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Phil Spencer: "getting [acquiring] Nintendo would be a career moment for me"; Nintendo's future "exists off of their own hardware"
(www.resetera.com)
Archive link: https://archive.ph/NF2r0
At some point, getting Nintendo would be a career moment and I honestly believe a good move for both companies. It's just taking a long time for Nintendo to see that their future exists off of their own hardware. A long time.... :-)
I don't see that happening for Game Pass, but do you know which company has already displaced ownership for their subscription service? Nintendo.
Why wouldn't it happen for Game Pass? It's happened for every new service. Start them with a great deal to undermine all competition because you can eat the cost and they can't. When the competition dies, slowly start enshittifying it, until it's as bad or worse than the original. Arguably Microsoft is already starting that process by killing off the $1 demo.
Microsoft isn't going to pass up free money, and if anything this email conversation confirms that they're drooling, waiting for the "fuck them over the barrel" stage.
It's not happening for Game Pass because they're not in a position of strength to exploit. Nintendo is. Unity thought they were. Streaming video services all raised prices, and plenty of them are still offering value to customers at those prices, but I know that I cancelled two of mine in response; and streaming video services have at least four major players, which is more competition than the business they replaced (cable) ever saw. The $1 trial was always a teaser rate to show people the value they can get out of Game Pass. It's not for me, but the numbers make a lot of sense for a lot of people. Contrast that to Nintendo, who is in a position of strength, only offers their retro games for a subscription on their shitty hardware on their shitty emulators and sues everyone for offering them by other means, and I know which one I dislike more.
It's not happening for Game Pass right now. If Microsoft hoovered up Nintendo and all the other companies, leaving Game Pass with little competition, they'd flip in an instant. Then you'd have not only Nintendo games for an overpriced subscription, you'd have Nintendo and everything else Microsoft bought for an overpriced subscription, where Microsoft can do whatever they want because only they have the rights to those games.
I'm not arguing Nintendo's subscription services doesn't suck ass, I'm arguing that Microsoft would do the same thing if they got their mits on Nintendo's catalog, except potentially worse because they have more 'exclusive content' to lock-away in their garden and they can force their BS into Windows.
And if I had $100B, I'd buy Nintendo, but Microsoft can't buy out that much of the video game market either, especially after Activision got through by the skin of their teeth. Activision happened because Nintendo didn't.
Nintendo is bad for game ownership right now. Live service games like Diablo IV are bad for game ownership right now. I don't care what Game Pass might be one day. The second it becomes that, you can guarantee I'll turn on it.
I'm a Linux guy. I was fearful of this for a long time, but it didn't take, and Microsoft clearly abandoned that strategy of trying to make the Windows Store happen for games. Even Microsoft couldn't force you to give them a larger cut of the PC gaming pie. Right now, they're struggling to increase Game Pass numbers beyond their ~30M subscribers even after they've added numerous publishers and developers to their catalogue in perpetuity, because, to my surprise, people can do math. The ones that the math works out for is probably not much larger than that 30M.
Sony is in a dominant position in the market. Xbox doesn't threaten them hardly at all. Even Sony isn't keeping games entirely exclusive anymore, probably because enough people like me did the math and found out that 4 exclusive games isn't worth having a $500 machine collect dust next to our TVs, so now their games get PC ports. These business models only turn to shit if you let them. We can live without all of them, so they're all optional. Don't give them money when they offer a bad product, and we'll only get better products.