asturur:

How many years star citizen is in development? will it ever be released or finished?

I think you got the name confused. This is in regards to Starfield, the new Space FPS rpg game that Bethesda has been working on. Same teams who made Fallout and Elder Scrolls.

schmidtbag:

In the grand scheme of things, I disagree. Without exclusives, what are we left with? Xbox and Playstation have been very similar in their specs for a decade (and they're basically just specialized PCs), as well as the Nintendo Switch and Nvidia Shield. The only really compelling reason to go from one platform to the other is the exclusive titles. You could argue "right, so titles are arbitrarily incompatible" but if they were compatible then that would basically just eliminate whoever has the worst or most expensive hardware. That means a reduction in competition. When that happens, everyone loses. In fact, the underlying issue of this acquisition is because of MS trying to undermine competition. So - while it is really annoying when games are incompatible because some guy behind a desk said so, if MS keeps up with these acquisitions, we might lose Playstation, and that's bad for all of us.

wow it's rare for me to so strongly disagree with you. eliminating exclusives means true competition, not less. there are many areas to compete in, from hardware, to gui, to user experience, to optimization. and it frees the game studios to compete at the best coding and gameplay. it would be little different from selling one gaming pc vs. another - which is VERY competitive or selling one game over another. it just means more choice for the end user

Sylencer:

One trend that needs to die is exclusive titles. Doesn't matter if pc or console.

Not going to happen, Sony and Nintendo would lose billions with this move!

tunejunky:

wow it's rare for me to so strongly disagree with you. eliminating exclusives means true competition, not less. there are many areas to compete in, from hardware, to gui, to user experience, to optimization. and it frees the game studios to compete at the best coding and gameplay. it would be little different from selling one gaming pc vs. another - which is VERY competitive or selling one game over another. it just means more choice for the end user

Depends on how you perceive the situation. In a world where exclusives don't exist, there would be competition but it would shift to a different level. In some cases that works out nicely, in other cases I'd argue it makes competition worse. The fact there are so many areas to compete in I would argue undermines both of our point, but if I may, let's analyze further using your example of gaming PCs: Many of the boutiques have thin profit margins. Many have gone under because of that, and they can't depend on another covid for a hefty sales boost. But even the best of the boutiques are often struggling, because you have giants like Alienware who make expensive but popular garbage. Because of the brand name and their global presence, they're a default choice for those who don't know better. There's no exclusivity in the gaming PC market, yet I wouldn't consider the competition healthier than Xbox vs PS (as platforms), which I find to be more evenly matched (the success between them varies depending on what metric you look at and when). When it comes to games, it gets a little more complicated since, as you pointed out, there's a lot of ways they can be competitive. I believe that if there were no exclusive titles, we would have a case of basically a bunch of indie titles and then a small group of giants that get all the attention (in the way Alienware does). Yes, there's theoretically potential for more competition, but I'm sure in practice, the competition wouldn't be particularly healthy. I think you could think of exclusive titles in the same way as militaries of similarly sized countries. Both countries are working against each other with obviously exclusive access to resources, yet they're both constantly trying to figure out how to make something better or can counteract the opponent. They have to be competitive or else they might get defeated. Direct competitors in business are similar. and that's why what MS is trying to do here with these acquisitions is a problem, because it's basically the equivalent of allying with an otherwise neutral country and effectively attaining their resources and knowledge. This disrupts the balance of competition.

H83:

Not going to happen, Sony and Nintendo would lose billions with this move!

Yeah but sales on the other platforms will make em also lots of millions

Go Indie games. That's where the fun is to be had.

FTC and other regulatory please bodies take note. This will happen again if the Activision deal gets approved. Microsoft is very slimy even when crafting the terms with the EU regulatory about making the games available on other platforms. It's very vague. And all off sudden the final notes is that Microsoft only has to make it available on the cloud for other platforms? really?? And it's very vague too.. Which cloud platform? Microsoft's game pass?? Which company benefits most from this? Righto... Microsoft I bet it be very easy for them to release game to game pass / xcloud.. No porting/optimization required.. But porting it to another platform? I bet they wouldn't.. just because they can choose not to.. (although it would also take them more effort) I know.. exclusivity is bad.. But what Microsoft is doing is just shifting the exclusivity from one platform to their own.. And it's way worse... Let's take Starfield as example.. Before MS acquired Bethestda: It was only going to be exclusive launch the PS5, but still will launch on other platforms later on.. After: It wont be released to PS5 at all (not that I care about Starfield) Thanks MS 🙂))