So Sony goes out of their way to secure big 3rd party marketing rights, have reportedly gone out of their way to moneyhat games they know are popular on Xbox and iirc they even went after Starfield after securing two Bethesda games, even if those two games won’t break records it’s still Bethesda, a publisher they know well is very popular among Xbox fans so it was yet another aggressive move, showing everyone that their aggressiveness during the PS4 era was going to continue onto the PS5 generation, I didn’t mention essentially taking away Final Fantasy from Xbox, a franchise that already had cultivated an audience on Xbox (I remember FFXV actually selling quite well on Xbox)…
And let me throw the KOTOR remake out there too… anyway.
Xbox essentially misses out on a bunch of games due to the market share they have in the console space, thus making it even easier for Sony to moneyhat 3rd parties, what happened last gen, with Activision Microsoft has a chance to maybe make things more even in the console space to avoid things like this, if the split was more even it would be harder for Sony to secure those 3rd party deals but still Microsoft doesn’t have any interest in making something like COD exclusive because…? can the FTC really do anything about it? but let’s say COD is too big like Minecraft why not everything else? even if Microsoft made everything from AB exclusive it still wouldn’t put them near a monopoly… looks to me like they don’t really care about Xbox’s position in the console market and only care about GamePass growth but even then making the majority of AB games exclusive would be massive boost for GamePass because it would bring in a lot of new people to the Xbox ecosystem/consoles and I would bet that vast majority of their GamePass subscribers are on Xbox consoles so why don’t they want Xbox to have a bigger potential audience? I just don’t get it.
Anyway… I’m kind of just disappointed, Sony will still be Sony and do what they do while Xbox has to make concessions? even though they’re still not near Playstation in market share, doesn’t make any sense to me, I feel like Phil and Co owe Xbox console fans better and clearer messaging, are they serious about Xbox’s position in the market or not?
Every acquisition is different of course but the interesting thing to take note is that it seems to have gone through without much fuss from regulators despite some politicians raising objections.
The more I think about it. The more I think’s it’s unlikely that we will move away from the annual CoD releases. The casual gamer they are trying to get subscribed to game pass with this purchase often only buys two games. A sports game like Fifa and CoD.
These games go for 60 to 70 euro and need a 60 euro subscription to play online. The big new sport games generally don’t release on gamepass day one(MLB does, but only a limited subsection of Americans care about Baseball), so people would still have to purchase these games.
So the maths is 156 euros for game pass ultimate + 60-70 euro for the latest sportsball release or pay for the games for 60-70 euro and pay for psplus or gold, which would be cheaper. If the games weren’t annual, the maths gets worse. They would have to buy another year of game pass ultimate and the sportsball game to continue playing, where they would only have to buy a much cheaper online subscription and the sportball game if they weren’t subscribed to game pass ultimate.
Conclusion: to maintain a facade of value in game pass for the casual two games only crowd, they would have to keep the CoD mines running at full throtle.
That’s where I disagree. With all the stuff happening right now Sony won’t be the same anymore and will do things differently. Shortage, Microsoft aggressive moves, big tech giants eyeing gaming, mobile gaming growth, rise of subscription services - the market won’t be the same. ATVI gives Microsoft enough clout to lead the gaming industry in the direction Microsoft wants. And they haven’t finished their purchases yet. The market layout has changed.
A lot of deals happened earlier. I mean it is just like with the games that comes to Playstation 4 right now and skip Xbox One. They are aiming at the previous market state.
Keep in mind that ATVI deal was initiated in November last year. Literally 4 months ago. Nobody expected it.
MS was literally sleeping before a couple years ago, Sony was free to do their bidding. Holding MS accountable is legit, considering games skips Xbox on a regular basis because of moneyhats and/or their weak position.
The strategy that’s slowly emerging from the newly formed Microsoft Gaming business is that Microsoft won’t go full Xbox exclusive for everything, and will choose exclusives where it’s beneficial, and support multi-platform games elsewhere. While Starfield, a new IP from Bethesda, makes sense as an Xbox exclusive for Microsoft to push Xbox Game Pass, Call of Duty has been available on multiple platforms for nearly 20 years.
We’ll still likely see some new Activision Blizzard games going Xbox exclusive where that makes sense, similar to what Microsoft [promised with its Bethesda deal]. But Call of Duty , Activision Blizzard’s biggest franchise, will remain on multiple platforms just like Minecraft .
The delicate balance of choices will be interesting to watch play out, particularly as Sony makes its own multi-platform push with PlayStation exclusives arriving, albeit years later, on PC and [10 live-service games to appear] on multiple platforms (including Xbox!) before March 2026.
