Sony had the chance to get damn near ALL ABK titles and forfeited them for CoD. Ain’t no chance Phil is going to give them all those games anyway. He didn’t commit to other ABK titles because that ain’t in the cards, chief.
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This is exactly what I’m thinking.
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I believe there will be exclusives…just not much this generation as they still have to figure out an optimal way to work with ABK (if they decide to change some things of course)
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While I do think they will go mostly multiplat with ABK, to me making games exclusive just makes far more sense
CoD/Mobile/Candy Crush are the true money makers in this deal, is bringing something like a Crash 5 or a Tony Hawk sequel worth bringing to PS/Switch to sell maybe a couple of million extra copies or is it better to make it exlcusive and force more people into the xbox ecosystem/GP
To me the latter just makes much more sense, obviously multiplayer stuff is more debatable because of the userbase/crossplay and MTX but single player stuff that moves the needle at all should be exclusive
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Yes, and MS emphasized that it was only COD in the contracts they made with SONY Nintendo. If they want to make certain games multiplatform that will be Phil’s decision but nothing will stope them making everything but COD exclusive.
Especially when the COD and King machines finance the whole thing. Like who gives a crap about a loss of sales from Tony Hawk or Spyro.
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Exactly! Plus Phil has commented on having more family friendly games for the platform. He’s got loads now…
I mean if Elder Scrolls 6 is going exclusive, of course Spyro and Crash of all things are going exclusive.
The only question mark in my opinion are the live service games, as that is pretty much how ABK have been set up and generates a lot of money.
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I don’t know how likely it is that we’ll see less CoD but I do hope that they put some of this army of devs on to other IPs, including ones MS already owned. It might be a pipe dream but I’m hoping the intent to have a greater variety for Game Pass will make them branch out into under-served genres.
It would seem obvious but there’s one aspect of exclusivity that’s not discussed much and that’s merch. I mentioned it in the Square Enix thread but I wonder if the benefits of exclusivity would be outweighed by whatever extra money if any an expanded base could bring in from shirts, figures, et cetera.
My money’s on no, and exclusivity makes more sense financially, but it’s not like I have a balance sheet in front of me. There’s a lot of calculus that goes into making these decisions and we’ve seen that intent can change over time.
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For real, when King is making you more money in a week than these titles might make in 6 months on another platform, it’s really not much of a loss
Especially when you’re getting the benefits of it as an exclusive too
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Right. I do think most of us saying that not everything is going to be exclusive are referring to those types of games. Single player stuff is almost definitely going to be exclusive with MAYBE some specific exceptions if they feel like there is a reason. Even there, I don’t know that every service game would be multiplat, but I think some will. And I think Nintendo might get a bit better treatment than Sony in that regard since they weren’t jerks.
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Blizzard stuff is more PC leaning so I think it’d be reasonable for a game like Odyssey to remain exclusive and still keep upwards of 3/4th of its users.
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Speaking of Blizzard, Jez said on XB2 yesterday that devs there are hyping him up about their future pipeline. They wouldn’t tell him exactly what’s in the works but it sounds like they have a lot of stuff happening, besides the usual WoW, Diablo, Overwatch.
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Its finally over. Do we know when we can expect some old cod games to come in to game pass?
People should probably re-read it and truly understand what they’re saying. If was more than COD, there would no reason to have separate 10 year COD only contracts if they were going to add everything everywhere. Microsoft doesn’t need Sony or PlayStation. Never have and never will. COD is only there because it’s a massive yearly game (all the others aren’t) and shareholders within Microsoft can see the massive amount of money being made from COD. Crash, Spyro, etc.? Not so much if at all.
I said it Bethesda the day it was announced - all future games would be Xbox exclusive barring contracts like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo. That was a $7.5B acquisition. Does anyone here truly believe that Microsoft spent $70B to give Sony games? I don’t think so.
Also, as I stated above, if Microsoft was going to put every game on PlayStation for example, why have a 10 year COD contract when you wouldn’t need that at all if you’re putting everything on the competitor’s platform.
More games, more people where they want to play MEANING within the Xbox platform and eco-system.
Having AB games be multi-platform opens up way more issues because in that scenario, why is Bethesda exclusive? Why are small studios like Obsidian and others exclusive? Why would future acquisitions be exclusive?
Everything that Microsoft is doing and investing is for the Xbox platform and eco-system. That’s it. It’s not for Sony, Nintendo, or anyone else.
Will remasters of old games be multi-platform like Microsoft has done with Bethesda? Sure because they’re old freaking games and you can entice people with the old games but if you want to play the next new Fallout or Crash or Spyro, you can only do so within the Xbox platform and eco-system.
Should Microsoft change their messaging to “within the Xbox platform and eco-system”? Absolutely but at the same time, people should know what they mean by now. When Sony says their eco-system, it’s never included Xbox so why should Microsoft include PlayStation?
I said every new released game excluding COD would be exclusive when the deal was announced. I was right with Bethesda and I will be right again with AB simply because you don’t grow the Xbox platform and eco-system by putting your games on PlayStation.
Those who only play COD every year or mostly just COD every year will simply stay on PlayStation and buy the game for $70 as opposed to spending $500 upfront for a Series X. Putting AB games on PlayStation decreases the chances of people even thinking about buying an Xbox because they’re not going to care about every AB game anyway and the few they do would still be cheaper than buying a Series X so they’ll just stay on PlayStation.
The ONLY way I ever see PlayStation getting AB games or even Bethesda would be if Sony allowed a curated first party only version of Game Pass on their platform and even then, it wouldn’t be native. It would be streaming only which not everyone would want to or be able to do.
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I agree although I guess it depends on how big they feel the game might become, if they feel it could be a real juggernaught and up there with the biggest multiplayer games maybe they’d want it everywhere kind of like CoD
Obviously then there’s the flipside of if it’s huge then that’s a major driver for your ecosystem if it’s PC/Xbox only, I definitely don’t see this as black and white as the Bethesda acquisition but that’s largely due to how GaaS focused ABK is compared to Bethesda
Obviously these companies put money above all else but I do wonder if Sony’s behaviour these last few years will play a factor at all, I know if it was me id be trying to give Sony as little as possible
Not really, we know the new stuff isn’t coming anytime before 2024 but with Sony’s marketing in place it might even be 2025
Old CoD id imagine won’t take very long until it starts getting dropped in, I don’t expect it all at once though
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Here is how I see Microsoft’s priorities for first party multiplatform games
- Xbox
- Steam
- PC Gamepass
- Nintendo Switch 2
- PS5
PlayStation is 5th priority!… people need to realize that PlayStation needs Xbox way more than Xbox needs PlayStation. PlayStation gamers are a low priority.
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I maintain that the only reason they signed those 10 year contracts for Call of Duty is because they have no intent of killing that franchise off other platforms ever as long as it’s still profitable. So they’re like yeah I’ll sign that cause I was going to do it anyway. Phil alluded to not taking it off after the contract expired in some of his interviews last year though that may have changed some with Jim Ryan’s behavior.
Regarding other titles, they didn’t sign anything for them because it lets them decide on a case by case basis and not be locked in. I believe we’ll get MANY exclusive titles to the Xbox platforms from ABK, I just don’t expect everything to go that way. Phil has also made comments saying he expects that we will eventually see fewer exclusive titles across the industry over time. Xbox Boss Offers Unique Perspective on Future of Exclusive Games - ComicBook.com (link is a summary of the interview which was at bloomberg) But who knows, we’ll see what happens. It’s cool that they are in the position of being able to pick and choose what makes the most sense for them each time.
I do 100% agree that they’re not as high a priority and that Switch 2 will be more important, especially since we saw data alluding to how high of a percent customers of PS and Xbox were likely to have a Switch as well.
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I’m not talking about companies signing the 10 year deal. I’m talking about Microsoft even offering it because why offer a COD only deal if you’re going to put EVERY game on your competitor’s platform? If you’re giving Sony the next Crash or Spyro, then obviously you’re definitely ad absolutely giving them COD so why have any type of contract in the first place? It wouldn’t be needed.
Phil saying less exclusives is because majority of games go to PC, cloud, etc. day one so technically, no console game is truly exclusive. Also, we’ve seen from emails as much as Phil is a nice guy, he’s also a ruthless business man which he should be. When your competition has tried to end your brand and have taken away games from Sega, Nintendo and Microsoft for the last 25+ years which they continue to do to this very day, the last thing you’re going to do is give them any damn thing.
If it wasn’t for the fact that COD makes fuck you money on a yearly basis, that would be exclusive to Xbox eco-system as well because if it was a Crash or Spyro, let’s be honest, would anyone truly give a shit about it? Nope.
The whole case by case basis is there for remasters/collections/old shit PlayStation already technically has. Or if there’s contracts in place like Bethesda.
You don’t spend $70B to help your competitor. That would completely defeat the purpose of what Microsoft has been doing since E3 2018, speaking of which, Phil says before he announced the acquisitions, that he knows EXCLUSIVES are what made people fans of Xbox which also applies to Sony and Nintendo. Phil knows exactly what he’s doing. He’ll sucker some people in with COD and be like, well if you want to play everything else, you know where you have to go in order to do so.
They only signed those contracts because it was contentious enough to potentially halt the deal.
Which is better, Microsoft shouting from the rooftops “Everythings exclusive, Xbox going to destroy playstation” and regulators (including the EU) holding it up…or say
“Here’s 10 years on us, whoo boy guess we’ll just have to settle for all that King money and Playstation CoD money”
In 10 years they might own Nintendo and Sony will have a gameless, $799 PS7. CoD might be Xbox exclusive by default.
Same with the Nintendo version. They don’t want to bring to Nintendo. Phil Spencer never sat up at night and said…“something is wrong with the world, theres No Call of Duty on Switch. I will make it right.” its a play to get the deal through. It worked.
Xbox is going to make a lot of money on Call of Duty. Multiplaform or exclusive. They will use that money to buy Sega etc…which will be exclusive, while they run out the clock on those CoD contracts.
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