Nothing Minecraft will ever ever be exclusive, I think people should just give up on that. I’d rather be wrong than hopeful in this case.
Disney + has been a huge success because of the popularity of its brands: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars etc.
So we need to look at what made those brands so popular.
When Marvel hit with Iron Man, did they say ‘right, we need to make a new Iron Man film every three years forever?’ or did they move on to bring more and more IP to the screen? Did they take risks on IP few people had heard of like the Guardians of the Galaxy?
Pixar had a massive hit with Toy Story, and yes they made sequels, but they also pushed on and delivered new IP after new IP after new IP and made many of those just as popular if not more so. Some had sequels, but that never stopped them from trying new things.
I could go on with similar examples in the Disney wheelhouse, but let’s come back to video games and look at the market leaders.
Nintendo leverages their IP as hard as anyone. There will always be a Mario, always be a Zelda and so on. But they also introduce new IP every generation as well. Some hit, some miss, but they never stop trying to find the next big franchise that becomes synonymous with their brand.
Same goes for Sony. They also have success with reiterating on well-loved IP, but they take risks too. They had massive success with Uncharted, but let Naughty Dog do an entirely new IP in The Last of Us that became their biggest selling game of all time. They let the team that was known for Infamous try something new with Ghost of Tsushima. They let the Killzone guys pivot to an entirely new Genre and have their biggest success with Horizon. Those franchises are now going to go on to be well-loved IP.
So what I am saying is, yes, leverage your well-loved IP, and MS is doing that. There have been 12 Halo games in 20 years, 14 if count mobile and the arcade thing. Elder Scrolls 6 is in early production, it’s not going anywhere.
But they also need to keep looking for what the next well-loved IP is going to be.
If anything, the criticism of Xbox in the past has been too great an emphasis on milking just a few big brands and not trying enough new – the classic ‘all Xbox has is Halo, Gears, Forza and Fable’ meme, and the fragility of this strategy was laid bare when Fable fell off the rails and it became ‘all Xbox has is Halo, Gears and Forza’.
I am delighted to see the modern Xbox under Spencer pushing to find new iconic brands and trying new things.
The reason Fallout is not being leveraged right now is that BGS is making Starfield, and a decade from now that could be a huge brand in its own right.
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Goro -
This is actually an amazing point, and of course ties in with our favourite topic - acquisitions.
For instance, if are trying to achieve a Netflix cadence then what number of teams or studios would you need to have in place with the standard project duration of 4-5 years, nowadays. With 4 tentpole franchises per year.
For context- Netflix has 41 teams making original content.
The answer - in term of teams building content on the xbox side for an equivalent effect might be equal or higher.
I know, but here we are talking about leveraging big IPs to achieve success and, well, MS handling of MC IP in that department is…underwhelming at best.
I understand the original game not being exclusive, an already existing live service game, you can’t pull it off without huge controversies and that’s ok, but at least in the past, they understood the power of exclusive perks: the infamous Super Duper Pack for One X, cancelled 2 whole years after a big announcement at E3 2017. Now history is repeating itself because the RT patch seen as a demo will likely never see the light of the day for…reasons.
Also they put MC on GP for console in 2019, 2 years after its launch (why?) and I’ve never seen some perks for GPU subscribers related to MC, madness. Now they are following the same pattern for PC: they are putting it on PC 2 years after the GP PC launch (E3 2019) and only God knows why.
Also MC Dungeouns: why not following the other games pattern (console exclusive+Steam day one, not 1,5 year after)? It’s a stand-alone spin-off and it’s absolutely not needed putting it on PS and Nintendo platform.
IDK, MC its the biggest game ever existed and MS not leveraging it for the sake of Xbox in ANY capacity imo is mind boggling, considering the importance of exclusives in any commercial endeavour, even more so in subscriptions: Disney+ had a never seen headstart thanks to its exclusive IPs, the app is still bad compared to other services and also the output of new products is objectvely slow and thin compared to Netflix or Prime, but they are still hugely successfull because of IPs…and then MS doesn’t leverage MC at all. XD
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I agree with everything you said yet I am certain of the fact that it’ll never be the case that Minecraft anything will be exclusive lol. Maybe down the line when there’s cloud stuff, then sure some xcloud perks or feeatures, etc might be exclusive by definition due to no other decent competition in that space, but then again, there’s exclusive stuff xbox doesn’t themselves get like Minecraft on VR (PSVR). So it’s a mess really.
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A game maker toolkit?
Anyone remember Project Spark?
Just add that team into Minecraft, I would say.
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Yeah, lol, for that the rumour is that MS did an horse trade with Sony: PSVR port in exchange for XBL account integration on PS. Which imo should have been demanded since day one, the game is property of the publisher ultimately.
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A lot of it is the Sweden Minecraft team’s call.
But I get your point.
Cancelling an announced patch like the Super Duper Pack is bad in any way, shape or form you frame it, Sweden team’s call or not. My point is that MS management of MC is confusing at best, because it goes openly in contrast with all their other gaming endeavours. I remember them saying that cancelling One X patch would have lead to a better next gen integration/port and as of now the core game tech is the same as of 2014 and the RT patch is nowhere to be seen.
Dude -. I agree with what you are saying. Not defending Minecraft here. Lol
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I know, I know, I was only saying that I don’t get the argument some people use “it’s team call”, while all their other teams, similarly limited integrated, make wildly different calls.
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You know @FarSightXR-20, this would be a perfect candidate for the Community Corner OT 
Cleaned up a bit and it would easily get my vote 
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They will be needing Fallout thats for sure
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This was exactly what I was talking about yesterday. Leverage AAA IPs with games from mid and small sized studios. Pretty serendipitous timing of that tweet!
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every minecraft game like dungeons and the upcomming platformer should be exclusive to xbox. Let the main game be on everything to get people into it. if they want to play the spin offs one place to do it which is xbox.
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Completely agree in general. Although I think as Matt Booty mentioned, Minecraft Dungeons proved other Minecraft properties can succeed. They know this now and we know they have at least two Minecraft spinoffs in the works. I think they’ll use this IP effectively and to advantage.
They absolutely need to produce more Elder Scrolls and Fallout especially. They need the gasification games but should also be producing spin offs that fill gamepass with more of their content. Elder Scrolls could easily use its name for other game types. I think it’d translate very well to a 4X type game, strategy tactical game (likeGears Tactics), Card Game or Souls Style Game.
Additionally, Elder Scrolls still has so many areas and time periods to explore,they could make so many additional games if people could handle the development.
Fallout is in the same boat with Elder Scrolls in terms of areas and time periods to explore, it probably has way more to be honest. This one I’d absolutely be pushing Obsidian and inXile to take on the property and make games in different regions. Either way they need to get at least 1 Fallout in production but I’d push for two.
In addition to these IP specific games, they should be leveraging these IP for fighting games or party games.
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Gamepass need that 1 game that 1 game that sells into the 100 million + range all it needs is that 1 killer game to launch into it day 1 and don’t leave & Gamepass Subs and number will explode like crazy so far the only game with that guarantee potential is GTA 6 nothing else comes close to it unless MS decide to make a new Minecraft Exclusive to Xbox eco system and i don’t see that happening.
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I don’t see why microsoft couldn’t release its new mine craft or all spin offs everywhere including switch but just not on playstation which is its main competitor
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Yeahhh, neither Minecraft exclusive nor GTA6 day 1 on gamepass is happening. TES6 will be huge though
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It’s similar to what I’ve proposed in the acquisition thread: Set The Coalition loose on a new IP (beyond their smaller scoped project). Maybe this is a controversial take, but I find Gears too big to shelve and too small to shackle The Coalition to it.
Go tap People Can Fly, for example, to work on the franchise, maybe on a spin-off in a second-party capacity at first. You now get a fresh perspective on an older property which can still be leveraged for Game Pass as a brand name while positioning your premier studio to develop more IP for Game Pass.
I’d be interested to see what this studio with established Gears experience could do off the back of Outriders (powers, loot) in something like a Hivebusters continuation/evolution. They’re also in a pickle after that weird deal with Square, so it seems like a viable opportunity.
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