Microsoft keeps finding innovative ways to make owning its products feel like renting them. You buy the Xbox, buy the game, maybe pay for Game Pass, and Microsoft still patents a way to interrupt you with ads. At this rate, the final boss will be a 30 second unskippable commercial.
They fucked themselves when they went on their buying spree of studios. Their idea was literally that they would own every game studio, making a GamePass a necessity that they could charge whatever they wanted for.
Their quest inflated the price of every subsequent studio they acquired, leading them to take on so much debt that they had to shutter the studios they’d just purchased, and now they have to make a ton of money on every game–but that’s not how games work.
But they didn’t even have to shutter many of the studios. Many of them were profitable. Microsoft just didn’t want the competition and they decided the studios weren’t obscenely profitable
Pretty clearly they were looking to corner the market, then. Disgusting. I would hope they went out of business, but that would leave Playstation as the de facto monopoly, and they are already killing themselves to enshittify as it is.
Microsoft keeps finding innovative ways to make owning its products feel like renting them. You buy the Xbox, buy the game, maybe pay for Game Pass, and Microsoft still patents a way to interrupt you with ads. At this rate, the final boss will be a 30 second unskippable commercial.
They fucked themselves when they went on their buying spree of studios. Their idea was literally that they would own every game studio, making a GamePass a necessity that they could charge whatever they wanted for.
Their quest inflated the price of every subsequent studio they acquired, leading them to take on so much debt that they had to shutter the studios they’d just purchased, and now they have to make a ton of money on every game–but that’s not how games work.
Just capitalism things…
But they didn’t even have to shutter many of the studios. Many of them were profitable. Microsoft just didn’t want the competition and they decided the studios weren’t obscenely profitable
Pretty clearly they were looking to corner the market, then. Disgusting. I would hope they went out of business, but that would leave Playstation as the de facto monopoly, and they are already killing themselves to enshittify as it is.
The only winning move for the final boss is to put down the controller and go outside.
Love it!