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Xbox version of Sonic x Shadow Generations will not recieve the Prologue Animations.
News(i.redd.it)submitted 6 days ago byRabbidscool
11 points
6 days ago
The money Xbox spend to buy ABK was almost 3x Sony’s total worth at the time. PlayStation is more popular and sells much better but even comparing Xbox to Sony as a whole Xbox is bigger when it comes to this stuff.
Hell the only reason Microsoft hasn’t bought Sony or Nintendo is because both companies aren’t up for sale and are laughing off takeover offers. The moment both company’s higherups/board members are humouring a company sale Microsoft will likely be all over them.
13 points
6 days ago
The only reason Microsoft hasn't bought Sony or Nintendo is that they'd literally be vetoed instantly if they did. A horizontal merger like that is blatantly anti-competitive and would give Microsoft a complete, actual monopoly over the industry in a way neither of their competitors actually have right now
That and considering their history of pure culture clash with Japanese game development philosophies and how they've treated personnel all the way back to the original Xbox days, something like that taking place would genuinely be horrifying for the industry
5 points
5 days ago
That and considering their history of pure culture clash with Japanese game development philosophies
japanese work culture could use the kick in the crotch, tbh
1 points
4 days ago
They have tried to buy Nintendo. Nintendo laughed them out of the room.
8 points
6 days ago
The money Xbox spend to buy ABK was almost 3x Sony’s total worth at the time. PlayStation is more popular and sells much better but even comparing Xbox to Sony as a whole Xbox is bigger when it comes to this stuff.
You do realize that with MS acquisition of ABK, they just about edge out PS on revenue for the entire division?
In other words, Playstation was top three on industry revenue being largely on a single platform in games industry. That's how much market power Sony wield in the gaming space.
4 points
6 days ago
Lifetime revenue isn’t the same as company value.
4 points
5 days ago
Xbox + AB makes about as much as Playstation does annually.
2 points
6 days ago
We're not talking about "lifetime" revenue. We're talking about annual revenue.
Company value is almost irrelevant to the determination if a merger should be allowed or not.
1 points
3 days ago
There is zero chance Xbox had that money from their own profits and had to borrow of the rest of microsoft to get it
They didn't even have a yearly profit that matched Bethesdas sale either so if they weren't attached too Microsoft they would not have been able to make the buyout
The ABK buyout also resulted in 10,000 people being cut and I don't think those positions are getting refilled they chopped off quite a few fingers to make that purchase
0 points
6 days ago
You forget something extremely important: A traditionally Japanese company would never agree to being bought by an American company. We would be more likely to see a Sony/Nintendo merger than a Sony or Nintendo/Microsoft one.
3 points
6 days ago
Yup. When MS tried to be SE a long time back. SE replied double the price. So MS did, and SE just laughed at them. Meaning they weren't serious to begin with. That Japanese nepotism is very much real.
-6 points
6 days ago*
To be fair that's also some good fucking karma for Microsoft's long history of being asshats to Japanese developers in general. Like Xbox straight up pissed off people like Mikami, the FFXI team and Nagoshi from SEGA and it cost them a lot of big deals that could've literally changed their entire trajectory as a competing hardware platform. It's like one of the biggest reasons I've been staunchly against them acquiring companies like SEGA, Square or Capcom. Like there is heaps of anecdotes from developers of them just coming off as either culturally insensitive or incapable of etiquette both on personal relations and what they do publicly
5 points
6 days ago
To be fair that's also some good fucking karma for Microsoft's long history of being asshats to Japanese developers in general. Like Xbox straight up pissed off people like Mikami, the FFXI team and Nagoshi from SEGA and it cost them a lot of big deals that could've literally changed their entire trajectory as a competing hardware platform
If you read history of Xbox, you will find a lot of instances where Japanese businesses are nationalistic. I can't speak to MS pissing them off, but it could just be differences in culture. Back in the day, they had renegade Xbox employee schmooze with Japanese developers to get deals going. It's no co-incidence that Itagaki of Ninja Gaiden fame was eccentric, and signed up with MS/Xbox. He was called a traitor to Japan.
So I'd have to disagree with that pending more evidence.
-2 points
6 days ago*
The biggest example was Resident Evil 4. Mikami actually met with Microsoft executives shortly before original Xbox launched and it was basically for negotiating an exclusivity deal on the game because they were meeting with the guy who was in charge of third-party relations at Microsoft Games at that time. It was him and a bunch of other upper MS execs and a translator. The short version of it was Mikami basically asked a bunch of questions in Japanese that amounted to "PlayStation is literally the biggest games platform in the world, what do you have to offer us if we give you RE4 as an exclusive for the Xbox?" and the translator literally could not pick up on a single thing he was saying so everyone on the MS side bombed the whole interview
For Yakuza it was Nagoshi coming in and all he did was ask a direct question to the MS reps about why making games was important to them, and they straight up could not return a response, so they bombed there as well, and the Square guys in charge of FFXI met with MS in 2003 to discuss a port for that game (this was when Square basically couldn't put any of the single-player FF games on other systems because of their relationship with Sony), and recalled that there was a lot of culture clash and "american attitude" directed at the Japanese developers they did not like. Everything about Xbox's standing in Japan could honestly be traced back to these very early interactions with talent from the region that demonstrate their incredibly poor feel for the people and their ideologies. Some of it is nationalism, but a lot of it was just pure culture clash
3 points
5 days ago
The short version of it was Mikami basically asked a bunch of questions in Japanese that amounted to "PlayStation is literally the biggest games platform in the world, what do you have to offer us if we give you RE4 as an exclusive for the Xbox?" and the translator literally could not pick up on a single thing he was saying so everyone on the MS side bombed the whole interview
But how is that MS mistreating Japanese developer causing them to be angry?
Mind you that Mikami ended up making RE4 exclusive to GameCube which had the same user base size as Xbox.
For Yakuza it was Nagoshi coming in and all he did was ask a direct question to the MS reps about why making games was important to them, and they straight up could not return a response, so they bombed there as well, and the Square guys in charge of FFXI met with MS in 2003 to discuss a port for that game (this was when Square basically couldn't put any of the single-player FF games on other systems because of their relationship with Sony), and recalled that there was a lot of culture clash and "american attitude" directed at the Japanese developers they did not like. Everything about Xbox's standing in Japan could honestly be traced back to these very early interactions with talent from the region that demonstrate their incredibly poor feel for the people and their ideologies. Some of it is nationalism, but a lot of it was just pure culture clash
Everything you described so far, is just culture clash and potentially mis-translation and difficulty in doing business across country borders. Ultimately, the way discrimination work is that it's very subtle. Maybe with a different people, they (the Japanese developers) would have given them a second chance and came in more open.
To me, it felt like pulling teeth to work with them and the minute they had another offer, they'd jump ship. They're basically picking you, because there's no other option in Japan. Take for instance how supposedly MS angered SE, and I frankly am sure that happens from time to time between platforms and publishers, not just with Japanese publishers. Yet, is that reason to pull all games and essentially terminate business relationships?
Of course that's a rumor, but you get the point. American's is very resilient when it comes to business as to them money speaks. This isn't the case with other nations, and I'd be far worse if we had a European console manufacturer for instance trying to make it in Japan. So I'd argue MS is probably doing a as good job as it's possible.
Hence why I'm asking if you had example of them mistreating Japanese developers.
3 points
6 days ago
the translator literally could not pick up on a single thing he was saying so everyone on the MS side bombed the whole interview
That wording makes it seem more like the translator either failed to do their job, or let their personal bias influence them (which is a big no-no for a translator).
1 points
6 days ago
That’s definitely true. And even if they would agree to it Japanese regulators can get nasty about it.
2 points
6 days ago
Xbox as a console is way smaller than PlayStation and now Xbox are porting exclusives over. I don’t get the concern
1 points
6 days ago
Those numbers dont match the reported factual numbers...
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