Most hilarious post I read in the entire thread. I'm sure MS has Playstation 4 and 5 compatible versions of all their first party catalogue thereim their hard drives, waiting for Jim Ryan to say yes.
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Microsoft responds to Sony's claim that Call of Duty is unrivaled & unique (Claims Sony is paying to block games from Gamepass)
- Thread starter Idas
- Start date
- Activision/Blizzard
Yes, Sony has often paid for exclusive content, timed exclusives, and the types of deals that keep games off Gamepass. But many titles are PS exclusive without any deals being made... they are simply PS exclusive because they don't sell on the other platforms. This is becoming more rare because there's plenty of cash to be had on Switch and PC, but Xbox still lags behind.
So, a list of Sony exclusive third party games isn't necessarily indicative of Sony's behaviour on this front, it's more indicative of market trends up to this point.
People expecting full native Game Pass (with native versions of Xbox games) are gonna be dissappointed.
I know how you feel. Before 2018, the last Spiderman game was on 9 platforms. :)
Oh Shit? A month!? I thought that was in a year.
Well, that answers that. I appreciate your responses. They'll get to that soon enough.
I don't know about any of that. What does that have to do with this acquisition?
Should we stay on topic, or is this fair game?
As good as it was for the industry when MS denied it back in the 360 days when they were on top.
I'm not saying that those games couldn't be made without the exclusivity agreements. My argument is that the money from those agreements goes towards the business to use for making games. Your argument was that these deals are solely there to prevent a game from appearing on other platforms. Neither of us know the finer details of any of those deals, but think about it. Do you think Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo would give money to a developer/publisher without some stipulations on the product and how the money is used? I don't think so. They're businesses.
The other part of this scenario is that the third party developer in a exclusivity deal remains independent. They get to make their own stipulations for the game, how the money is used and have the opportunity to choose different partners for other projects. In a situation where a dev/publisher is being acquired by a first party company that first party company generally gets the last say. That's the whole problem with acquiring several developers and publishers. Microsoft gets to gobble up an enormous amount of IP and get to say what happens with the IP and the developers, conceivably, forever or until sold/shutdown. Whereas Sony gets a limited say on FF7R and 16 for a limited time and Square gets to go on with its business.
It has to do with the point regarding what's being good for the industry.
It's lawyers arguing at the end of the day. They're going to present an incredibly biased and one sided viewpoint that ignores anything that isn't conducive to their case.
I am a big fan of exclusives as this usually results in much more polished product tailored for the specific console.
By offering a massively inferior experience when compared native play for the foreseeable future?
Obviously the tech is improving and not like it's gonna happen any time soon. If it ever happens, by then it'll be serviceable for those with good bandwidth.
Nah this isn't true either. Stuff like NBA 2K and Guardians have Sony Marketing and still end up on GamePass. They get just as much marketing as say Village and Village we know was at least a year.
Totally, and its fine, it's literally their job. Its just surprising to me how much an official inquiry like this one looks like a console-war forum thread XD
A few things:
- All companies value recurring revenue over one-time purchases. It's just significantly less risky. What happens if you release a bomb on a sub is that it fades into the library; if it bombs traditionally, you lose millions of dollars and gain nothing.
- GP is like Amazon Prime. It's not just "value of all games at retail times # of downloads = value." Do GP members spend more on the store than non-GP members? Not just DLC for GP games but overall. Do their friends spend more? Is it linear? As in, does the average spend of a non-GP user go up as their friends who sub to GP go up? Etc..
No. It's a snowball effect. Entire genres are skipping Xbox because of the deals they have put in place in the past. Sony was market leader last gen, they bought exclusivity of key franchises at a discount because of their huge lead, gamers who liked certain types of games flocked to the Playstation, certain types of games started selling worse and worse on Xbox, the audience completely left after 360's success, the deals for exclusivity are now even easier for Playstation to get to the point they don't even have to pay for some of the more niche stuff - especially Japanese games.
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Regardless, it's a solution. It's not feasible to bring the whole GP library to PS consoles, and having a first-party-only service will always be inferior to the real thing.
Regardless, it's a solution. It's not feasible to bring the whole GP library to PS consoles, and having a first-party-only service will always be inferior to the real thing.
People moan that the only way to play PS3 games is through streaming, and your answer is to stream games like Starfield? Lmao
Yeah, I don't care enough to get emotional invested but it's interesting. I love the hobby but corporations are going to corporate.
What I am trying to say is I don't think Square is going to PlayStation to fund the game, I think Sony is going to Square to make it exclusive. Of course Square can spend that money wherever but I don't think they need that money to fund the current game or any future games, my point is Square makes enough money on their own games to fund all their games themselves I don't think they need to lean on Sony to keep their company afloat, they take the money because why not. Of course if you are fully funding the game you want something back, just look at the Tomb Raider deal Xbox did.
I don't think if Sony said no to the deal and kept their money, that the FF franchise would just die off because Square can't afford to make a new one. If Sony did say no then Square can sell in on 3 more platforms. I think what the case is right now, Sony is probably paying enough to Square to the point they think it's enough to cover the missing Xbox and Switch ports and then they can sell it on PC after some time to scoop up more sales.
I think this whole situation is worse than Sony just outright buying Square, it's the will they won't they release the game that's the stupid thing
Xbox streaming is pretty damn good in my experience. A single player game like Starfield will likely work great and be pretty indistinguishable from native for all but the most sensitive and discerning gamers.
Subscription services have a predictable income stream; every month, there's guaranteed income; this is different from pay to own, where there's no guarantee that the next instalment will bring in the same income.
Microsoft can make losses early in the game to gain market share. This is different from a company like Sony, where Sony's dependence on gaming is much higher percentage-wise than MS, and their net income is much lower at less than 10B a year. There's nothing anti-competitive about this, as it's pretty standard in all industries.
Additionally, unlike linear entertainment like TV and movies, there are potential upsell opportunities in games like MTX, Micro-transactions, DLC, ads etc. Microsoft is also expanding their ecosystem beyond the PC and Console to the Cloud, which means there's a much bigger addressable market in the long term.
People are okay with XCloud because there's evidence that MS is improving the service and expanding it to more markets. Sony doesn't have a track record of improving its service. Heck, they don't support streaming PS5 games and their server capacity is still capped at 5M.
Hmm I think there's some truth here but it's not so simple. Microsoft failed to cultivate the audience for these games after making a concerted effort in the 360 days IMO. I really don't know how much is to do with Sony's deals and how much is a result of publishers putting some games on Xbox then getting cold feet when they bombed.
It is already good for a lot of people (hell, I even played via xCloud in the train).
You need time to cultivate the audience. Microsoft started with FF13 (unfortunately not that great franchises) but FF14 skipped the platform, FF15 was on Xbox and FF7R and FF16 went exclusive to Sony.
Sony cultivate JRPG audience since PS1. PS1 was literally a JRPG console.
I'm coming in late to this and forgive me if I'm stepping on toes but what do you suggest? That only companies smaller or slightly larger than Sony are allowed to enter this market and compete?
My experience of XCloud, and cloud gaming in general, is that it's a noticeably inferior experience that is tolerable for certain types of game and not for others. It will no doubt get better but it's by no means an equivalent to native play and it won't be for a long time, especially for those in areas with worse internet.
Doubt. It is already good enough. And minor issues are no different from bugs, glitches and artifacts, tearing etc. that we get with native experience.
I totally agree that Xbox dropped the ball and fell flat on their face at the end of 360 into One gen. It's definitely not exclusively because of the exclusivity deals. The big install base gap out of the gate helped it all along. The underpowered One helped along the lead platform for third parties switching from Xbox to Playstation. It's only part of the puzzle, for sure. But it is part of it. So, when I see the rebuttal to the default exclusives that Playstation gets as not 'counting' for exclusives, to me that's a bit disingenuous because the plan Playstation executed on so well was what they have done since they got into this space. They wanted certain third party games associated with their platforms and they are very aware that has a knock-on effect for any given gen. This has been their strategy every gen to great success. They were trying again this gen right out the gate with trying to associate Bethesda games with Playstation. Two they got and they were looking at Starfield next. I think that was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back tbh. Especially considering Bethesda's history with Xbox.
But to say that getting, for instance, SFV exclusive didn't help kill the fighting scene that the 360 cultivated and LEAD in is either not knowing how it went down or being disingenuous about how it went down. And again the fighting scene on Xbox didn't die in a vacuum. There were plenty of mistakes made by Xbox. But to say Sony wasn't deliberately trying to strangle that genre, and other genres, on Xbox just isn't true. And one of their main weapons in doing so was strategically placed exclusivity deals. They mattered big time. They were smart business and I personally have no issue with the deals Sony made, and made at a discount, given their install base advantage by mid-gen.
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I don't really get your thinking. Of course Square's games will be on other platforms. From Square's perspective they get additional funding and support to make a game in exchange for exclusivity for a set time. Then they get to sell it on other platforms. That's so much better than being scooped up by a first party. Nintendo has the best relationship they've had with Square in years, and that wouldn't be the case if Square was acquired. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. 😅
Xbox are still making consoles because they understand the value of a truly consumer-focused brand. The brand Xbox, with physical shelf space, is unique in Microsoft's portfolio. They've tried to get into numerous consumer-first brand spaces in the past and none of them have ever come close to the success of Xbox.
I don't see them ever leaving the console space for that reason alone. xCloud is part of the future, for sure. But having a brand the youngins want is the prize of most all corporations imo.
So you first make an argument that we don't know about why FFVII isn't on Xbox and that maybe it wasn't on the whiteboard, despite the fact that XV was on Xbox AND FFXVI is also not on Xbox now, and the turn around and make an argument assuming Bethesda's financial situation based on no source…🙄
Microsoft is about to walk away with half the money and with custody of the kids
Because the consoles still sell? You need time for people to get used to streaming. The same reason they make TV apps.
They learned with Xbox One that you cannot be too hasty (Stadia proved that too). A lot of things that Xbox One introduced were too ahead of that time.
I know it takes time. I imagine thing would be quite different if they continued on the path of the early 360 years.
2 big exclusive JRPGs, Tales, Eternal Sonata, Star Ocean, locking in FFXIII, becoming the shmup platform of choice, timed exclusivity on Lost Planet, exclusive Ace Combat, Katamari, Ridge titles etc. It was so depressing when that all got left behind for "Halo Gears Forza" then things got even worse with the XB1.
You can compete without gobbling up large swaths of the market in one fell swoop. We all know what happens over time when these things go unchecked the companies get broken up. Since they will eventually stifle all competition. Growing organically through creating with the revenue generated is far more ideal than just buying competition or adjacent pieces. Goes for sony or any one else. Like we are arguing about ungodly sums of money concentrated to far few companies, no different than how the middle class has eroded exponentially as our entire society races more and more towards all wealth concentrated by the few.
It already isn't a massively inferior experience and in 2 to 5 years, it will be so good that most people won't be able to tell the difference between native play and cloud, imo. Better servers, better internet, better compression, etc.
ZeniMax was planning to sell.
ActiBlizz was blood in the water due to all the scandals and internal development issues and it sounds like the board decided to get while the going is good once MS approached them.
The reason people think Playstation for fighting and JRPGs aren't a coincidence. Sony specifically targeted the big players in the market to ensure they got them exclusive. This drove smaller titles to their platform. They didn't purchase SFV exclusivity or Evo to let Xbox become the platform of choice. Its no different why they were quick to work with Epic to resolve the latency issues.
The opposite is also true. You think they are giving ActiBlizz hundreds of millions for their exclusive marketing deal out of the goodness of their heart? Or were they trying to reverse the image of Xbox being the premier platform for FPS?
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Microsoft doesn't use the word profitable when talking about Gamepass, they say sustainable. These are carefully chosen words. To gamers, it doesn't matter. We still get the games. But for them, it's a way to get people in the ecosystem, where they will then go on to spend more money on DLC and microtransactions.
That's true. Phil has said Xbox is profitable at least, so it's not like a total black hole even if Game Pass itself may not be turning a profit yet. But that's part of why it's sustainable is because the economics of a digital storefront and ecosystem means revenue comes from other areas outside of subscription revenue.