Microsoft Was Interested In Buying Zynga At One Point, Reveals Xbox Boss

@somnambulance Fortunately you can watch tons of tv sports tv and sports on your mobile device! And even play call of duty call of duty call if duty! It's a good fit really.

Which is why their Activision play is less Call of Duty and more Candy Crush. Microsoft sees the amount of money spent on mobile gaming: Genshin Impact made more profit than Sonys entire games division last year alone.

"I have a lot of respect for the people at Zynga and what they've built."

Even for Donny?! 😂

No surprise, Xbox is about PC, consoles, mobile devices and even TVs. They have a long-term strategy about video games. Sony supported PlayStation Now on Sony Bravia TVs and then stopped supporting them. I almost bought one. Typical of them.

@MayaMousavi so would Sony if they were in the same position as Microsoft. To say one is worse than the other is laughable when they do the same practices.

@MayaMousavi this is factually untrue.

Sony’s first acquisition was in 1993 of the UK game studio Psygnosis (developers of Wipeout).

Microsoft’s first big acquisition was Rare in 2000. That same year Sony bought Bend studios and a month later bought Naughty Dog. Sony was in the process of buying them before Microsoft announced buying Rare.

Big businesses acquire smaller businesses. It is not unique to video games or Microsoft. Look at all big companies, they all do it. My friends company was bought by Samsung because he owned the patent to a software they wanted for use in Android and to stop Apple getting it. It happens all the time.

Big companies do stuff to get to the top or stay at the top.

Sony is currently winning. They’ve done that by throwing their weight around. Forcing companies to sign exclusive deals with them. Or even paying for it. There have 8 exclusives to every 1 Xbox has. And most of them are third parties because Sony has pushed them into it.

Microsoft, now forced to counter this, are throwing their money around, buying up companies and buying exclusivity that way.

They are two different tactics but it is ultimately two giant corporations fighting for supremacy and using different tactics to achieve that aim. And even though I love PlayStation, I don’t feel like Sony has been the nice guy in this situation.

Edit: And in response to your “8 acquisitions in a single year” claim. That was 2021 when they bought Zenimax which included eight studios. That same year Sony bought 6 individual studios. So it wasn’t much different, just that Microsoft made arguably a better acquisition.

@MayaMousavi the thing is Sony didn’t need to buy studios. Sony had the monopoly on the market and had the ability to secure exclusive third party games, either by paying for them or (most often) simply promising better sales on PlayStation if they remained exclusive.

Xbox had a choice. Either shut down the console side of things to try and compete. So they made two key decisions, first was to create the Netflix of gaming, the second was to start obtaining exclusive titles. They did that through acquisitions.

Netflix did a similar thing. They started by just being a streaming service. Then they made shows that they released both on Netflix and elsewhere. Now most of the Netflix made content is exclusive.

I think the problem is people keep looking at this from human terms. We take the side of our favourite. We think people are doing things out of human emotional reasons (spite, envy, meanness etc) when in reality it is just business and they are both making decision to compete.

Sony has 19 studios. Microsoft currently has 23. That still doesn’t mean Xbox will have more games in the future. Most Japanese games are still going to be PlayStation exclusive because loyalty means something in that culture.

I think the future is going to be much better now that Xbox is making for better competition for Sony. I still think certain things can be improved on both sides. But taking emotion out, this will help both companies compete more strongly.

Happy they didn’t would’ve been a waste of money for console players … why couldn’t they go after Ubisoft instead

@MayaMousavi guy you’re on PlayStation website acting as a ps warrior and here too ….

@MayaMousavi with regards to your Xbox 360 argument; a lot of those games came out before the PS3 was even out. So that’s more Sony’s fault for launching a year later. How could Bethesda release Oblivion for PS3 if the console isn’t even out yet?

Can’t exactly blame Xbox for that. They’re not exactly going to sit around waiting for Playstation to launch to start getting games.

@MayaMousavi Yea because PS2 probably couldn’t handle Morrowind. Also Dead Rising? Can’t launch that on PS3 if the console isn’t out either. I’m just pointing out whenever someone makes that argument it’s really flawed. Like Xbox did something wrong? If Xbox 5 launches a year after Playstation 6 you can’t blame Sony for having games on their console. So why blame Xbox?

@MayaMousavi okay, you got a bit hung up on the word ‘monopoly’ there. I didn’t mean it that PlayStation has exclusive control of the market, but that they are in the dominant position compared to Xbox.

The way I see things is that Xbox and PlayStation are direct competition.

Nintendo, PC and mobile compete in the same space, but they are different to the PlayStation vs Xbox battle.

During the 360/PS3/Wii era it was more of a three way battle and Xbox held its own then. But things have changed a lot since then.

Last gen this was the result:

PS4 = 117 million consoles sold
Xbox = 51 million consoles sold

2022 Profits:
PlayStation = $24.2 billion
Xbox = $16.28 billion

PlayStation is dominant and Microsoft had to respond to that to try keep up.

I’m not saying it is fair that Microsoft is buying studios for exclusivity. I’m not saying it’s fair that Sony pay for exclusivity with first parties. If you want to cry about fairness right now, Sony has blocked Xbox gamers from buying 3P games far more than Microsoft has done so to PlayStation gamers. And Sony was doing it far more aggressively last generation than in the PS3/360 gen. So Microsoft’s response was to buy up studios.

But there is one more thing you’re missing.

Activision-Blizzard put itself up for sale. If Microsoft didn’t buy them, Tencent or someone else would have.

@MayaMousavi I have never heard such horse manure in my life from all of your comments.

@MayaMousavi utter horse *****. Sony has been buying studios even before the original PlayStation was released. As they bought Psygnosis a publisher to bolster there EU/US output. They also bought the bulk of there studios between 2001-2010 which is well before Microsofts recent spending spree. So it's been more Sony especially with it's hardcore approach to 3rd party exclusives that poked the bear. Microsoft is only doing what Sony did before them which your perfectly fine with 🤔. Again it sounds like to me that most PlayStation fans are upset as there used to having it all & that Microsoft has bigger pockets to buy more at once. As again your happy if Sony buys up more which looking at your disgust of Microsofts recent purchases you shouldn't be.

Facebook games/mobile money and a hi from Don Matrick again (if he still works there as he did go there in 2013 after all).

I know Zynga/Gameloft/King and more can make fair games but their business practices don't change what is done and their game design isn't perfect besides the tying it into such systems. Look at Gameloft on J2ME cellphones or handheld consoles their passable then the smartphone era or their mobile to console ports or their more fairer console games. You notice details.

Then again Take 2 got Zynga so their happy with their Rockstar and Zynga money right? But King is just enough for a mobile division right?

Will we see mobile games like Halo isometric ones again or more particular mobile games I really do doubt it. Or we see continued King efforts as per usual I assume then the more broader access they could have but don't really need to. Even if Crash on mobile has had interesting life over the years besides the King endless runner as the most recent.

Bullet: dodged.