Xbox is a family. The dozens of developers and publishers it has bought using an unending pile of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft money hasn’t been used to form a dangerous monopoly, but a loving unit of studios, intellectual properties, and technology that just want🍸 to get together and hug it out. No money to be made, jobs to be laid off, or projects toꦕ cancel - just love. Ain’t it grand?
Toda🔴y saw Microsoft confirm that its long-fought acquisiti𝐆on of Activision Blizzard King has finally been approved by UK regulators, removing the last obstacle in its way when it comes to sinking its claws into this $70꧅ billion purchase. To mark the occasion, - yes, corporate monopolies have trailers now - welcoming Activision and its myriad studios and properties into the fol♏d.
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Live se🍷rvice games are saturating the market, and soဣmething has to give.
The song ‘Oh What A Beautiful Morning’ by Gordon MacRae acts as the backdrop to a montage of titles ranging from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Overwatch 2 to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Psychonauts 2 as we run down who exactly is joinin🅰g the Xbox family and why we should smꦉile about it. We didn’t spend billions on this acquisition, but the messaging wants us to know how much better our lives are soon going to be. Please stop buying into this.
When Microsoft first started buying up talent it felt like a positive change for the industry. It wasn’t exactly known for marquee exclusives, and now was buying up studios like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Double Fine and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ninja Theory before giving them the resources required to make something new and without restraint. Then came the Bethesda acquisition, which at the time felt like some sort of unparalleled development, but following Activision Blizzard, it’s a mere drop in the pond. While great games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush and Grounded have spawned from these deals, we’ve also seen failures like Redfall and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halo Infinite making clear how hard it is to manage so m༺any large teams under a single first-party umbrella.
Even with all the money and ways to spend it in the world, Xbox is still falling behind the competition. Activision Blizzard King exists as a means to remedy those shortcomings and prepare Microsoft for the cloud-based future with a portfolio so massive it couldn’t possibly falte🏅r. But a single corporation having this much control over a growing artistic medium is no good thing, and will always be about the money that can be squeezed from us at every turn. Not to mention theꦆ lack of value most of its games now have thanks to subscription services and overlong production cycles. It’s not sustainable, and 2023 has made that so obvious as constant layoffs intersperse what many are considering the best year for video games ever. It is for the players, but definitely not the devs.
We’ve seen failure in this industry trickle downwards, and that it isn’t those at the top who suffer when a project fails or poor decisions are made, it’s those deep in the trenches trying hard to make ends meet amidst corporate circumstances they have no control over. Dozens of peopl🌠e were laid off🅘 following the cancellation of Hyenas by Sega, while Volition closed its doors mere days ﷽after its 30th anniversary because parent company Embracer Group needed to make up billions in lost revenue after a lucrative deal fell through. It expanded too quickly and with such confidence that it saw no world where it could fail. It did, and now hundreds are out of work while beloved properties hang in limbo an🍷d likely will for years to come.
Video games are considered art by those who make them, but not the suits sitting in chairs responsible for marketing and selling them to the masses. They are products, and a means to make money and remain the market leader will always override human values. We have built the world to operate under these whims of capitalism, and there is no changing things unless we dare to burn it all down and start again. That won’t happen, and video games will continue to consolidate under fewer and fewer umbrellas until we only have a small 🐷handful of sources to turn to.
We have fewer options, and as a result, fewer means to protest when a studio is closed or some bullshit consumer practice is introduced. We should be mad that this deal has gone 🍒through even with a lengthy fight, but Microso🐲ft has already made a fool out of loyalty to brands to a point that we’d rather support them than complain. To many fans, this day marks a monumental victory. It is our fight, and we are well on our way to winning it.
Influencers and similar public figures I’ve expected integrity from speak about themselves and Microsoft as a collective. Saying ‘we’ are going to get this deal through and ‘we’ are going to be so much better off in the years to come. It’d be exciting to see franchises like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guitar Hero, Spyro, and Crash return, and there are plenty of nostalgic pen꧑nies to be made from revivals if Xbox plays its cards right, but we should be smart enough to look past our own enjoyment and acknowledge the bigger picture.
Xbox might be treating us like theirꩲ sweet litt✅le darling now the deal has gone through and things look bright, but it’s better to worry about what the future holds and how this behaviour will shift once the going gets tough and the mask comes off. We aren’t owned by corporations, and shouldn’t lean into this parasocial relationship to a point where it not only jeopardises the sustainability of video games, but our own identities.
We’re part of the Xbox family now, which is far more ominous than Microsoft wants us to believe, and we’d be wise not to give into the corporate hype and see things for how they really are. I care about people🦂 keeping their jobs, games achieving their artistic potential, and less of the industry being ruled under the thumbs of a few select individuals. We are moving further and further away from that, and the time has long passed to be worried.
