I mean, they’re not wrong.
The problem is if they have the power to push a deal like this through then that actually does give a small amount of credence to the monopoly talk. They wouldn’t be, mind you, but monopoly isn’t usually “controls everything” but rather “controls enough certain things that they can force people to accept their terms”.
Gamepass is still a Microsoft platform.
My gut instinct is that this is MS making the first moves against the FTC. Should the FTC decided to take this to court then MS will do whatever they want, because they’ll win in court. Say goodbye to any compromises.
Obviously both parties would like to see this through quickly.
No, if they own ATVI they have the full control over what is released and where. Nothing to do with monopoly. I still believe that either COD is not coming or if it were to come, Sony will have to make the concessions and it won’t be the regular deal. There have never been a case in a history where anybody was obligated to release the games on any platform under favorable condition to another platform.
I mean Brad Smith said that they will offer multi-year deal to Sony. And that deal certainly won’t be a marketing deal (that for some reason people believe).
I agree. But Steam and Nintendo being healthy without AB games means that MS won’t be at that threshold.
Is all about money. It just happens that it requires less money for Sony to buy exclusivity than for Xbox to pay to bring it to the console. That’s it.
It would just cost Xbox more money than Sony. But that’s what they need to sign up for to get best in class 3rd party support until they get a bigger user base.
Y’all seem to care more about third party than the actual exclusive games coming to MS platforms.
Well given that Activision will be first-party and we don’t know anything they’re working on outside of Call of Duty and the few Blizzard titles, that’s all that there is to talk about. I’m sure if they come out and say they’ve got a dozen franchises in the works that will be exclusive, but Call of Duty and Overwatch won’t be people would be (mostly) okay with it, but for now all we’ve got is “We spent $70 billion to keep putting games on Playstation” which goes against pretty much everything that Xbox has been doing for the last 5+ years.
The reality is they spent 70 billion to get those games day one on gamepass, improve the working conditions for employees, and help them make better games.
My main problem is that it will take years before Xbox will get the exclusive games. It was expected, but still annoying. But in general people concerned about the big games and big names. No matter how good the first party games are gonna be - big names like Quake or Doom or Starfield or TES will overshadow anything as they are well known across various communities.
Exclusive GTA6 will generate more engagement that the whole Sony first party combined for example.
Interestingly I just did a thread on this here: Which new AAA studio should Xbox do a partnership with?
There’s so many new ‘AAA’ studios that Xbox could be backing right now, however only Sony seem to be doing it.
So Sony have CoD marketing until 2024, so it’s possible we might not even get a new CoD on gamepass until 2025 depending on what’s in those existing contracts
Oof 
Yes. Until 2024-2025 we won’t have the fruits of the big games. Ironically TES6 will probably come out around that time too
It is still amazing how Sony has FIFA, COD and GTA deals simultaneously.
I do wonder what will happen with EA’s football franchise now they have dropped the FIFA license.
It’s always in the top 20 and even did better than Minecraft in 2021.
They did?
Have they stated this? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it with GTA.
Personally I think they should be supporting the new AAA studios (as per my other thread), it helps create new relationships which could lead to acquisition and potentially some of the biggest new IP’s.
No, I think they won’t make any time exclusive deal regarding GTA at all. They should get the marketing deal though.
It is still not set in stone though
Lets look at some of the positives here…no really seeing the Nintendo Direct today put me in a good mode
Primarily focused on COD, and popular Activision/Blizzard games, you know Overwatch is up there, so is Diablo 4 HOWEVER…This is 100% going to be a “sign into your Microsoft account” scenario here. Even Minecraft on Playstation and Switch require a Microsoft login now so 100% expect it for Activision games. I don’t think Xbox would of bought Activision without some plan for most of the games to be exclusive.
If it’s focused on the most popular, chances are the rest of Activision games are obscure enough ei THPS, Crash, Spyro, Guitar Hero, and can stay exclusive. Also games like the new Blizzard IP and new games in existing franchises ei a Starcraft Ghost
This now makes it much less likely for Sony to try to acquire a publisher and maybe they’ll tell Sony to ease off timed exclusivity too …Sony got a reality check here and found out how easily MS can stomp them out of existence by buying whatever they want and starving Playstation of 3rd party games…and while Playstation first party make great games they lack the brand power that Nintendo games do to single handedly carry Playstation like Nintendo first party carries the Switch
COD being on Playstation means Sony made FPS have almost no chance of ever being successful. MS destroys Sony’s games via proxy by COD being on Playstation
Finally and this may be something people are not looking at…at the end of the day this means more revenue for MS to dump into first party…now that the FTC is going to f*ck right off MS can go back to acquiring…lets face it…with $70 billion MS could of funded first party for like 10-15 years easily. Now they don’t have to wait for the Activision deal to finalize and they can go back to hunting for more studios.