Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that “Marxism is refuted”. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism.
I'm emphasizing the point that is the only part of the quote that doesn't fit the modern day so closely you would think some really good Marxist author wrote it recently.
I spent five minutes searching for the right emote to express my anguish at that fact and then gave up because none seemed to fit quite right. My comment was too ambiguous without one it seems.
Capitalism leads to concentration of capital. Concentration of capital leads to Monopoly. Monopoly leads to imperialism. Imperialism leads to fascism. -Lenin Yoda
excited for this to continue until there's one aaa game developer, called Slop. They release one £200 game a month, and the only thing the human mind is capable of remembering about these games is that the graphics were pretty good
Fuck yeah my kid learns to gamble before he can even understand basic probability.
It’s a game that just pushes the “spectacle” button in your brain until you starve
There will also be Nintendo, who will also fleece you but in different and mind bogglingly weird ways
They're called amiibos and they are the best way to be fleeced ever invented
:volcel-judge: Breach the door on three. :volcel-judge: :volcel-judge: :volcel-judge:
There will be gacha waifus. And people, including here, will defend the game's existence because waifu treats. :so-true:
There’s been a million mergers in the last 15 years that I’ve been like “are we seriously gonna let this happen? Don’t we have laws against this?” And then it happens anyway. Throw it on the pile lol
Fingers crossed they at least do something about Bobby
I'm hoping Microsoft dusts off Metal Arms (blizzard bought Swinging Apes studios ages ago) to try to have their own edgy action platformer to compete with Ratchet & Clank.
Oh definitely since Microsoft has stated Game Pass is great for smaller games rebooting old games would work great for such a model. And if anyone wants to get GamePass while its cheap probably do it sooner rather than later
Making a True Crime game where the MC discovers the police were the true criminals would be fun spin on the series.
Have the MC be a newbie who truly believe in the system only for them to chase some case and find the whole department/city is involved and allowing it to keep tax money flowing and fund their own bribes. Or do LA again except the end game gang are the LAPD. Like true to life not Hollywood propaganda
Fingers crossed they at least do something about Bobby
What are they gonna do?
"Please sir, go enjoy your billions elsewhere. Thank you."
I mean it would be good to see him go, but him facing any consequences is a laugh.
Lol I came this close to putting “obv his class position will protect him from real consequences but it’d be nice for him to be gone” but thought obviously that would be implied here
Yeah the twitter nerds this morning are all saying "Finally he's gonna get his comeuppance." and it hurts me every time I see it.
Lol dudes next 5 generations could sit on their asses their whole lives and still have money left over
If they lived on the median income of the country they reside in and just invest the rest in index funds without touching it, they’d be fine indefinitely right up until capitalism collapses, which will hopefully be sooner than 5 generations from now
I know one way that future can be prevented.
:owned:
ARM and Nvidia is an attempt to try and destroy China's mobile, computing and server industries
Lmao what a clusterfuck of a system. Holy shit. Halo is one of those franchises that makes like a bajillion dollars on sales.
taking more time to catch the new people up.
343 is also using a heavily updated version of the blam engine initially made for Halo 1 in the late 90's, so the new hires have to learn something new that they will never use again unless they get hired to make a new Stubbs the zombie game.
This explains why Bobby Kotick has been adamant about not stepping down no matter what. That dude is probably on the verge of the biggest payday of his life...which is saying something.
Between this and the Bethesda purchase, there seems to be a growing lack of independent publishers in gaming.
There is, but I also think there have never been as much independent video games being published; it feels like a golden age compared to, say, the 90s. And so many bangers (Stardew Valley, Oxygen Not Included, Factorio, Satisfactory, Papers Please, FTL, Subnautica, and so on and so on).
Sorry, I meant independent of the console manufacturers, not like indies.
Oh I'm sure, the list is just the ones that came to mind. Again, it feels like a golden age; to the point where you even have a hard time keeping up with great games coming out; I discovered Green Hell, another independent one, completely randomly at least a year after it had come out. It's great, by the way.
I mean, I played the shit out of it. the whole "Arstorzka" being authoritarian and bad with an npc saying "they all pay us the same" while another nnpc from the "United Federatuon" comments on how their borders are all cool and good and fancy and use computers instead of people is pretty "gonmunizm baed guys"
I've no idea to be honest, it's the only one of two out of my list I haven't actually played (the other being FTL); I do know it's been critically acclaimed, hence the inclusion. You may well be right.
I was never a fan of papers please (partly cause it’s too hard for me) but FTL I highly recommend, it’s so good. I personally recommend the iPad version, that game is pretty much perfect for tablets
Yeah, FTL is definitely on my to-play list but that list is long, sadly.
I think you're totally right. There's definitely an indie golden age going on rn. So many games and so many all time greats.
I think how we got here is the ubiquity of tools like Unity and Godot that made game making possible for smaller or individual devs. As well as the diminishing returns of better graphics and or intensive games.
What I'm really interested in is seeing his this golden age will end. I think we're seeing the beginnings of it. Different indie developers have grown and some have started not just developing but also publishing. I have to imagine we'll see a conglomeration of indies behind just a few major indie publishers.
Microsoft will make the games, Disney will make the movies and the series and Amazon will make the deliveries. Marx was, is and will always be right.
Really though, Blizzard makes nothing worth playing. Objectively speaking, big buyouts are bad, but anyone affected by this needs to play better games.
C'mon man, Activision Blizzard published Sekiro, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Overwatch, THPS Remake, Diablo, etc. Sure there's a lot of slop but there's also some good games in there
The good games on that list were only published by them, though, not developed. I can't imagine Blizzard vs Microsoft as publisher would make a huge difference? Could be wrong.
I really enjoyed Overwatch and Diablo, but I take your point, and I agree that I don't think that Blizzard vs Microsoft makes a huge difference in games they solely publish, e.g., Sekiro
That company is gone though, the workers are all gone and they intentionally publish broken shit
Blizzard does not exist. It's Activision now. Literally none of the people who made Blizzard important or special still work there, and all the ex-employees willing to speak on it say Blizzard is dead, hasn't been around for years now.
I'm sure the state will not allow Microsoft to build a monopoly and squeeze the market. I'm sure those anti-trust laws will be applied any second now. Any second now. Any second
Go on lib gaming sites. "Its not a monopoly, Microsoft is still only the third biggest gaming company by revenue".
Bazinga brains willingly refuse to learn or understand how screwed they are. :so-true:
Sex pest company acquired by known Epstein confidant company, :soviet-hmm:
Time to go all in with JRPGs --oh wait, the switch is taking care of that
Honestly the counter, if they can afford it, would be to get EA and make FIFA exclusive. That way Microsoft doesn't make much headway in Sony's strongest market. Would be funny if all three console manufacturers became essentially regional.
Few things in the gaming industrial complex :jokerfied: me more than the decades of consistent fleecing of sports game consumers who buy roughly the same trash most years.
Oh yeah I forgot they already acquired that one and was trying to think of another acti-blizz shooter
I've been out of the loop with a lot of this stuff, but why would CoD go exclusive? It seems like it would be the type of game that Microsoft would want to keep multiplat. I'm sure PS5 sales far outpace the new Xbox considering the demand. It's still all about the money at the end of the day, and it seems shutting out millions of players from purchasing CoD on PS would be a risky venture.
That's all true, and yet Bethesda are only releasing Starfield on Xbox and PC, which is pretty wild considering how many copies Skyrim sold.
Yeah they're massively limiting their audience, but I think Microsoft is trying to go all in on exclusives this generation. I think they are just trying to murder the PS5 with brute force
Gaming's gotten wild, seems like Sony and Microshit are switching places with Sony being the ones to make their exclusives (GoW, FFXII) multiplatform.
Skyrim has sold a lot, but a halfway decent CoD game can do 20-30 million copies.
Unfortunately there are no halfway decent CoD games :trans-undertale:
redirect playstation demand into xbox demand - millions and millions of dudebros out there base their console purchase on literally "where's CoD at"
That might be the case, but there's plenty of non dudebro CoD purchasers. I think this is very much understating how much of a casual game CoD is. This reminds me of the Minecraft situation, which was also multiplat when Microsoft acquired the parent company.
I get that, I just think there are some IPs where it doesn't make sense to me personally. But what do I know
I don't see this. They're bigger than ever rn and still the significantly easier option for casual players to get into gaming as opposed to computers.
There's the chip shortage atm, sure, but what consoles are being made are still selling out instantly over a year after their launch.
Kind of a shame Joe Mama is too cowardly to rev up the Sherman anti-trust law.
He'll use it to bust up teachers unions and nursing unions, just like ol' Teddy did.
Is that where you put all the capitalists in Georgia and burn it all to the ground?
Yo they did it
Hope they kick Bobby out once the deal is done
So this article claims that this still has to be approved by regulators.
Forgive my ignorance but can companies just claim that a deal is going to happen even before said deal is approved? I assume the answer is yes, and I also assume that it will get approved anyway.
I guess I know the answer to my question but this shit fucking sucks.
All mergers have to be approved by the DOJ, so I guess they think everyone should just know.
I think Microsoft might still publish games on PlayStation.
But on Xbox - those games will be on game pass.
Like, call of duty can’t be a system seller as an exclusive for years if the systems are still sold out.
They bought Minecraft several years ago now and it’s still being supported on everything with a screen
Yeah. A few games from Bethesda are going Xbox exclusive maybe.
But I don’t see Microsoft being willing to cut off a huge chunk of revenue (games on PlayStation and Nintendo) for the sake of maybe selling a few more xboxes, which are still production constrained.
Heck, I imagine the most likely outcome will be old Activision games coming to game pass.
As the way Activision makes games, they are too big to not be on every device.
But maybe Microsoft would pivot call of duty campaigns to a Games as Service - having shorter campaigns than ever, but coming out regularly on game pass exclusive while keeping the multiplayer cross-platform.
selling a few more xboxes, which are still production constrained.
They have to know consoles are on the way out in less than a decade. That's why they have been switching to the game pass model and releasing everything they own there day 1.
There isn't that much profit in selling a console as well. They generally make up for that with inflated game profits
Yeah consoles are usually sold at a loss. I know when the PS3 came out it was the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market because it was sold at such a discount.
Call of Duty will absolutely go exclusive in a few years. Warzone and any similar Free to Play successors may end up multiplat, but I really would expect any paid games to be exclusive.
You don't have to come up with fresh and original ideas if you just buy all the developers :very-smart:
Wonder what Playstation buys in response now. I don't think they could afford Ubisoft or EA. Maybe Take 2 or Square Enix, but even then that's a huge stretch.
It's really a shame, consolidation is bad for the industry as a whole and they're doing it now cause the timing is perfect with both consumers and employees being unhappy with Activision.
I think they'd do a Japanese publisher like Square or Capcom. Their hand is kind of forced by Microsoft's strategy - if they don't start snapping up publishers, they'll be squeezed out of the market unless they can carve a Nintendo-style niche. Which isn't out of the question.
