While I dislike Sony, their disgusting practices with exclusive-content, and much of the moves they pulled against SEGA and Nintendo early in their console-maker days (and, I really don't care for their first-party titles either), and I wouldn't shed a tear to see them crash and burn, I really don't like seeing gaming companies pulling a Disney, especially when one such company is Microsoft.
People really seem to have a short-term memory when it comes to Microsoft, if they are labelling them "good guys".
While it's great they currently have a "benign" strategy when it comes to PC, that can change at any time. It already did in the past, multiple times, and they can easily lock all of these developers to their own platform at any time.
Also, I should mention I did own an Xbox 360, and it was one of the most insulting, and terrible experiences I had with any console.
The library of games was great (Project Gotham Racing 4, Crackdown, Dead Rising (at the time it was an exclusive), ...), the online services/interface/... left a positive impression, but everything else was a mess.
First, the actual console was broken. Really, there's not other way to describe that whole "red rings" mess. I have all my consoles still working (some approaching 40 years), with no problems. In my house-hold, and despite being well taken care of, my brother had to send his console to be fixed twice (and, each time he clearly received a refurbished console that had another problem; for example, he sent one with a graphics card problem, and received back one whose disc drive was extremely noisy, and stopped working a few months later; for each repair, he had to pay). I bought a console for myself, and just as soon as their warranty for the "red rings" problem ended, my console broke down (and remained, because I refused to pay a ridiculous amount to fix a problem that was clearly on the design and manufacturing of the console). The only console I owned that stopped working.
Additionally, and even worse, despite living in an European country, and buying hundreds of games (between "full" games, and digital "arcade" titles), I was constantly treated like a third-rate customer. There were plenty of content, and services, I couldn't access. For example, we never had access to the indie marketplace games.
Worse, I found myself unable to buy some games and DLCs, because of whatever unexplained reason. Take Crackdown. I rather enjoyed the game, and when a DLC for the game was announced, I placed funds in my wallet to buy it on day one. But, despite being a first-party title, they never released the DLC in Portugal (and Germany, but the game was banned there). Imagine living in the European Union, buying a game, and then having the Digital DLCs for the game available everywhere, except where you live, with no explanation.
So yeah, is a company that couldn't care less about customers outside of the US, the UK, and barely anywhere else, a company we want to have owning many of the great studios? Definitely not.
this is the correct take here
