“They could have made some great new exclusive IPs by now with proper management but instead want to buy their way out. Ridiculous”
This not true. You people seriously need to stop with this passionate gamer mindset.
New IP is a risky business and every single company will try and avoid it at least they´re 100% certain of its success. Look at Quantum Break, Days Gone and Forspoken for example; despite Metascores, those games has many fans worldwide and some of it sold pretty well (Days Gone sold over 8 Million) and still got it sequel shut down by Sony, Quantum Break had it sequel shut down by Microsoft and Forspoken had its entire development studio shut down.
So many games get cancelled for those companies that we didn´t even know it existed in the first place. Look no further than Shu Yoshida´s recent interview to The Guardian where he explains how making games got more expensive and riskier than ever before.
That said, MS did created two new in-house studios from the ground up. The Initiative and Playground´s RPG Studio which are working on both Perfect Dark and Fable. It´s the third year in the current generation and so far there´s only a cinematic trailer for both games. I mean, how viable it was to MS to create tons of in-house studios when back in 2018 Xbox had 5 first party studios vs Playstation and its 13 first party studios?
If lucky, It would take the entire current generation for us to see no more than 3 first party games not taking in consideration that those could fail as well. MS simply didn´t had the time to create 7 in-house non proved/experienced studios just to get even *in numbers* to Playstation´s established studios and IPs
Just take a look at Sony and how they reacted to Phil´s shopping spree. TEN new first party studios in less than 3 years! A historical record studio acquisitions by Sony and none of those studios was created. Why? Because Sony knows they don´t have the time, money and herculean effort to spend creating studios if they want to quick react to what MS is doing.
We love games, but it´s not our money invested on the creation of those. And those companies will only do what favors their pockets FIRST.
Do you love Killzone? Yeah, I believe Sony loves it too. But apparently, they love Horizon even more since a new sequel is already in development. Doesn´t matter what we want. We´ll always get what they throw at us.
