“I prefer the industry when you have two really strong competitors. You get better games, you get more games, and you get an industry riding a positive wave.”
Remember when gaming companies were publishers AND platforms?
Pepperidge FarmNintendo remembers.
To everyone confused what his point is:
“But those two roads do not converge. Those two roads necessarily diverge, because to be a platform and to be a very well-supported, well-accepted, well-selling platform, you need exclusive content. Nintendo needs its Mario and its Zelda, and PlayStation needs Crash Bandicoot and Astro Bot, and Kratos and Horizon, all of that. But if you’re going to be the biggest publisher in the world, which is not a bad ambition - I’m sure there’s gold on them there hills - you have to bring your stuff on every platform. Multi-platform is almost a prerequisite.”
He’s arguing that Xbox has ambitions to buy massive studios and be the biggest publisher ever, but that doesn’t work with how they also want to start making games exclusive. This kinda fits with him saying that PlayStation should keep their games on PC
Basically, he’s saying that if you want to make big franchises that are in the public consciousness and get made into TV shows/movies etc, then they need to reach the biggest amount of people possible so that the average person cares about that franchise. If most people can’t play the games, most people will stop caring about the franchise entirely.
You can tell when commenters have not read the article.
Honestly this is what is confusing me the most about Xbox’s move here. They have spent the better part of 10 years dumping exclusives specifically to become the next Steam. Now all of a sudden they care about console sales again and it doesn’t really make sense with the direction they have been going.
Nintendo is laughing at Layden.
Valve laughing at half life 3
Isn’t Sony both a publisher and a platform? Nintendo, too.
Also, why is the quote there twice? Read both 2-3 times looking for one to say something different. Guess you got me, but I don’t see the point.
Pretty much every platform is both, except linux maybe.
Two really strong competitors is called a duopoly and in practise it works like a monopoly in terms of gouging customers and stiffling competition. It promotes collusion, but it tends to look way healthier from the outside than a monopoly. It’s not though.
Playstation:
We would like a Duopoly: Xbox disappears and we are left to compete with Nintendo.
Meanwhile, Steam does nothing, wins anyway.
I mean, they could have been both. The parent corp is one of the greediest pieces of shit though. But no one is going to buy their consoles when M$ goes all in on llms and drives the cost over $1000.
two really strong competitors
