS. He didn't want MS-DOS. The store owner told him that they can't carry DR-DOS because Microsoft told them if the did, they couldn't carry any Microsoft products.
This kind of stuff is the reason I don't want MS to ever get a stranglehold on any other market.
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Too many people and companies love VSCode without thinking it through like you.
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I don't love it, but management doesn't trust OSS alternatives for various reasons.
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It's also Sony's MO. They push for exclusives and try to recoup the money out of "standards" and submarine patents. And we can all see the number of games that are "Timed Exclusive" to Playstation, not because they need to be (the devs are LITERALLY designing on PC hardware and then porting to whichever console anyways), but because Sony dumped bags of money onto a developer.
The original Playstation, Sony ran with after their Nintendo partnership fell through... but Sony also "just so happened" to have it
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I think his point was there aren't the huge porting efforts as there were in the past.
The original XBox ran on x86 whereas the PS2 ran on the custom Sony "Emotion" chip. Poerting between the two usually was an effort that involved a whole other studio and months of time.
I remember when the PC got a port of Final Fantasy 7, it had to be done by Eidos, have a custom sound driver installed and came like years after the initial release (to be fair it also got 3d acceleration so it looked better but sounded wor
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I remember when the PC got a port of Final Fantasy 7, it had to be done by Eidos, have a custom sound driver installed and came like years after the initial release (to be fair it also got 3d acceleration so it looked better but sounded worse due to using MIDI) and god knows what hacks they had to do to make it work.
It was also Glide only, so you had to have a voodoo. I remember, because after upgrading my rivatnt and voodoo2 to the first geforce, it looked like shit.
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PS2 had DVD, because Sony had a submarine patent.
PS2 had DVD because it launched right as DVDs were about to take off, and Sony saw the potential in one device that could play movies and games. DVD players were expensive then, so it made the PS2 an easy sell. They did have to eat a big loss per unit on the hardware, but it all paid off. Patents had nothing to do with it.
PS3 pushed Blu-Ray because Sony had a submarine patent.
It wasn't a patent issue. Sony owned Blu-Ray factories and was one of the biggest players in Blu-Ray. The extra storage was very useful on the PS3, and PS2 as a DVD player made a lot of sense. There were pretty obvious reasons to go with it. It didn't work out great in the end though, as Blu-Ray was too early in its life cycle and made the PS3 too expensive. PS3 really didn't sell until prices came way down.
PSP pushed those ludicrous, battery-power-devouring "UMD" cartridge-discs and ridiculously expensive Sony Memory Sticks instead of SD cards... because Sony wanted to push those formats in Japan.
Mini-discs for a portable was the dream for a long time. The GameCube used mini-DVDs because Nintendo thought they'd be able to release a portable version a few years later, but eventually they realized it wouldn't work. Sony eventually tried mini-discs and got mixed results.
I don't know much about the memory sticks on PSP. Could very well just be a "we want to push Sony products" thing. The custom memory on the Vita was because the business model was to sell the Vita at a loss and make it up with overpriced storage. That didn't work out well.
Well, Duh! (Score:3)
It's Microsoft. What did anyone expect? Gates may have gone to pasture and decided to spend his filthy lucre to buy himself a better reputation. Ballmer may not be jumping around and throwing stuff like a rabid gorilla on PCP anymore. But it's still Microsoft. It's still the house that Gates and Ballmer built. The leopard doesn't change its spots. It just hires a PR staff and, unlike Musk's, listens to what they say.
Of Course (Score:4, Insightful)
Innovation is literally the term Microsoft coined (Score:1)
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
They're pursuing it RIGHT NOW (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a key part of what the Activision acquisition is about!
This is why I think Sony and Nintendo should pursue a very nasty policy toward Microsoft before regulators:
"You want to buy Activision? Fine, you're a software company. Then port Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty in perpetuity to Playstation and Switch."
I mean what could Microsoft execs even say against that to their shareholders? No, we don't want to sell Halo, Gears of War, CoD, etc. to users of much bigger platforms and roll around in cash like filthy pigs?
More importantly... (Score:2)
Then port Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty in perpetuity to Playstation and Switch."
Would mean a lot more if they were made to port Starfield [xbox.com] to other platforms... buying Bethesda was about stopping that game from reaching the PS5.
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This one looks pretty awesome... (Score:1)
After Fallout 76 (and even Fallout 4 to a lesser extent) I'm considerably less excited about Starfield.
I felt the same way but after the long preview video they did showing all kinds of gameplay, I think they have a real winner. It has a ton of flexibility and story it seems like, and a giant range of worlds.
Probably is best to buy it on a PC if you can though, and I'm sure you are right about it being buggy at launch.
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That's a key part of what the Activision acquisition is about!
This is why I think Sony and Nintendo should pursue a very nasty policy toward Microsoft before regulators:
Sorry but hell-the-fuck-no. Sony is the fucking worst in this case. You've fallen for the bait, you've gotten angry at one line in the the story. If anything has come out of the FTC hearing it is that Microsoft is an absolute underdog in this case, the company with lots of money who has *not* engaged in anticompetitive behaviour, even while their competitors (the ones you support) do precisely that.
"You want to buy Activision? Fine, you're a software company. Then port Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty in perpetuity to Playstation and Switch."
Are you asking for the court to legally get your tenant to support your rent seeking? Sony charge a ridiculous
Re:So what? Seriously. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So what? Seriously. (Score:4, Funny)
If you're right, and I'm being obtuse, I'd be acutely aware of it.
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I'm sorry, but do you realize this is exactly the kind of manipulation that they are trying by buying Activision Blizzard? Or are you being intentionally obtuse?
I honestly wonder why you would pick sides in this case. Microsoft is quite clear that they have no intention of locking Activision's primary asset away from the purchase. Unlike say Sony who just flat out come out with a wheel barrow of money and say "baby, you can have all this if your game just doesn't end up on xbox and PC".
This isn't pot calling kettle black. It's kettle calling kettle black. Everyone is an arsehole here, the Japanese one just happens to be especially big.
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Didn't translate into policy or action at all - why would anybody give a crap about it?
Only if you ignore the Activision Blizzard $7.5B acquisition as part of the policy. The email advocated spending up to $3B. That's like Brexiteers advocating to control immigration and trade with hard borders with the EU--except not a border with Ireland, the only EU country that has a land border with the UK.
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THIS ^
This stuff comes out and people who want to like to go 'Ohh wow see there" about it but its nothing. As you say there is zero evidence it was ever translated into any sort of policy or instruction. Its not a crime to have have ideas.
Its not even a crime to have criminal ideas. Its why you have a legal department, and compliance officers etc, so other executives who are not legal and regulator experts can ask them "Hey can we do this?" as long as they accept the answer "no, that would be tortious in
Re:So what? Seriously. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is evidence of antitrust activity, that's what.
It's not bluster, it's the word of a company's executives on corporate intention/vision.
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So, everything an executive puts in any email, no matter how limited the audience, however transitory, is proof of intent? That's unreasonable. That email was one exec saying to another, "I think we oughtta." And then they didn't.
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I see nothing concerning there.
I see something bad. Today's hearing has been a torrent of evidence of Sony acting like utter ****s in the industry. We have seen direct evidence that Sony wait to see if a game is likely to be popular and then write blank checks to studios to not publish on other platforms. We even saw evidence of Microsoft's internal documents saying they didn't want to buy Bethesda (Zenimax) but were essentially forced to in order to prevent Sony from making Starfield (a widely anticipated game from a company with a long
Monopoly going to monopolize (Score:2)
Xbox: From First to Worst (Score:1)
Original Xbox guy here... Halo, MechAccault, KOTOR and Xbox Live was like an explosion on the scene. PS2 had horrid graphics by comparison. It was obvious Xbox was king of that generation. Xbox 360 kept it going with perfect - everything. Best exclusives, MassEffect, Gears of War, Kinect, and a better Xbox Live to boot.
Enter the Xbox One - the disaster MS has never recovered from. Full of Ads, UI that changed every 20 minutes for no real reason, a stupid 'record that' that took 30 seconds to even open,
Why wouldn't you? (Score:1)
It goes both ways (Score:2)
It should be no surprise that neither company actually likes each other.
This is what Sony's message on Xbox was:
(source: https [pushsquare.com]