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I mean I’d argue there’s some serious room to help out the consumer since the price of cars has been outpacing inflation pretty handily since around 2014 (and been beating it into a bloody pulp since 2020). There is some insanely obvious price gouging going on when the average price of a new car in 2024 is over 49k. There is room for BOTH higher wages and at least semi reasonable car prices for the American consumer. In my eyes if you clearly aren’t willing to help me as an everyday clearly struggling American today, then goooo right ahead and kiss my ass as I buy foreign if it’s cheaper.
That’s not quite how this works tho. Microsoft doesn’t make games. Sony doesn’t make games. The only exception is Nintendo but even they outsource a ton of devopment to studios like 1-up studios, monolith soft, retro studios etc. These companies just make a console that plays games and then they try to buy rights to good games or studios so they can make their games exclusive to that console to bolster sales. Sure, sony and microsoft could pour tons and tons and tons of money into creating their own studios i guess that make their own branded games but they have decided to focus on hardware sales instead. This is especially true for microsoft where the xbox is just a small part of the business where the PC market is their focus.
From a business standpoint, it makes 10000% more sense to just try and acquire other businesses that do the work under you and you just publish their games. Which is why nintendo, sony, and microsoft all try to do it so much. I mean Sony alone has bought 14 development studios since last year.
This whole thing has confused the ever loving balls out of me. Xbox and Microsoft having been getting MURDERED over the last few years and ridiculed by pretty much everyone for one reason and one reason only, they have no games. Why get an Xbox? PlayStation and Nintendo have all the good exclusives. Xbox has nothing.
Now, Microsoft goes out and buys up some IP’s and studios that have games they can make exclusive if they want (even tho they’ve said over and over they won’t for the ones that currently aren’t console exclusives but we’ll see on that one). So, for the first time in pretty much forever they’ll have the opportunity for console exclusives other than Halo and now everyone is complaining that they’ll make the games console exclusives. It’s like the biggest damned if you do, damned if you don’t for them lol.
“Fuck Xbox they don’t have any good exclusives.”
Microsoft goes out and gets good exclusives
“Fuck Xbox they’re making the good games exclusive.”
I enjoy assassin’s creed type games and I know this isn’t a hot take or anything but man are those games bloated with boring ass time waster side quests. Starts to feel like a job after a bit and I hate it. I really wish they would just focus on a solid core campaign story and leave the billion little errands on the cutting room floor. But I get that some people love just hunting stuff down and checking them off a list so idk. Just feels like they’re focusing more on maximizing the time you’re playing the game rather than just having fun playing it.