There’s been LOADS of analysis on this and the consensus has always been that Microsoft doesn’t understand the Japanese market.

Japanese dude here. You have to understand that Japanese people are really into a lot of Japanese series that have never seen the light of day in the US, or are very niche.

This overly-specificly defined market is imaginary. Its an intentionally crafted term, likely crafted by lobbyists at Microsoft, to create the false impression that Sony has a Monopoly in Japan, by excluding other big players in the market like mobile and nintendo.

If only there were some sort of history between Japan and Korea that might explain why the people of Korea wouldn’t necessarily favour Japanese consoles over others to the extent that the people of Japan do...

Sorry, I should add, there’s more context for the competitive arguments in the full recording of the hearing, which you can see here:

But they’re not doing anticompetitive things in Japan. The Xbox hasn’t failed in Japan due to shenanigans, it has failed because the Japanese market isn’t interested in it. It’s very weird to ask for an open and free market and make these allegations when...the open and free market has been saying for 20 years that…

A politician was paid to put a narrowly handpicked fact, void of contextual value, on the record?

Very simple.
They canned a planned PS5 version from a studio that they acquired.
Sony doesn’t buy a studio and then take shit from Microsoft, they acquire a studio and plan new games for their own platform.

Well, partially because Sony isn’t buying up major publishers and then making their games platform-exclusive, at least not yet.

“This deal was not done to take games away from another playerbase like that,” Spencer said. “Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games.”

I had honestly forgotten about the domestic abuse allegations, I thought most of his being “canceled” was on the basis of the number of inappropriate texts with an underage fan (which then prompted other similar texts and DMs to be released).

Seriously. Focusing on one while ignoring the other feels like “Just don’t look over here.”

Doesn’t negate all the weird behavior at the offices as documented by his coworkers.

While obviously we don’t know the exact specifics of what actually happened here, it was pretty telling that everyone who knew or worked with him was immediately ready to accept it as fact because of all of their experiences dealing with him and his history of behavior everywhere he went. The number of stories that…

Quick correction to this part of the article: “He had reportedly been arrested for these charges and pleaded guilty to two counts in October of that same year.” He pleaded NOT guilty to the two counts. The current version makes things very confusing.

I mean, there’s still all that horrific shit of him sliding into underage girls DMs and telling them they’re hot jailbait.

“No one wants to work give birth anymore!”

Maybe Japanese women are tired of giving up their careers and life outside the Japanese home...or maybe it is just too expensive to have children now. But no, those are not the real reasons, it is because they haven’t played the right video game.

“something something Nintendo resale values”

Does the prequel include a wage high enough to support another human life?