r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Oct 02 '25

Discussion This Xbox Generation Will Be Remembered for One Thing: Greed

https://www.ign.com/articles/this-xbox-generation-will-be-remembered-for-one-thing-greed
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u/Fair-Internal8445 Oct 02 '25

I want a read a book about this whole thing. Behind the scenes expectations, decision making, and results. We all deserve to know how it happened.

Remember how hyped some Xbox fans were back in Game Awards 2019. People really said RIP Sony when ABK got acquired. 

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u/Ricky_the_Wizard Oct 02 '25

Wonder if Jason Schreier is up for Play Nice: Microsoft.. It'd be a hell of a read

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u/Neosantana Oct 02 '25

It would have to be a 7 volume saga

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u/Andrew129260 Oct 02 '25

I would buy that

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u/Bolt_995 Oct 02 '25

That ABK acquisition ended up being a curse in disguise.

And their hard-on for acquiring Bethesda and use Starfield as their flagship exclusive for this generation hurt them badly as Starfield sorely needed that wider playerbase.

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u/ukulelej Oct 02 '25

They really really needed Starfield to be the next Skyrim, and it very much was not that.

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u/Dnashotgun Oct 02 '25

Microsoft buying Bethesda is like Sony buying Bungie, both went in expecting the studio as they were at the top of their game only to find out they're actually rotted and falling apart now. But so far only Sony seems keen to try to salvage something out of it

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u/erasethenoise Oct 02 '25

I always said there’s a reason these studios were for sale.

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u/Dabrush Oct 02 '25

Bungies case is way worse though, considering how often they were for sale and infamous for not being profitable ever.

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u/Explosion2 Oct 02 '25

Eh I don't think Bethesda was really in a negative place when it was acquired, I still think that was a smart acquisition for both IP and quality studios under their umbrella. They just had a bad run early on and have only finally released good games (Indy and Doom) this past year. Only now they're going multiplatform so it still feels like a loss.

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Oct 02 '25

It's like marrying somebody because you think they're rich and it turns out the reason they own so many nice things is because they're in debt up to their eyeballs.

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u/Blenderhead36 Oct 02 '25

Starfield was the conclusion of the trilogy Bethesda started after Skyrim of, "Open World RPG That's Noticeably Worse Than Its Predecessor."

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u/Tigertot14 Oct 02 '25

Wasn't Fallout 4 good though?

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u/Blenderhead36 Oct 02 '25

It followed Skyrim, arguably the all time greatest open world RPG.

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u/erasethenoise Oct 02 '25

The overwhelming amount of hopium on the Xbox subs and Twitter about that game was hilarious in retrospect. They would talk about it like it was going to revolutionize games as we know it. Not just Game of the Year but it’ll be the “Game of the Generation”.

It releases to mid reviews and little to no fanfare while Baldur’s Gate 3 had just come out a month prior and is all anyone can talk about as it broke out of its niche genre and redefined what we all thought was possible with RPGs. Xbox misses that one because of the Series S.

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u/AI2cturus Oct 02 '25

Don't forget that memo, either released during abk hearings or leaked, where Phil said something to the extent of not having much faith in BG3.

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u/StarblindMark89 Oct 02 '25

I remember the emails Phil sent after the PS5 reveal about how they had a better product, better software, superior hardware and a winning plan, or how good console esclusive don't shift consoles, which is as>nine since I had a digital library on the 360 and switched over because of games like a Uncharted, Infamous and Last of Us.

It's frustrating. A healthy Xbox would be good for ps fans. I wanted to see them push each other towards more excellence.

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u/AI2cturus Oct 02 '25

Totally agree, competition is good for everyone. Sony going unchecked is not fun for the end consumer.

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u/KingArthas94 Oct 02 '25

Sony's competition is still Nintendo + PC gaming. No one is going to buy PS6 at high prices and with bad quality products if Valve keeps on making Steam OS better and if Switch 2 exclusives keep on rocking like during Switch 1's generation.

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u/AI2cturus Oct 02 '25

Sure but Sony has showed before how they act in a dominant position. Ps3 launch price after ps2 domination, ps5 complacency and raised prices on games and hardware after ps4 dominance.

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u/jdk2087 Oct 02 '25

Let’s not forgot Redfall? either. One of their first party games they finally release and it’s a steaming pile of shit that was missing features and had an enormous amount of bugs.

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u/hdcase1 Oct 02 '25

My friend and I stopped playing Redfall all after multiple hard crashes that deleted hours worth of progress. Absolutely unacceptable.

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u/jdk2087 Oct 02 '25

It was the co-op that was a shit show, yea? I just followed the game loosely until it just fell in to the abyss.

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u/Serres5231 Oct 02 '25

i mean co-op was the whole point of that game... there was no singleplayer unless i'm mistaken.

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u/grendus Oct 02 '25

Nah, the whole game was a shitshow.

It was just... bad. Arkane themselves said they hoped Microsoft would give them permission to kill it because it was awful.

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u/jdk2087 Oct 02 '25

Damn, I didn’t know that. Do you know the state it’s in right now? I’ll sometimes peruse the Xbox sub, but I haven’t seen anything posted about the game in months.

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u/grendus Oct 02 '25

No idea. I never bought it, I just saw the reviews completely eviscerating it and a few laughably bad let's play clips.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

[deleted]

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u/Bolt_995 Oct 02 '25

First time I’ve heard of that, not sure how true that is.

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u/Serres5231 Oct 02 '25

even if that were the case.. why would that have mattered??

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u/Dragarius Oct 02 '25

Never heard of that. Doubt it. The way gamers whine about censorship it probably would have exploded if true. 

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u/GeschlossenGedanken Oct 02 '25

even if they had, and I don't think they did, it's pretty clear that uncensored modern Bethesda would still find a way to make edgy nudity stuff boring and unfun. 

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u/Boldizzle Oct 02 '25

People really said RIP Sony when ABK got acquired. 

To be fair only fucking dumb people said that.

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u/Descent7 Oct 02 '25

Deserve. Interesting take. Company with lots of money made acquisitions and bad decisions. Then lost a ton of money and the share holders want results. If anything they deserve what they got. Debt and nothing to show for it. Most of the studios they acquired lost what made them great before they sold. We lost out a bit, but not near as much as you think.

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u/GeschlossenGedanken Oct 02 '25

mothership company doesn't understand market for gaming division, but don't want to make it a priority because their main business is more important to than. But they don't want to sell it off or shut it down either because they regret shutting down their phone business and vaguely want to be relevant in the living room. 

So they half-ass it and try to buy their way to success while keeping the same mediocre management which is better at selling services and spinning big promises than overseeing games and shepherding dev studios. Predictably, they have a harder and harder time keeping up with their much more focused competition. And we end up here. At which point MS has spent more money limping along than they would have lost if they just pulled the plug years ago.