UltraMega

The potential for Sony to lose out on a few games is the downside, but there are arguable upsides as well like stronger incentive for both companies to produce high quality content to stand out from the competition. Won't be long now before Sony had their own subscription offer and arguable that's a result of competition from Microsoft. Acquisitions in the tech world are nothing new, they're not even rare to gaming specifically. The only real difference between this and other acquisitions is that Microsoft is a bigger company making big acquisitions, but they are still well behind Sony in the gaming world.

I didn't say office 2021 and office 365 are the same and I'm not arguing that, but there is nothing missing from Office 2021 that would typically be in older non subscription models of Office. The only real difference that people might actually care about is office 365 comes with more OneDrive storage which is the one thing that makes sense as a subscription. Realistically the differences between the two are meaningless. Also, the screenshots I included show that you can purchase whichever version of office you want. If you wanted Outlook included but don't want to spend a ton you would want the "home and business" version. Microsoft has never said it intends to release games that have features only available to the subscription model. Feel free to include a source if you think I'm wrong about that. If anything, they have done the opposite by releasing all their games on Steam.

I've never argued that sub models won't become the standard, only that to date Microsoft has not eliminated any non sub options for purchasing software and they have not stated any plans to do so.

What you got against 4K gaming?

This is just wrong. You absolutely can buy office 2021 in whatever of the three versions you want. I'm not sure how differences in COD games have any relevance here. Arguably the issues you might have with Activision could go away now that they're under new management. As for OneDrive, since typically that would not be a part of a non-subscription based version of office, I don't think it counts as something that's been lost. Any Office files would save to the default documents folder in Windows would be backed up by OneDrive by default with or without Office, so I'm not sure what difference it makes. OneDrive is free and you can back up Office files with it just by saving them to the documents folder. Additionally, Microsoft has made efforts to move away from Outlook. I'm actually surprised to learn they still support it with new versions at all. Their distancing themselves from Outlook, if that's what they're doing, has nothing to do with Subscriptions. Yet on that note, I'm pretty sure Outlook was not usually a part of the cheaper home/student versions of Office though I could be wrong.

Game Developers Conference report: most developers frown on blockchain games WWW.TECHSPOT.COM It seems that an overwhelming majority of game developers are also against NFTs and their use as a monetization... Slightly reassuring news.

As I already stated, office 2021 comes in 3 versions. Only the student version does not come with outlook. You can buy it directly from Microsoft. Not hard to find. One drive is a free feature built into windows. I understand your point of view, you think Microsoft wants to eventually eliminate single purchase software sales and go full subscription. I maintain that you have not shown any evidence of that happening, purely your own skepticism. Again, not saying it will never happen but for now I see no evidence of it. I don't take the mere existence of subscription options as evidence that other options are being eliminated when that has not happened.

I'm not sure what you keep going on about with office because over and over I've just repeatedly pointed out that you can still buy office in a non subscription form. Same is true for all these games, game pass is just an option. It's not required for any particular games. If in the future subscription services are the only option, that will be annoying but that's not the case now and it's not going to be the case anytime soon. Frankly you have done nothing to support your argument with real evidence, only suspicion. I'm not saying it will never happen, but until theres some evidence of that I'm not going to be concerned.

I think valid concerns is more accurate than valid complaints since none of this has happened yet. Still, as PC gamers we're not going to miss out on anything so I don't see a down side for us. I'd also argue that Microsoft is definitely not going to ruin Activision any further, likely the exact opposite. As for console games, it's definitely likely that some of these games will stop coming out on PS but I just don't see why Microsoft would really care at this point since the money is in game sales, but we'll just have to wait and see if ultimately Ms sees more value in exclusivity or total sales. That said, you're clearly skeptical of Microsoft on the basis that they're a big company and therefore automatically have bad intentions and I don't find any logic to that kind of sentiment at all so I will argue firmly against those kinds of ideas. Skepticism needs to be grounded in reality for me to accept it as reasonable.

The term "exclusive" has been used to describe a lot of games that come out on one platform first but still eventually comes to other platforms. The next Horizon game is a "Playstation exclusive" even though it's coming to PC eventually. As far as I know, Microsoft has not said it won't be releasing any of the games in question on Playstation yet but I could be wrong.

Some games have always been console exclusive though so it's nothing new. I'd say there are less exclusives now than in the past, and with Sony releasing their games on PC now, it's definitely a win for PC gamers. I really don't see why MS wouldn't want to sell COD on Playstation though. Money is money, and they make money from selling games and subscriptions, not from selling hardware. If people want to buy COD on Playstation, I don't see why MS wouldn't want to take their money as well. I think at the least though, COD would come out sooner on PC/Xbox, then Playstation maybe 6 months or so later.

Data mining is probably a factor, but even more so I think they wouldn't want to upset the payment structure for windows to prevent people from moving to Android as a cheaper alternative. Android is probably the biggest threat to windows but luckily for Microsoft, Google has been struggling to exite their customers about anything. Even if Ms does see more value in sub models VS standard purchases, I think they will continue to have both options for all foreseeable future. As long as people buy it one way or the other, they're happy.

I'm not sure what you mean by "classic" versions? Is office 2021 supposed to have more than one version of word included? And sure it doesn't have android support but why would that be expected? There are no other one time software purchases that are cross platform in this market. You are listing features that have been added to the subscription, but nothing that's been lost from the one time purchase versions. It makes sense that things like cloud support and cross platform usage would be subscription based. Overall you're arguing that the existence of subscriptions is evidence that Microsoft wants everyone to move to a subscription only model and that they're going to push that no matter what. However real world examples don't support that argument. You say "Microsoft isn't the only company pushing this either" however you havent provided any evidence that Microsoft is doing this at all. Maybe someday they will infact do that but for now all I see is more options and no downside with no signs that they plan to stop selling single use keys.

I don't understand the issue. You are pointing out yourself that you can purchase a one time standard activation key so what's been lost? You call it a "basic" version but it's really the home version. What's missing from it? There are 3 versions of Office 2021, home, business, and professional.

I love 4k content but I've never even seen a 4k movie on physical format. Has anyone here ever actually watched a 4k blu-ray?

Well if Microsoft ever does take away the option to buy software without a subscription then your worries will be realized but since they haven't shown any signs of doing that I wouldn't worry too much. If anything I'd think Microsoft prefers customers like you who are willing to pay more for a sense of ownership. Yea office is just an example and it's a perfect example of how they still offer both options. I don't know of anything they have forced people to buy subscriptions for. Unless you have an exsmple of something like that, it's just pure speculation based merely on the fact that subscription options exist.

If that's your preference, by all means. I definitely prefer Netflix to owning movies but either way you can still own movies or games, none of these options prevent that. A subscription model for something like office is annoying but office is just one program. $10 a month for everything game pass has on it is a steal. And actually, as for office... apparently this is not widely known but Microsoft still makes standard versions of office. Office 365 is a subscription program but there's office 2017, 2019, and 2021 that you can buy as a standard one time purchase if you want to.

I'm not sure what you mean. Why would anyone pay for a game that's already on game pass?

I see this as Microsoft competing with Sony by trying to improve their first party line up. Likewise Sony is getting more and more into the PC market. As a gamer, seems like we're winning out. Maybe if Call of Duty doesn't come to Playstation later on that will be a disappointment for Playstation owners but overall I see the competition between Sony and Microsoft as a win for gamers.

Acquisitions are the nature of any market. I think the similarities between EA and Microsoft are only that they've both made acquisition at all. Sony has done the same. EA tends to drive franchises into the ground. Microsoft has a much better track record.

How is it the same thing EA does?

I don't think we need to worry about that. With the way people have access to things like unreal engine and unity these days, the barrier for entry into game development is lower than ever.

Just to add some context, in 2021 fiscal year Sony brought in 25B from gaming while Microsoft only brought in 13B in revenue. It seems like Microsoft is throwing their weight around but realistically I see them as simply trying to catch up to Sony. Microsoft's gaming division is growing much faster than Sony's though. Microsoft saw ~50% growth while Sony only saw ~13%. Reading through the lines, I think it's safe to say Microsoft has proven the strength of the subscription model and their fast growth has put pressure on Sony to follow suite and release their own subscription plan. The PS4 era proved for Sony that the strength is in the software IPs and not the hardware sales. Both companies are realizing that more and more, and Microsoft is trying to emulate the level of quality and success that Sony hit with their first party titles. Some see this consolidation as a bad thing, and if it were a company like EA buying up other brands I would agree, but Microsoft is a very different company. They have a pretty massive amount of gaming tech under their belt now and it will be really interesting to see what comes of it when they eventually release a true next gen title that builds on all the new tech and talent they've gained.

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-for-a-whopping-68-7-billion-all-cash-deal.html Pretty big news. I wonder if they will Kick Bobby out after the acquisition.

To be fair the real-world performance difference between a SATA SSD and an NVME SSD is pretty minor in terms of actual load times for programs. The vast majority of games will still play fine off a hard drive.