Sony practically owns their cloud platform too, with their Gaikai purchase a decade ago[1] and PS Now being "PS3/PS4s in the cloud".

[1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-03-sony-acqui...

This is actually an area where I think Sony has dropped the ball; PS Now is an interesting service, and they have a pretty interesting catalog of older games from the PS2/PS3 era. But they don't advertise it well enough, and I don't think they put enough focus on new releases and keeping them available the way Microsoft does with Gamepass.

There's rumours of them revamping PS Now and PS+ into a new service.

I've heard these, and they should! It would give them direct competition to GamePass Ultimate, which is a tier of service they don't currently offer (unless you buy PS+ and PS Now as separate subscriptions).

I assumed Sony were migrating to or already using Azure at this point.

https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-microsoft-to-...

At the time Microsoft where not throwing so much money at games development an IP ownership. I wonder how Sony feel about this now.

I see. But because they're maintaining datacenters for PS3/PS4 streaming I think they have the potential to go hosted, at the end of the day multiplayer servers are developer-controlled and network servers (e.g.: PSN, Xbox Live) are mostly identity services and such. (Even matchmaking isn't the network's job anymore)

Nintendo yes. But they've long been a closed, relatively niche ecosystem. Their entire market cap is less than the value of this deal.

Sony, perhaps. But I do think the cloud platform is a critical piece, because it is a huge source of value capture (e.g., all CoD compute on Azure is no small deal). It also allows significantly more dominance in distribution via cloud gaming - and coincidentally, Microsoft has been much more aggressive about owning distribution with Xbox Game Pass. This is all on top of the fact that Microsoft influences the PC and console markets, not just the console market.

Activision are much better at monetising than Nintendo.

Think candy crush and loot boxes vs fun single player mario games

Nintendo operates on different rules due their absurd array of reliable IPs. I get the sense that MS, Sony are still trying to sort out their own "Mario, Zelda, Pokemon" clone with mainstream movies/merch potential and all that entails.

> Nintendo operates on different rules due their absurd array of reliable IPs

Or do they have an "absurd array of reliable IPs" because they operate differently?

Halo is probably the closest thing they have to a Marioesque IP.

I'm not that big on FPS games. When I play Nintendo I generally play things like Mario Party or Mario Kart. A friend recently gave me an Xbox Series S, and off the top of my head I couldn't think of a single multi-player party sorta party game. I'm sure there are plenty of these games, but they definitely don't have the same type of draw as Mario.

The major non-Nintendo consoles have de-emphasized splitscreen and party games for a long time -- once we hit the PS4 and Xbox One era, it felt like most games didn't even support splitscreen at all, aside from a few indies. I think those games tend to rely on in-person interaction to boost the fun, and MS/Sony have decided to prioritize selling additional consoles instead of making one usable for multiple people.

The halo universe is pretty big. There are about 20-30+ books that I can recall, a phone game, and 2 RTS games on top of the FPS games we know and love. There is a TV show releasing this or next year. The universe of Halo is one I've grown up with and can't stop waiting for the next piece of lore to come out. There's a lot to enjoy in the Halo universe even if you don't play FPSes. The books themselves are solid though a solid % is just your run-of-the-mill fiction.

I don't think the parent was saying they were the same.

Just that Halo was the closest IP in terms of prestige.

Nintendo and mobile are the only real options for party games. Xbox and Playstation are for AAA enthusiast games.

From a pure marketing perspective the problem is Master Chief is such a blank slate unless you are pretty steeped in the lore.

ie Pikachu has already sold a lunchbox by the time you have explained what the space marine guy is about.

This all seems really simple-minded but having identifiable brands are incredible business. I definitely see MS and Sony trying to Mario-ify their characters. Aloy/Horizon Zero Dawn is a good candidate for this.

Absolutely not, Microsoft owns your operating system on your general computer. At least you could argue that I am, in some sense, willingly entering the ecosystem by buying an xbox. Blizzard and Minecraft are primarily PC games.

Pretty sure Nintendo operates their cloud platform as well, though it's hardly comparable as it only offers NES + SNES roms.

It offers some n64 titles now as well.

Sadly, these are emulated quite poorly.

It's pretty difficult to emulate an N64 with both accuracy and speed because its GPU is strange and flexible in all the wrong ways. And its game catalog isn't that large, so not worth the engineering effort.

The games people care about deeply like SM64 have remakes that aren't that hard to get.

I saw an SGI Indy on eBay today, that had some sort of N64 development device it came with. Not sure if it actually contained an emulator or maybe just a header for an onboard debugging port though. Sadly it was priced wayyy higher than the Indy I just bought so I ignored it.

I’d be more inclined to agree except that emulation of the same exact games went much better on the original Wii. Nintendo just phoned this one in.

Word of Dolphin hasn't made its way to Nintendo HQ yet?