He said yes twice to the question, like he was pretty confident lol. He would have prefaced his statements a lot “this is just my guess”, “this is only what I’m hearing, nothing concrete” “don’t take my word for it”, nope he straight up said “yes, there will be something at least to commemorate the deal closing, nothing necessarily like a Direct, but still significant”. lol
And Jez and Matty have corroborated saying it could indeed be possible, although Jez hasn’t heard of it himself. Maybe he hears it soon? Who knows.
Jeff was also right in a way about Gold, though he thought it would be dropped completely. However, from Zhuge, we know MS was working on announcing Gold free for F2P games for months, so by the time Jeff started to hear about it.
Jeff was also one of the rare one who saw MS was making a big investment in gaming, though he didn’t know it would end up being Bethesda being acquired.
If this event happens like rumored it is most likely an event that gives MS/Bethesda a chance to answer some of the questions about exclusivity and such from the past months.
My gut tells me that it will a field day for Xbox owners and we also will se a lot of meltdowns from another community.
Yeah, this is just pure common regulatory steps. MS even made a whole temporary subsidiary with Vault to appease EU. They know better than anyone how to deal with that type of stuff.
I would imagine that the reason we are starting to hear about this is because Microsoft and Bethesda are gearing up for the PR/Interview Circuit, and many gaming sites are starting to get their “place” in line to interview Phil, Todd and Pete.
And ideally would be if Xbox can just be totally upfront about everything. But let’s say Starfield is exclusive, but Wolfenstein 3 IS coming to PS (maybe), what will they say in these interviews? Case by case basis, again? I say, screw it all, it’s just all exclusive now. Easy peasy, clear language, clear plans.
This case by case basis will continue haunting every single fucking Xbox and Bethesda interview if they don’t clear it up all at once next month. Imagine five years down the line, there’s a new doom game coming and interviewers and the gaming community is still wondering what platforms it’s coming to, or “have Microsoft made back the money from the acquisition yet?”. It’s gonna be a huge logistical nightmare. Its gonna poison the well of actual discussion of the games themselves with all the console war bullshit and other nonsense. Like imagine if every single playstation game from now on gets haunted by “is this one coming to PC? Is that one coming to PC? Yall said you want to explore pc as a platform in the future. What does it mean for playstation as a brand if this one isn’t exclusive anymore?”
Worth noting that Phil has called this out specifically in the past wrt Switch ports. He noted some games they allowed to get ported to Switch and PS4 as a courtesy to the dev team but in general he was frustrated that every game from XGS was being framed as a plausible port to other consoles.
I think they will announce full on exclusivity across the board. ALL the arguments in the other direction stem from the perspective that MS cares about sw sales revenue, but during the user acquisition phase for Game Pass they just flatly don’t care about that. They have foregone tens of millions of potential sw sales as is after all. They have demonstrated that making things exclusive and day 1 on GP is more important than sw revenues repeatedly.
Yeah, absolutely! And I can’t imagine that they already have a clear plan. I’m sure Bethesda themselves would like to know too what the whole thing is going to look like. There can’t be any more vague stuff, it should be crystal clear. If for some reason they have to release Wolfenstein 3 on PS, just be clear and state that right away. That’ll be a problem though since the game hasn’t even been announced yet.
Some say MS will probably keep MMO’s multiplatform, that’s true for TESO and Fallout 76 but personally I say any future games by these developers is Xbox only, simple as that. So I hope MS will bring the message that way. Because like you said, otherwise the media will keep coming with stupid ass nonsensical articles, even years from now.
For Obsidian, NT, Compulsion they didn’t have to say at all that their games would be Xbox only, it was a given. So should Bethesda, should not matter that Bethesda consists of many studios and some huge franchises.
Lately tbh this whole “MMOs will be multiplat” is also something I feel like contesting. Existing ones like ESO and FO76, sure. But newer titles? Not so much. The reasoning is that they require a large userbase. Well Sea of Thieves is consistently on top sales charts on steam, and yet that isn’t either on playstation or switch. It was Xbox’s most successful IP the entire previous generation, Rare themselves came out and said that. So if SoT can do that and still stay afloat (ba dum tss!), why can’t any other new multiplayer game too? Sea of Thieves could also do much better if it were also on playstation and switch. But it isn’t. Because it alongside all the other Xbox first party games represent and reinforce that Xbox is the home to these games. That Xbox = great multiplayer experiences you can’t get anywhere else. And that’s true objectively. You can’t get a halo, Forza or SoT type experience on Playstation. These games are intrinsically what Xbox represents. There’s no large sandbox fps with forge where both campaign and multiplayer matter just as much. There’s no arcade racer on playstation that’s comparable to Forza Horizon. There’s no game out there like SoT to begin with, forget about on playstation. So yeah, there’s an argument to be made that it’s the multiplayer games that Xbox shall put more effort into making sure it can work while still being exclusive, all to bolster the brand of Xbox as the home of best multiplayer.
I get it that’s its better, more reliable to have more platforms for all the increased userbase and hence increased potential spending on mtx and all that, but it’s not as trivial to think that oh these MMO style games will be multiplat otherwise they won’t survive. Personally, I don’t care either way, but I was just skeptical of the degree of certainty people seem to be assigning to MMO style games staying multiplat. I think there’s a good chance if xbox wants to be this brand that represents great multiplayer experiences like Halo and SoT and so on while Sony continues to be the brand of cinematic single player blockbusters I think keeping even the big multiplayer games exclusive would completely make sense.
Time for MS to shut the multiplatform talk down once and for all and show that after the debacle (terrible launch line up, no big exclusives for , at least, a year, too few consoles on the market and so on) that was the series launch, they actually care about their console business. If MS doesn’t specifically mention that Bethesda games, as per usual for first party games, won’t be released on any other console except Xbox (while Sony is buying exclusives left and right on top of their 1st party games), then it’s goodbye Xbox ecosystem for me.