Less than 8 years ago, Microsoft were on the verge of spinning off their Xbox division after the troubled launch of the Xbox One. Following some terrible internal decisions, they had gone from the incredibly successful Xbox 360 to near failure. Somehow, they had shuttered almost all of their development studios bar a floundering 343i and a Rare that seemed content to make games for Kinect.
The view of the Xbox One was that there were not enough internally developed games, therefore not enough exclusives, therefore no reason to buy the system.
While a Phil Spencer inspired Game Pass fuelled resurgence brought the Xbox One back from the brink. They needed first party games.
And so they shocked the gaming world by purchasing Western powerhouse Bethesda.
Even more recently, an opportunity brought on by Activision’s broken public image and the apparent deteriorating quality of its games, allowed Microsoft to purchase one of the worlds biggest publishing houses.
Much of the industry was left dumbstruck, many commentators and expressed concern.
Meanwhile, Tercent, the biggest player in the gaming industry smashed Microsoft's record buy of Bethesda by buying Supercell, Take-Two then broke the record again by acquiring Zynga, before Microsoft dropped jaws again with the Activision deal. Sony has continued to consolidate on their own terms with smaller but not insignificant purchases of companies such as Bungie, Housemarque and Firesprite.
Many fear this leads the industry down a dark path.
But haven’t we been here before? It’s interesting how these things echo...
In 1993, nearly 30 years ago, spurned by Nintendo, Sony decided to do something that would change the face of gaming.
They decided to make a games console.
Now there was nothing, on paper at the time, that was revolutionary about this idea. A 32-bit CD based games system was not an original idea, the controller design was clearly stolen from the SNES, like some jilted ex-lover taking half the marital assets, videogames as a whole had been around and refined for decades at this point, and most worryingly of all, Sony had no games to speak of.
By which I mean of course they had no developers. They had published other game titles under the Sony Imagesoft label, games that typically were ports or licensed affairs developed by other studios, but Sony had never made a game themselves, as they had no studios to speak of.
As goes the story today, no internally developed games therefore no exclusives therefore no reason to buy your system.
Sony sought to remedy this however. And thus in 1993 they bought a publisher called Psygnosis.
Psygnosis were a titan among publishers in the home computer space. They had a number of teams working on projects, and had published games for many more, most notably publishing a little effort called Lemmings by a studio called DMA design who would go on to do quite important things in the future, despite Sony inheriting the Lemmings IP.
Sony bought Psygnosis for a then eye watering £30million. Some said they’d overpaid, but most recognised that this was a move industry leaders Sega and Nintendo could not match.
This was more than a purchase of a publisher and their studios, this was a statement of intent. A giant had entered the gaming scene.
But this acquisition of Psygnosis didn’t just catapult PlayStation into the limelight, it galvanised others. Nintendo bought a significant stake in Rare, who they had worked closely with in what is an interesting parallel to Sony’s recent acquisition of Housemarque. Infrogrames went on a spending spree comparable to that of Tencent or Embracer Group, hoovering up the shell of Atari and the iconic publishing house Ocean for a massive (at the time) $100 million. Sony meanwhile continued to purchase new studios into the new millennium.
Now if Infrogrames were Tencent of that era, Nintendo were Sony, and Sony were Microsoft. Sega, it could be argued, were the current day Nintendo: the quirky, inventive underdog capable of brilliance and baffling decisions.
For all the concern that Microsoft are disrupting the industry with their competitive financial might, Sony were doing exactly the same back in the 90s. Hideki Sato, the lead architect behind most of Sega’s hardware, has mentioned more than once how Ken Kutaragi would taunt him about how Sony had the advantage when it came to internally manufacturing console components and suggest that Sega make games for the Playstation.
This compares, to an extent, with Microsoft openly talking up about putting Game Pass on rival platforms via the superior cloud services it boasts, cloud services which Sony use and license.
As a 90s Sega kid, I really did feel like Sony were the boogieman. Nintendo were the bitter rivals of course, but that rivalry was built on a mutual respect. The SNES remains one of my all time favourite games consoles because my friends and I would all play each others hardware and enjoy it. Sony felt like a wealthy billionaire buying a football club and disrupting the game.
And I imagine that’s exactly how many Sony and Nintendo fans feel now. But the thing was, despite Sony's financial might and industry shaking moves that may have acted as a green light for Infrogrames to try to (and catastrophically fail at) own the whole industry, the hobby endured. Despite the heartbreak of Sega bowing out of the hardware business, the gaming scene has never been stronger.
As a teen, I felt Sony wielded an unfair advantage. Some of the tactics I despised, like securing exclusivity for 3rd Party properties such as Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy still persist today. But it is just the nature of the beast.
Console wars fought between fanboys are silly, but the battle between rivals in a market place is very real, and from the Atari era, through Nintendo’s 80s dominance up until the present day platform holders have done everything they can to eke as much market share as possible. It’s the sort of free market capitalist battle where the combatants will use anything and everything at their disposal, and while we may not approve of all the methods, it is the way things have always been, and most of the time we, the consumers, do win out.
Sega have always been a plucky underdog, and endured through their sheer inventiveness and desire to push boundaries. They couldn’t match the might of the Sony's and Microsoft’s of this world, and only ever pipped Nintendo at the post for a few years. But even they were involved in the 90s era of consolidation.
Yes, when they were planning to launch the Dreamcast, they were unable to get a certain publisher on board. EA refused to publish games on the Dreamcast which left Sega with quite the dilemma.
No EA games therefore no sports games therefore less reasons to buy your system.
So Sega made a bold move, acquiring Visual Concepts, who EA had a minority stake in and who had lots of experience with ports of the said publishers sports games.
(The above image comes from an excellent SegaBits article, link in the image)
While it may seem a more understandable acquisition, it was still a large one during a period where acquisitions seemed rife.
The point is, despite so many crying foul over Microsoft's industry changing moves, we’ve already seen the precedents set decades before.
As much as I’m not a fan of these moves, just as I dislike multiplatform series getting exclusivity to one platform, it simply is the way of the industry, a part of the ebb and flow, a circle of consolidation where as much as companies try to control the biggest names in the industry, new names will sprout up and rise to prominence.
Despite so called comedians making TikTok videos on how Xbox will destroy the industry, we’ve been here before, and the hobby will be fine. You only have to look at the rise to prominence on newer studios and publishers since, and the fact that Rare (twice), Visual Concepts (twice) and Bungie (thrise) have had multiple suitors.
The industry is arguably healthier than it has ever been, with more people gaming than ever.
The only black mark on that era was that Sega bowed out of the hardware business, and all things considered, the worst has already happened.
So sit back, enjoy the games, it's all gonna be okay.
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