Hacker News Reader

Comment by personalityson | Hacker News Reader

What culture? Microsoft makes great games

"Great" is subjective, when you use objective data, the reality is: not so much, besides they don't really make their own games, they buy studios/publishers and acquire IPs

They managed to kill Halo, they bought Rare in 2002 only to slack off for 2 decades

They still struggle to sell consoles despite having infinite cash and having spent an obscene amount in marketing

They launched 2 SKUs this gen, yet they couldn't release 1st party games for couple years, despite having bought a plethora of studios

Players have chosen, why should they still manage to buy their way in? They proved they are incompetent and incapable of moving the industry forward (even HW, proprietary storage expansion, same mistake as Sony's PSVIta era, generic controller vs Dualshock 5's gyro,haptic,speaker)

2 SKUs this gen, this is a out of touch move, they couldn't even anticipate the obvious mobile/handheld market boom (genshin), they are busy trying to buy their way in, it makes them in-flexible (rare W pun)

Honestly, both Valve / Nintendo (let's not forget that they also plan to buy Valve, according to the leaked email), are better the way they are, an acquisition by anyone would be a stupid idea and a huge mistake, for both companies and for the consumer

And let's not forget how they fucked up their Surface brand too, let's stop trying to put Microsoft everywhere

And let's not mention how horrible the Microsoft Store still is today

Microsoft doesn't have a great reputation among the Japanese public as an employer. My understanding is it's to do with a round of layoffs they conducted in the early 2000s which caused a huge stink. The story goes that this was the reason they got laughed out the room when they first tried this.

Have you already completely forgotten the launch of the Xbox One? The Xbox division is reasonably well managed now but they're still pushing towards a rental model over actual ownership. The Microsoft store is a cesspool of malware, and Windows 11 is actively user hostile. Their game studios have next to no quality control. Not to mention previous genius management ideas like stack ranking.

What do you think will happen to Nintendo if they are assimilated by such a company and milked for all they are worth? Mario Odyssey 2 will be an open world live service game riddled with bugs and missing features like the ability to jump.

>Have you already completely forgotten the launch of the Xbox One?

Have you already completely forgotten the launch of the Wii U?

The Wii U was a somewhat underwhelming console with poor marketing that therefore did not sell very well. The Xbox One launch was a shitshow of controversy full of the kind of tonedeaf and user-hostile garbage that Microsoft has made itself infamous for. It's not about the hardware or the sales numbers, it's about Microsoft absolutely loathing their users.

Not even remotely comparable. One was just not good enough, the other was user-hostile bullshit.

> Have you already completely forgotten the launch of the Wii U

Didn't everyone?

More like they pay publishers, who then make great games.

Halo franchise is a good example of Microsoft culture wrecking a game

They pay game studios, Microsoft is the publisher.

Nintendo does the same for many of their games as well. Smash is developed by Bandai Namco and Sora Lts, Paper Mario is developed by Intelligent Systems, Pokémon is developed by Game Freak. These companies have various connections with Nintendo, like Microsoft have with their publishing game studios.

Nintendo does develop their core IP in-house though.

Halo was for the most part handled in house by MS owned studios, either Bungie or 343. Not really any different than how Nintendo handles Metroid Prime or Mario.

Nintendo seems to be a better guiding hand when working with external studios. Look at Silicon Knights output when partnering with Nintendo vs. MS for example. Or well, Rare for that matter.

Microsoft has been a huge pain for Minecraft players.

What was the last truly great MS game?

Forza Horizon, Flight Simulator are all good games -- at the time of release, ie. no botched launches with following fixes, which is the industry standard

> are all good games

You say that like you didn’t just stop at two games.

What games?

Don't bother, they made horrible games and whole gaming division need to be cut. I own all modern and most vintage consoles. By quality of games: Nintendo number one, then Sony pretty close, then Steam, Microsoft somewhere after.

Steam (or Valve) for matter makes games?

Wow, had to look it up and they haven't really put out an original game of note since Portal 2 in 2011. (Not counting CS:GO, as a remake, or DOTA2 since they bought it, but even counting those it would be 2013.)

What about Half Life: Alyx? Not just original, but pretty revolutionary for the platform.

you have it backwards. CS:GO was bought (mande by external studio then bought), Dota2 is a remake of a wc3 map/mod.

Well, I was referring to Steam like to platform where I would rather chose to buy\play games over MS.

Like Starfield, for example. Or the recent Quake 2 remaster. Microsoft owns Bethesda, Obsidian, id and plenty of other big name studios.

I haven’t tried it, but according to reviews Starfield seems like a generic space soap opera version of No Man’s Sky with loading screens.

> Microsoft owns Bethesda

This... explains a lot. The user-hostile experience, the lack of innovation of their game engine, the ability to buy fantastic reviews. I never knew the two were connected.

Not really, it doesn’t explain much if anything. Since they only bought Bethesda in 2021

Ah okay. Just two bad companies. Thanks for the correction

They began making Starfield years before MS bought Zenimax

Forza, Flight Simulator, Halo

Forza is awesome

Fable?

What games?

The last one, Starfield, was undercooked on all fronts: narrative, gameplay and technologically.

Halo was a huge disappointment.

So that leaves Forza and Flight Sim.

A track record like that in any other situation would get you a one way trip to the unemployment office.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com