No one gets established in the gaming business without leveraging money from elsewhere. Sony had to spend their way in, Microsoft had to spend their way in. Google has the infrastructure, but to get exclusive content that will bring people into their ecosystem will require spending from their ad revenue business.
Epic wants to establish a PC store, and guess what, they are spending their way to try and establish themselves as an alternative to Steam.
Gaming requires those building ecosystems to eat a loss early, and sustain those losses before critical mass is achieved.
Microsoft needs to cultivate competitive gaming studios is nonsense by the way. Microsoft has traditionally had a small first party studio organization, and it is something that Sony had too up until the PS3 generation where they lost exclusivity with a lot of titles going multiplatform; releasing day and date on other consoles.
Microsoft was dumb. It was in gaming without ever committing fully to the venture. This is how they came into this generation with 5 studios, one making a game that was available on everything. This was how they got into proper relationships with developers, but never ever solidified those relationships by acquiring Angel Studios, BioWare, DICE, Double Helix, Bizarre or even trying to get Team Ninja.
They sat around as reliable partners were swallowed up, or saw some developers move in another direction because the parent company was working in its own interest. They also got into deals where they got games but did not own the IP. They published Sunset Overdrive, did not own the IP, they published Gears of War, did not own the IP. They published Ryse, and they do not own that IP. Where on earth have you seen a game being a cornerstone of a platform, published by the platform holder and not owned by it?
Microsoft was extremely careless around talent and IP.
The moment I see people state that games are being taken away from a user base, I honestly cringe. You are a singular user being asked to make a decision as to what platform you would want to invest in. The only way any party becomes a factor is when they offer something compelling to users. In short, the people that are against purchases most of time simply do not want to make another purchase. They are usually the same users that have disproportionately benefited from Sony doing what every business in a position of strength does i.e. perpetuate dominance.
So these moves, tend to be viewed from a pro Sony lens despite the fact that we now have a divergence in business models. Microsoft needs content to fuel Game Pass, and they are not going to get to where they need to be by buying a studio here, a studio there. They need to accelerate that timeline and the easiest way to really make a case to consumers is by getting the talent and recognizable IP. Today, you cannot play a Final Fantasy game on Nintendo systems or Street Fighter for that matter because there is a party that pays to keep them off other systems. You could play the Xeno games on PlayStation, and today you have to get a Nintendo console to play that because Nintendo bought Monolith.
I was never going to get the original Xbox up until it was announced that Dead or Alive 3 was going to release exclusively on it. A third party title that had been on PlayStation and Sega systems. No brand loyalty, just a gamer moving to where a must have game had moved. I was similarly willing to miss the XB1 generation if Microsoft did not make changes to what they presented at E3 in 2013. It is amazing how simple life becomes when people worry about the decisions they can make.
Platforms taking games away from others is normal. Platforms keeping games away from others, even for some time, is normal. Publishers being bought out is also normal, albeit infrequent. My advice, if you want games on PlayStation, there is something out there for you. If you desire what Microsoft is doing with Game Pass or their exclusives, they have multiple entry points for you. The persistent moaning about how stuff is being taken away is entitlement that needs to end seeing that it is common place.
I once asked whether there were people that were allergic to getting games on anything that is not PlayStation, and going through threads, there are those that have platform loyalty that is hard to explain. The world will move on as these complain.
