Eh, Microsoft and Sony bought game studios that are past their prime/bloated. Video games are one of the easiest markets for a small no name player to break into so I'm not concerned at all about "gaming studio monopolies!"
Its a different story when most games have their monthly gaming budget already allocated to a bunch of ondemand services. They're locked in, effectively, and very unlikely to 'step down' to paying for a single product. They could though, don't get me wrong, but still. Its not getting easier.
Cloud is the biggest threat right now for independent studios. Its the same principle as the platform war on mobile, except less enforced as the same device can still go offline. Though you might question how offline you can really game today.
As for this takeover... lol. Bungie is yesterday's news, already chewed apart and spat out by corporate. Now Sony's munching on the regurgitated remains. I get the counter move, but this is basically pissing away 3.6B.
If Sony want to survive they need to kick out the Elop and stop releasing their exclusive game on PC which draws customer to their platform. Otherwise buying one studio will do nothing.
Sony survives. Company's been at it much longer than MS in gaming, and more successful throughout the entire time. MS OTOH has built a long history of major fuck ups, from peripherals to the way they roll out services, to the hardware itself, to the PR surrounding it... they failed on all counts. Picked it back up, sure, but fail they did. Sony similarly screwed things up... but never the core of its product: a new console with solid (first party) titles. Sony sells hardware on the content. MS sells it on promises of unified services and connectivity. They still do! The latest release is the best proof. They had hardware, and literally then started considering what to run on it. They're still working on that, too, with the recent take over. Agile indeed...
Their console release is literally that, releasing little chunks to finally get to some minimum viable product.
The two companies also have a radically different business approach. They can differentiate even just by doing everything differently. MS hasn't got the same agenda, they're not tied to console as Sony is, and similarly, Sony isn't tied to PCs. I'm still quite convinced cloud gaming won't be able to bleed over different markets, or really take over at all. It'll likely exist side by side with everything else.
