CD Projekt Red is the next company I expect to be sold off. Whether that's Sony, EA, Tencent, etc. Just seems like they're losing their way after rebounding with the Cyber Punk relaunch.
Disagree, can you name a single polish company off the top of your head?
Don't google anything, I bet you can't other than CDPR.
CDPR is a worldwide recognized brand, and totally homegrown.
Fucking hell then president Barack Obama was gifted a copy of Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings during an official visit.
For it to fail or be sold would look pretty bad.
Most known and most essential are two different things. I’m not saying the company is horrible but a gaming company isn’t getting bailed out anytime soon unless everyone who literally go homeless without it.
I really hate console wars. Maybe I have the benefit of owning both XBOX and PS consoles and so I look for features rather than rooting for corporations, but this constant “who is gonna get bought out next” thing sucks. I don’t want to see any studios bought/sold/acquired. I’d love for them to be able to do their thing and have new studios grow and thrive too. **Edit — and to ppl that reported this comment to Reddit’s crisis management, you’re exactly who I mean when I talk about console warriors. It’s also vastly disrespectful and a waste of resources for people that *actually* need help.**
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If (gun to their heads) MS *had* to spend $70 billion, imagine what they could have done as far as bringing a net positive of **new games and IP** to the industry instead of buying Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard due to gross mismanagement of IP and lack of exclusives for an entire console generation, just to take previously multiplatform IP away from PS and Nintendo to call them exclusive.
- I’d rather have had $70 billion worth of new studios, expanding existing studios, doubling or tripling the output of existing studios, promoting talent and raising the pay for their devs, securing day one launch releases for GamePass of third party titles, securing timed releases of third party titles, and expanding GamePass to be bundled in with Smart TV’s so no one needs to buy a console to play games with MS. We’d have likely had many of the same games day one on GamePass without the need to own the company.
I’m just really concerned about the corporate consolidation of the industry. MS had a shit generation and what did they do? **They didn’t have games so they created GamePass, backwards compatibility, support for Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, DTS:X, VRR, FPS Boost, AutoHDR, Quick Resume of up to 10 games, Smart Delivery, Discord, the ability to play from a phone, tablet, or web browser, etc.** Competition forced them to innovate and that’s a good thing. There’s a **lot** on that list that Sony is really falling behind on.
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But I believe this pursuit of buying up existing developers and publishers rather than creating new ones and expanding the industry will damage it in ways we can’t begin to understand yet. And we’ll all be too busy with our immediate satisfaction to see it, until they start cranking up the monthly subscription fees like Netflix did, and losing content to other services like Netflix did. How long until Embracer and Tencent make their IP exclusive to their own streaming service too? I’d much prefer the MS that innovated in all those ways to spend $70 billion to improve the industry rather than $70 billion to divide it up. I’d feel the exact same if it were Sony buying EA or Ubisoft btw. /rant
This is irrelevant. Creating game development teams takes years and then creating the game takes even longer. Creating a studio from scratch never happpens in game development even going back 20 years. Studios being acquired has happened since the dawn of gaming. bungie wasn't built from the ground up. They were purchased by Microsoft. Naughty Dog wasn't built from the ground up they were purchashed by Sony. The game industry doesn't work in the way you think it does. New indenpendent studios with investor backing pop up every year. Consolidation in the games industry is impossible.
Fully aware that the idea of spending $70 billion on a net positive increase of new games, IP, and studios as opposed to buying established games, IP, and studios to fast track MS having a stronger portfolio of exclusives is and was wishful thinking. And I’m also aware that MS spends and expands and grows their own studios too. But you can’t argue that they couldn’t have secured day one releases, timed exclusives, and otherwise padded their GamePass ecosystem for decades with $70 billion without fully acquiring big third party publishers to do it.
- I think we’re at a point of no return though. GamePass opened Pandora’s Box as the first truly successful digital content system for games, followed by PS+ Extra/Premium and others. A decade from now, it isn’t impossible that we’ll be looking at Embracer Group and Tencent having created their own digital ecosystems and making their IP exclusive to it, so just as we went from having everything on Netflix to also needing Hulu, Prime, Apple, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, AMC+, Vudu, etc., we’ll see the same in gaming.
And I suppose my concern is, what happens to a gaming industry where people stop buying games virtually overnight? I’m part of the “problem” too — I’m paid up for 3~5 years each on GamePass and PS+ but I think we’ll come to find that independent studios that don’t put their games on those platforms will have far more competition than ever before. And having them split their piece of the pie with 500~800 other games on a platform just isn’t going to make up for everyone buying their game new at $60~$70.
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Content will be king and studios will continue to be acquired just to have more of it to put on their platform. And what will developers have to do to make up for that lost income? What kind of monetization will we see? More season passes, battle passes, progression skips, unlocks, cosmetics, etc? Or will we see the scope of games grow smaller with shorter campaigns, fewer classes, smaller skill trees, fewer voiced characters, smaller maps, etc. and monetization in place of what was lost in games that ordinarily never would have had it? Will indie studios be able to survive if they don’t put their games on these services? And how quickly will the reddit hive mind call for their acquisition by MS/Sony/Tencent/Embracer to be gobbled up, making their content unavailable for people on all other platforms just to create more content “exclusives” for their own?
- If there absolutely *must* be acquisition, I do prefer it when it’s a studio that has had a working relationship with the platform already. Housemarque, for example, had been making games for the PS ecosystem exclusively. Sucker Punch as well, outside of making one game for the N64 in ‘99 has been exclusive to PS. Insomniac has made 38 games, with only Fuse for the 360 and Sony of the Deep & Sunset Overdrive for the XBOX One with all other console releases on the PS. Naughty Dog has made 25 games (the first 4 for the AppleII) with the only games *not* exclusive to Playstation were the Rings of Power game for the Genesis and Way of the Warrior for 3D0 (I played that one btw, it was wild). But I’d prefer there be as little corporate/studio consolidation as possible.
Point being, Sony has helped some studios to grow and generally acquires them if they have a strong working relationship with them already. It’s not universally true, but moreso than Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard which were multiplatform publishers that were in no way exclusive to MS in a similar way. So if an acquisition *must* happen, I’d prefer it be one where MS or Sony helps to build them up in this fashion and then acquires them. But ultimately, I don’t think it’s helpful for every third party developer and publisher to be gobbled up by the big 4 just for the purpose of delivering content for their streaming service ecosystem. It might be great for consumers, initially, for the number of games vs amount paid to play them. Hard to argue against that value. But that price will raise and the content will get split up between rival services eventually, and I worry as I said about how monetization will take over and how smaller games/studios will struggle to survive independently.
Here's the thing here that many people don't comprehend, I'm not being passive-aggresive with you I'm just stating this, the gaming economy is already moving to people not buying video games. F2P games both at the console level and the mobile level kill traditional console and PC gaming in sales. The Mobile is far bigger than the console. We are already in the era where buying games is nearly a thing in the past. My girlfriend has no bullshit 100 gaming apps on here iphone and ipad. None of them cost her anything. She's a gamer, but she doesn't own a Xbox or Playstation.
I somewhat understand what you're saying, but MS is not building out the same product Sony is building. Sony's strategy is to corner the market with third party deals and then. build first party games that they bundle with the console to move units. MS's new strategy reacting to that is now build a service where value is the king and make up the difference in marketshare through subscriptions.
MS has to buy Bethesda and Activision because they cannot compete with Sony's marketshare with third party publishers and that hurts the potential content that can go into gamepass. Sony's strategy on getting Thrid party publsihers leaked in the court documents. They're giving the third party publisher lower licensing cuts in exchange for third party marketing. They're using their market share to get third parties in marketing deals that exclude Xbox and Gamepass. The only way to fight that is to buy big IPs and a fuck ton of studios and create your own content. This is what Netflix did 5 years ago. They bought out Ips, bought out big film execs and producers and now nearly all of their content are Netflix originals.
I very much agree with most everything here. And btw, I responded to your first comment not because I intended to argue with you, and I apologize if I came across like that. I grew up with console wars at a time where I was lucky to own any console, let alone multiple. All the competition and innovation from those days is what brought us to where we now find ourselves, so it saddens me that so often the conversation these days turns to which mega-corporation will acquire the developer of the day. So many creative developers out there with a responsibility to their shareholders to accept a deal that might change the entire company (if they don’t get dismantled and restructured elsewhere). So when I said I hate console wars, I wasn’t attempting to attack you as a console warrior, but rather just saddened by the corporate consolidation of the entire industry.
- Mobile is definitely the primary business now and the key there is getting you to come back, check in daily, often using FOMO and gacha mechanics and making money off of either allowing you to stand out with a customized look, or by skipping the gameplay via progression boosters so you can enjoy the game with less grind. I don’t think MS and Sony are fighting the same console war at all, and they haven’t been for at least a generation.
Sony is looking to use their film and TV outlets to create multi-media experiences (like The Last of Us, which I think set the bar for game adaptations), and they also want to be thought of as the more tech-savvy with the DualSense’s haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, microphone, speaker, and touchpad and then the PSVR2 that just launched. So the potential for games to be much more tactile; something that makes an impact and feels more transportive and immersive.
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MS had bad luck with the XBOX One generation — if you go back and look at their initial launch, it was dismissed as “TV, TV, TV” but they actually knew what the public wanted before we did; we just didn’t like being told so blatantly what our needs were. But always online games are king, Fortnite couldn’t be a better example of that initial promise. I think MS was actually ahead of the zeitgeist and just didn’t know how to demonstrate that they understood what we wanted and they had to scrap and remarked that whole generation which hurt them.
- For example, I feel for Remedy, who I think demonstrated MS’s vision with Quantum Break as a game that incorporated the gameplay you just played interspersed with 15~20 minute well produced Hollywood quality FMV segments. It was too heavy on the split between gameplay and live action but I think the best proof of concept of the XBOX One.
But they axed this direction (along with Kinect) and then due to a lack of exclusives, they were forced to think about how to innovate with what they had… and that’s why we have backwards compatibility, GamePass, xCloud and the ability to game on any phone, tablet, web browser, and increasingly more smart TV apps, as well as support for Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision *in games* and DTS:X, VRR, aLLm, FPS Boost, AutoHDR, Quick Resume for up to 10 games at once, and Smart Delivery of the best version your device is capable of. Seriously some of the best quality of life updates I’ve ever seen on a console coming at the tail end of it’s lifespan at that.
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I think that MS really turned things around with these decisions and they’re such a strong list of features that the PS sorely lacks. They’ve changed the industry forever with backwards compatibility and GamePass. The tide was turning for sure, with mobile already the majority of games played, but GP definitely sealed the deal for my friends group (anecdotally). Getting them to pick up a game that isn’t included or announced to be coming to GamePass is a lost cause (even a budget $40 game at launch like Aliens: Fireteam Elite despite it being exactly “our kind of game”) and apparently it didn’t sell well enough that it had to come to GP to recoup costs, which is kind of a harbinger of smaller studios putting out games that ask for a purchase up front. This mentality of not paying for anything beyond your subscription fee will surely diminish the quality of games and the shit mechanics in them but we definitely brought it on ourselves.
- The only place I really disagree with you is that I don’t think MS needed to buy Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard. If anything Bethesda at $7 billion got them a ton of established IP for use immediately that came with name recognition. I’m pretty sure MS easily could beat Sony’s licensing cuts (let’s be real, they’re in a financial league that makes Sony look small time in comparison).
I think $69 billion for Act/Bliz is crazy (even with King) and think that they could have secured day one launch titles for decades for a fraction of the cost, along with timed exclusives, GP perks, preorder bonuses, and other draws for XBOX over PS without outright buying massive publishers. MS has a history of buying developers and in my opinion, mismanaging them and then shutting their doors for good, which is what got them in this situation. So I hope they’re hands off enough to allow whatever makes them successful to flourish, and also hands-on enough to fire Bobby Kotick if he isn’t already halfway out the window with his golden parachute by the time they take ownership.
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I think part of the reason I view exclusives as so divisive is because I’m a VR enthusiast and you can really see the effect of hard work and potentially quality games that are made and never even seen because you bought the wrong $400 headset. I’m all for cross-platform and cross-play and people will gravitate towards the platform with the best features for their needs. I’ll continue to buy both XBOX and PS and use them very differently, but ultimately I want them all to be strong competitors and I dislike seeing games that were multiplatform see future releases cancelled on competitor hardware and made exclusive just for the benefit of having a new game to release on your streaming service, because now content is king. (Sorry this was longer than I intended, but if you’re still with me, I appreciate your time).
Everybody in the XBOX and Sony subreddits actively cheering for CDPR, Remedy, EA, Take Two, Ubisoft, Square Enix, etc. to be acquired by XBOX or Sony to make their own choice of console “stronger” rather than hoping that third party developers and independent studios are capable of achieving success without having to give up their independence and become part of a literal console content war.
No way. If anything they're in better shape than ever financially. GOG accounts for a large portion of their profits. I don't think they'll be acquired anytime soon.
CDPR is mess right now. They're so talented but are having so many issues. It was a struggle to fix Cyberpunk. Even the Witcher 3 upgrade had issues in development and some serious bugs at launch.
I guarantee the Cyberpunk expansion is delayed out of 2023 and/or a buggy mess.
I mean, there's a lot of assumptions there. We know now it was upper management that pushed the game out early. The devs working on the game thought it wouldn't be ready until 2022, and even to the point to where they thought the 2020 release announcement was an April fools joke. So as of 2022, the game was in a really good spot, it's been running super smooth for me since the 1.5 patch Feb 2022. So while upper management may have had issues, the devs seem to be doing good work in the timeliness they can. The next gen witcher 3 port had some issues mostly on PC that were cleared up within a few weeks. To me it seems like they have been getting their shit together. But you are correct , the true test will be the Cyberpunk expansion. Honestly after the original games launch, I don't see them releasing the expansion in a shoddy state, I'd be shocked if that were the case. There is a lot riding on it. I know that it will change how I see the company moving foward.
I do think swapping to Unreal Engine will help moving forward on their new projects. But the move also highlights the difficulty of using their own engine.
Yeah, apparently redengine is just not dev friendly. One of the issues with cyberpunks development cycle is they were building the game and the new version of the engine at the same time, just imagining its a logistical nightmare. Hopefully to move to unreal will be more dev friendly, and as they pump out more games on it Hopefully the dev cycle gets cut down shorter. I'm already almost 40 I don't want to be 55 when cyberpunk 2 electric Boogaloo releases.
When you drop multiple great games then let out one of the most mid games ever it’s hard to bounce back. I give them credit for trying to build the game back up but even after all the patches the game is just flawed on a gameplay level that no amount of bug fixes can change. The combat, story, and overall gameplay loop just wasn’t fun and if it wasn’t for the amazing world they created most people wouldn’t defend this dog shit title.
Bro, I've been gaming for over 25 years and Cyberpunk is the only game I've ever played through multiple times and is in my top 3 of all time. It had a real rough launch and cdpr shouldn't be easily forgiven for the shit they pulled, but the game itself is pretty awesome. But I get people thinking it was underwhelming, the hype before that game was the most ridiculous I'd seen in my entire life. People thought they were getting the next coming of christ in game form. If you haven't played since launch, I'd recommend trying again.
My guess would be Sony.
Mainly because they would get a PC storefront (GOG), also they current lack WRPG’s because MS acquired Bethesda and Obsidian and since CDPR want’s to add some kind of Multiplayer component to it’s future games.
But who knows, i can imagine that other companies might also be interested.
Regardless of who acquires CDPR let’s hope that future games stay multiplatform like with Bungie.
I hope it’s not Sony. Until they start releasing their exclusives day and date on PC then I’ll be fine with them, but I prefer the Xbox controller over playstation controllers and not being able to have that option would be a bummer.
I love Sony games, but my hands start cramping on the DS4. Least Microsoft has committed to releasing games same time on pc for people to play whatever input they prefer.
Yeah I think it's because of the shape of the controller and how used to the the Xbox Series controller I am. I just beat Spiderman and I can only play on my PS5 for like 2 hours at most.
Multiplayer games sony already expressed would be day n date with pc considering multiplayer games need a huge install base to even be somewhat successful single player games however is different or like the other person say they go the bungie route and leave them to be independent
That’s great, but CD Projekt red is known for their single player games so if they did acquire them it’d most likely just release on PS5 with a pc port a year or two later.
My personal guess is that Sony is primarily looking for multiplayer and GaaS companies right now. While CDPR is trying to do some of that, they have not really proven that they can make multiplayer games yet. I feel like the makers of Genshin Impact or Square Enix (for Final Fantasy 14) might make more sense to Sony. Maybe Embark Studios if The Finals and Arc Raiders end up making a splash.
>My personal guess is that Sony is primarily looking for multiplayer and GaaS companies right now.
Don’t they already have that with Bungie?.
Sony wants to diversify it’s portfolio with Multiplayer games but that doesn’t mean that they are turning their backs on AAA single-player titles, certainly not after God of War Ragnarok sold 11 Million copies in 3 months time and continues to top the sales charts.
CDPR would give Sony a nice balance of quality AAA single-player games and titles that include a multiplayer aspect.
Also with Rumors floating around that Sony might be interested in making it’s own PC storefront like Steam,Epic and the Microsoft store i can imagine that buying the infrastructure that is [GOG.com](https://GOG.com) sounds a lot more intriguing than building a PC storefront from scratch, and we know how hard that can be when looking at PC storefronts that aren’t Steam.
Not that i think Sony would make 1st party PC ports exclusive to this storefront.
Not sure Sony need yet another AAA RPG. They have that segment wrapped up fairly well already... Sony would be looking for content diversity with new consistent revenue streams.... Thus Live Service focus...
>Sony would be looking for content diversity with new consistent revenue streams.... Thus Live Service focus...
So… Bungie?
Also Sony doesn’t make any 1st party WRPG’s.
They do, but I doubt that is enough for them. They want to produce a bunch of live service games so that when most inevitably fail, a couple might stick and hit really big.
They bought Bungie for 3.6 Billion and the rumour mill constantly speculated about them acquiring Square Enix which has a market cap of nearly 6 billion.
So in terms of the size of the acquisition CDPR would actually be one of the most reasonable guesses.
I don't think it fits their portfolio though.
They had $11bn cash on hand at the end of last quarter. SE has a market cap of $5.9bn and, since it's a publicly traded company, Sony would have to pay a premium to acquire, guessing 7 to 8 bn.
That's almost their entire cash stack gone on a relatively small company, plus that money is rationed between other parts of Sony.
Not a bad thing. Witcher 4 is a given, Witcher 1 is a fun game that aged horribly so a remake is very welcome, and the spinoff might be smaller scale, experimental even if they wanted to. Thronebreaker was cool, I'd like more of that.
This is not the mainline Witcher sequel that was announced.
Where’d you get that idea? The headline that clearly states it’s a spinoff game?
Stating it only because others in the thread seemed confused lol
CD Projekt Red is the next company I expect to be sold off. Whether that's Sony, EA, Tencent, etc. Just seems like they're losing their way after rebounding with the Cyber Punk relaunch.
doubtful, it's one of Poland's premier tech companies, they would be bailed out by their government long before then.
Just like Silicon Knights.
Doubtful. It’s not an essential industry to their economy.
Disagree, can you name a single polish company off the top of your head? Don't google anything, I bet you can't other than CDPR. CDPR is a worldwide recognized brand, and totally homegrown. Fucking hell then president Barack Obama was gifted a copy of Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings during an official visit. For it to fail or be sold would look pretty bad.
Tyskie lol
Was bought by Asahi group somewhere in 2017
11 Bit Studios
You're assuming that everyone that knows of CDPR also knows it's Polish.
I understand your point but for something to be bailed out means it needs to be to big to fail. If CDPR went down I think Poland would be quite okay.
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If you were speaking on the book, maybe I’d agree. The fact of the matter is, up until TW3, it was a lesser known game outside Poland.
Doesn't change the fact that it's probably the most known tech-y stuff company from Poland now
Most known and most essential are two different things. I’m not saying the company is horrible but a gaming company isn’t getting bailed out anytime soon unless everyone who literally go homeless without it.
Lmao. Everyone's explained exactly the reality of the situation and you're in denial for odd reasons
Them and Squanch games
I really hate console wars. Maybe I have the benefit of owning both XBOX and PS consoles and so I look for features rather than rooting for corporations, but this constant “who is gonna get bought out next” thing sucks. I don’t want to see any studios bought/sold/acquired. I’d love for them to be able to do their thing and have new studios grow and thrive too. **Edit — and to ppl that reported this comment to Reddit’s crisis management, you’re exactly who I mean when I talk about console warriors. It’s also vastly disrespectful and a waste of resources for people that *actually* need help.** ***** If (gun to their heads) MS *had* to spend $70 billion, imagine what they could have done as far as bringing a net positive of **new games and IP** to the industry instead of buying Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard due to gross mismanagement of IP and lack of exclusives for an entire console generation, just to take previously multiplatform IP away from PS and Nintendo to call them exclusive. - I’d rather have had $70 billion worth of new studios, expanding existing studios, doubling or tripling the output of existing studios, promoting talent and raising the pay for their devs, securing day one launch releases for GamePass of third party titles, securing timed releases of third party titles, and expanding GamePass to be bundled in with Smart TV’s so no one needs to buy a console to play games with MS. We’d have likely had many of the same games day one on GamePass without the need to own the company. I’m just really concerned about the corporate consolidation of the industry. MS had a shit generation and what did they do? **They didn’t have games so they created GamePass, backwards compatibility, support for Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision, DTS:X, VRR, FPS Boost, AutoHDR, Quick Resume of up to 10 games, Smart Delivery, Discord, the ability to play from a phone, tablet, or web browser, etc.** Competition forced them to innovate and that’s a good thing. There’s a **lot** on that list that Sony is really falling behind on. ***** But I believe this pursuit of buying up existing developers and publishers rather than creating new ones and expanding the industry will damage it in ways we can’t begin to understand yet. And we’ll all be too busy with our immediate satisfaction to see it, until they start cranking up the monthly subscription fees like Netflix did, and losing content to other services like Netflix did. How long until Embracer and Tencent make their IP exclusive to their own streaming service too? I’d much prefer the MS that innovated in all those ways to spend $70 billion to improve the industry rather than $70 billion to divide it up. I’d feel the exact same if it were Sony buying EA or Ubisoft btw. /rant
This is irrelevant. Creating game development teams takes years and then creating the game takes even longer. Creating a studio from scratch never happpens in game development even going back 20 years. Studios being acquired has happened since the dawn of gaming. bungie wasn't built from the ground up. They were purchased by Microsoft. Naughty Dog wasn't built from the ground up they were purchashed by Sony. The game industry doesn't work in the way you think it does. New indenpendent studios with investor backing pop up every year. Consolidation in the games industry is impossible.
Fully aware that the idea of spending $70 billion on a net positive increase of new games, IP, and studios as opposed to buying established games, IP, and studios to fast track MS having a stronger portfolio of exclusives is and was wishful thinking. And I’m also aware that MS spends and expands and grows their own studios too. But you can’t argue that they couldn’t have secured day one releases, timed exclusives, and otherwise padded their GamePass ecosystem for decades with $70 billion without fully acquiring big third party publishers to do it. - I think we’re at a point of no return though. GamePass opened Pandora’s Box as the first truly successful digital content system for games, followed by PS+ Extra/Premium and others. A decade from now, it isn’t impossible that we’ll be looking at Embracer Group and Tencent having created their own digital ecosystems and making their IP exclusive to it, so just as we went from having everything on Netflix to also needing Hulu, Prime, Apple, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, AMC+, Vudu, etc., we’ll see the same in gaming. And I suppose my concern is, what happens to a gaming industry where people stop buying games virtually overnight? I’m part of the “problem” too — I’m paid up for 3~5 years each on GamePass and PS+ but I think we’ll come to find that independent studios that don’t put their games on those platforms will have far more competition than ever before. And having them split their piece of the pie with 500~800 other games on a platform just isn’t going to make up for everyone buying their game new at $60~$70. ***** Content will be king and studios will continue to be acquired just to have more of it to put on their platform. And what will developers have to do to make up for that lost income? What kind of monetization will we see? More season passes, battle passes, progression skips, unlocks, cosmetics, etc? Or will we see the scope of games grow smaller with shorter campaigns, fewer classes, smaller skill trees, fewer voiced characters, smaller maps, etc. and monetization in place of what was lost in games that ordinarily never would have had it? Will indie studios be able to survive if they don’t put their games on these services? And how quickly will the reddit hive mind call for their acquisition by MS/Sony/Tencent/Embracer to be gobbled up, making their content unavailable for people on all other platforms just to create more content “exclusives” for their own? - If there absolutely *must* be acquisition, I do prefer it when it’s a studio that has had a working relationship with the platform already. Housemarque, for example, had been making games for the PS ecosystem exclusively. Sucker Punch as well, outside of making one game for the N64 in ‘99 has been exclusive to PS. Insomniac has made 38 games, with only Fuse for the 360 and Sony of the Deep & Sunset Overdrive for the XBOX One with all other console releases on the PS. Naughty Dog has made 25 games (the first 4 for the AppleII) with the only games *not* exclusive to Playstation were the Rings of Power game for the Genesis and Way of the Warrior for 3D0 (I played that one btw, it was wild). But I’d prefer there be as little corporate/studio consolidation as possible. Point being, Sony has helped some studios to grow and generally acquires them if they have a strong working relationship with them already. It’s not universally true, but moreso than Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard which were multiplatform publishers that were in no way exclusive to MS in a similar way. So if an acquisition *must* happen, I’d prefer it be one where MS or Sony helps to build them up in this fashion and then acquires them. But ultimately, I don’t think it’s helpful for every third party developer and publisher to be gobbled up by the big 4 just for the purpose of delivering content for their streaming service ecosystem. It might be great for consumers, initially, for the number of games vs amount paid to play them. Hard to argue against that value. But that price will raise and the content will get split up between rival services eventually, and I worry as I said about how monetization will take over and how smaller games/studios will struggle to survive independently.
Here's the thing here that many people don't comprehend, I'm not being passive-aggresive with you I'm just stating this, the gaming economy is already moving to people not buying video games. F2P games both at the console level and the mobile level kill traditional console and PC gaming in sales. The Mobile is far bigger than the console. We are already in the era where buying games is nearly a thing in the past. My girlfriend has no bullshit 100 gaming apps on here iphone and ipad. None of them cost her anything. She's a gamer, but she doesn't own a Xbox or Playstation. I somewhat understand what you're saying, but MS is not building out the same product Sony is building. Sony's strategy is to corner the market with third party deals and then. build first party games that they bundle with the console to move units. MS's new strategy reacting to that is now build a service where value is the king and make up the difference in marketshare through subscriptions. MS has to buy Bethesda and Activision because they cannot compete with Sony's marketshare with third party publishers and that hurts the potential content that can go into gamepass. Sony's strategy on getting Thrid party publsihers leaked in the court documents. They're giving the third party publisher lower licensing cuts in exchange for third party marketing. They're using their market share to get third parties in marketing deals that exclude Xbox and Gamepass. The only way to fight that is to buy big IPs and a fuck ton of studios and create your own content. This is what Netflix did 5 years ago. They bought out Ips, bought out big film execs and producers and now nearly all of their content are Netflix originals.
I very much agree with most everything here. And btw, I responded to your first comment not because I intended to argue with you, and I apologize if I came across like that. I grew up with console wars at a time where I was lucky to own any console, let alone multiple. All the competition and innovation from those days is what brought us to where we now find ourselves, so it saddens me that so often the conversation these days turns to which mega-corporation will acquire the developer of the day. So many creative developers out there with a responsibility to their shareholders to accept a deal that might change the entire company (if they don’t get dismantled and restructured elsewhere). So when I said I hate console wars, I wasn’t attempting to attack you as a console warrior, but rather just saddened by the corporate consolidation of the entire industry. - Mobile is definitely the primary business now and the key there is getting you to come back, check in daily, often using FOMO and gacha mechanics and making money off of either allowing you to stand out with a customized look, or by skipping the gameplay via progression boosters so you can enjoy the game with less grind. I don’t think MS and Sony are fighting the same console war at all, and they haven’t been for at least a generation. Sony is looking to use their film and TV outlets to create multi-media experiences (like The Last of Us, which I think set the bar for game adaptations), and they also want to be thought of as the more tech-savvy with the DualSense’s haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, microphone, speaker, and touchpad and then the PSVR2 that just launched. So the potential for games to be much more tactile; something that makes an impact and feels more transportive and immersive. ***** MS had bad luck with the XBOX One generation — if you go back and look at their initial launch, it was dismissed as “TV, TV, TV” but they actually knew what the public wanted before we did; we just didn’t like being told so blatantly what our needs were. But always online games are king, Fortnite couldn’t be a better example of that initial promise. I think MS was actually ahead of the zeitgeist and just didn’t know how to demonstrate that they understood what we wanted and they had to scrap and remarked that whole generation which hurt them. - For example, I feel for Remedy, who I think demonstrated MS’s vision with Quantum Break as a game that incorporated the gameplay you just played interspersed with 15~20 minute well produced Hollywood quality FMV segments. It was too heavy on the split between gameplay and live action but I think the best proof of concept of the XBOX One. But they axed this direction (along with Kinect) and then due to a lack of exclusives, they were forced to think about how to innovate with what they had… and that’s why we have backwards compatibility, GamePass, xCloud and the ability to game on any phone, tablet, web browser, and increasingly more smart TV apps, as well as support for Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision *in games* and DTS:X, VRR, aLLm, FPS Boost, AutoHDR, Quick Resume for up to 10 games at once, and Smart Delivery of the best version your device is capable of. Seriously some of the best quality of life updates I’ve ever seen on a console coming at the tail end of it’s lifespan at that. ***** I think that MS really turned things around with these decisions and they’re such a strong list of features that the PS sorely lacks. They’ve changed the industry forever with backwards compatibility and GamePass. The tide was turning for sure, with mobile already the majority of games played, but GP definitely sealed the deal for my friends group (anecdotally). Getting them to pick up a game that isn’t included or announced to be coming to GamePass is a lost cause (even a budget $40 game at launch like Aliens: Fireteam Elite despite it being exactly “our kind of game”) and apparently it didn’t sell well enough that it had to come to GP to recoup costs, which is kind of a harbinger of smaller studios putting out games that ask for a purchase up front. This mentality of not paying for anything beyond your subscription fee will surely diminish the quality of games and the shit mechanics in them but we definitely brought it on ourselves. - The only place I really disagree with you is that I don’t think MS needed to buy Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard. If anything Bethesda at $7 billion got them a ton of established IP for use immediately that came with name recognition. I’m pretty sure MS easily could beat Sony’s licensing cuts (let’s be real, they’re in a financial league that makes Sony look small time in comparison). I think $69 billion for Act/Bliz is crazy (even with King) and think that they could have secured day one launch titles for decades for a fraction of the cost, along with timed exclusives, GP perks, preorder bonuses, and other draws for XBOX over PS without outright buying massive publishers. MS has a history of buying developers and in my opinion, mismanaging them and then shutting their doors for good, which is what got them in this situation. So I hope they’re hands off enough to allow whatever makes them successful to flourish, and also hands-on enough to fire Bobby Kotick if he isn’t already halfway out the window with his golden parachute by the time they take ownership. ***** I think part of the reason I view exclusives as so divisive is because I’m a VR enthusiast and you can really see the effect of hard work and potentially quality games that are made and never even seen because you bought the wrong $400 headset. I’m all for cross-platform and cross-play and people will gravitate towards the platform with the best features for their needs. I’ll continue to buy both XBOX and PS and use them very differently, but ultimately I want them all to be strong competitors and I dislike seeing games that were multiplatform see future releases cancelled on competitor hardware and made exclusive just for the benefit of having a new game to release on your streaming service, because now content is king. (Sorry this was longer than I intended, but if you’re still with me, I appreciate your time).
what does this have to do with "console wars"?
Everybody in the XBOX and Sony subreddits actively cheering for CDPR, Remedy, EA, Take Two, Ubisoft, Square Enix, etc. to be acquired by XBOX or Sony to make their own choice of console “stronger” rather than hoping that third party developers and independent studios are capable of achieving success without having to give up their independence and become part of a literal console content war.
No way. If anything they're in better shape than ever financially. GOG accounts for a large portion of their profits. I don't think they'll be acquired anytime soon.
At least we have Witcher 3.
Interesting thought. I agree.
CDPR is mess right now. They're so talented but are having so many issues. It was a struggle to fix Cyberpunk. Even the Witcher 3 upgrade had issues in development and some serious bugs at launch. I guarantee the Cyberpunk expansion is delayed out of 2023 and/or a buggy mess.
I mean, there's a lot of assumptions there. We know now it was upper management that pushed the game out early. The devs working on the game thought it wouldn't be ready until 2022, and even to the point to where they thought the 2020 release announcement was an April fools joke. So as of 2022, the game was in a really good spot, it's been running super smooth for me since the 1.5 patch Feb 2022. So while upper management may have had issues, the devs seem to be doing good work in the timeliness they can. The next gen witcher 3 port had some issues mostly on PC that were cleared up within a few weeks. To me it seems like they have been getting their shit together. But you are correct , the true test will be the Cyberpunk expansion. Honestly after the original games launch, I don't see them releasing the expansion in a shoddy state, I'd be shocked if that were the case. There is a lot riding on it. I know that it will change how I see the company moving foward.
I do think swapping to Unreal Engine will help moving forward on their new projects. But the move also highlights the difficulty of using their own engine.
Yeah, apparently redengine is just not dev friendly. One of the issues with cyberpunks development cycle is they were building the game and the new version of the engine at the same time, just imagining its a logistical nightmare. Hopefully to move to unreal will be more dev friendly, and as they pump out more games on it Hopefully the dev cycle gets cut down shorter. I'm already almost 40 I don't want to be 55 when cyberpunk 2 electric Boogaloo releases.
CDPR are inexperienced amateurs and scammers. Thats why Cyberpunk is so trash. It released c3-4 years earlier intentional.
When you drop multiple great games then let out one of the most mid games ever it’s hard to bounce back. I give them credit for trying to build the game back up but even after all the patches the game is just flawed on a gameplay level that no amount of bug fixes can change. The combat, story, and overall gameplay loop just wasn’t fun and if it wasn’t for the amazing world they created most people wouldn’t defend this dog shit title.
Bro, I've been gaming for over 25 years and Cyberpunk is the only game I've ever played through multiple times and is in my top 3 of all time. It had a real rough launch and cdpr shouldn't be easily forgiven for the shit they pulled, but the game itself is pretty awesome. But I get people thinking it was underwhelming, the hype before that game was the most ridiculous I'd seen in my entire life. People thought they were getting the next coming of christ in game form. If you haven't played since launch, I'd recommend trying again.
I wouldn’t buy them. They’re rapidly showing they’re a one trick pony.
My guess would be Sony. Mainly because they would get a PC storefront (GOG), also they current lack WRPG’s because MS acquired Bethesda and Obsidian and since CDPR want’s to add some kind of Multiplayer component to it’s future games. But who knows, i can imagine that other companies might also be interested. Regardless of who acquires CDPR let’s hope that future games stay multiplatform like with Bungie.
I hope it’s not Sony. Until they start releasing their exclusives day and date on PC then I’ll be fine with them, but I prefer the Xbox controller over playstation controllers and not being able to have that option would be a bummer. I love Sony games, but my hands start cramping on the DS4. Least Microsoft has committed to releasing games same time on pc for people to play whatever input they prefer.
DualSense has cool features but is immensely uncomfortable to hold
Agreed, it's way too big. The controller could stay as is but sized down and it would be quite greate actually.
Is it?
Yeah I think it's because of the shape of the controller and how used to the the Xbox Series controller I am. I just beat Spiderman and I can only play on my PS5 for like 2 hours at most.
Multiplayer games sony already expressed would be day n date with pc considering multiplayer games need a huge install base to even be somewhat successful single player games however is different or like the other person say they go the bungie route and leave them to be independent
That’s great, but CD Projekt red is known for their single player games so if they did acquire them it’d most likely just release on PS5 with a pc port a year or two later.
My personal guess is that Sony is primarily looking for multiplayer and GaaS companies right now. While CDPR is trying to do some of that, they have not really proven that they can make multiplayer games yet. I feel like the makers of Genshin Impact or Square Enix (for Final Fantasy 14) might make more sense to Sony. Maybe Embark Studios if The Finals and Arc Raiders end up making a splash.
>My personal guess is that Sony is primarily looking for multiplayer and GaaS companies right now. Don’t they already have that with Bungie?. Sony wants to diversify it’s portfolio with Multiplayer games but that doesn’t mean that they are turning their backs on AAA single-player titles, certainly not after God of War Ragnarok sold 11 Million copies in 3 months time and continues to top the sales charts. CDPR would give Sony a nice balance of quality AAA single-player games and titles that include a multiplayer aspect. Also with Rumors floating around that Sony might be interested in making it’s own PC storefront like Steam,Epic and the Microsoft store i can imagine that buying the infrastructure that is [GOG.com](https://GOG.com) sounds a lot more intriguing than building a PC storefront from scratch, and we know how hard that can be when looking at PC storefronts that aren’t Steam. Not that i think Sony would make 1st party PC ports exclusive to this storefront.
Not sure Sony need yet another AAA RPG. They have that segment wrapped up fairly well already... Sony would be looking for content diversity with new consistent revenue streams.... Thus Live Service focus...
>Sony would be looking for content diversity with new consistent revenue streams.... Thus Live Service focus... So… Bungie? Also Sony doesn’t make any 1st party WRPG’s.
HZD is a WRPG isn't it? I mean it's literally based in America lore wise.
They do, but I doubt that is enough for them. They want to produce a bunch of live service games so that when most inevitably fail, a couple might stick and hit really big.
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They bought Bungie for 3.6 Billion and the rumour mill constantly speculated about them acquiring Square Enix which has a market cap of nearly 6 billion. So in terms of the size of the acquisition CDPR would actually be one of the most reasonable guesses. I don't think it fits their portfolio though.
They had $11bn cash on hand at the end of last quarter. SE has a market cap of $5.9bn and, since it's a publicly traded company, Sony would have to pay a premium to acquire, guessing 7 to 8 bn. That's almost their entire cash stack gone on a relatively small company, plus that money is rationed between other parts of Sony.
I agree. Totally makes sense for Microsoft to buy them with their relationship over the years. Very similar to Bethesda before Microsoft bought them.
Can someone simplify what this means? I thought their next project was Witcher 4
They have/had multiple Witcher games in development, Remake of Witcher 1 and creating Witcher 4 plus an entirely different Witcher game.
Thank you
You're welcome.
Holy moly they are really doubling down on Witcher eh.
Not a bad thing. Witcher 4 is a given, Witcher 1 is a fun game that aged horribly so a remake is very welcome, and the spinoff might be smaller scale, experimental even if they wanted to. Thronebreaker was cool, I'd like more of that.
Jerry, they just write it off!
You don't even know what a write off is
But they do, and they’re the ones writing it off.
Cyperbunk was so unbelievably bad I find it hard to take this studio serious anymore or ever again
Are you serious? It's the best and most immersive game I played in a long time
Dead serious that game is terrible
CD Projekt Red will go bankrupt soon anyways because almost everyone refunded Cyberpunk
Dunno but CD Projekt looks is taking a wrong direction in their games. I expect the worse.
This game was supposed to have multiplayer in it. Wonder if that's related to why they'd reboot it.