When Brad Smith and Phil Spencer aren’t good enough sources for whether CoD will be exclusive, I literally dunno what could convince someone insisting it’s still up in the air.
Gee golly, who knew?!
Sony even made the exact same point I made in the past about how CoD represents a sizable and important part of Sony’s revenue stream. Having your competition leverage that against you is pretty near the definition of ‘anti-competitive’, but luckily MS dodges that by just not making CoD exclusive.
Sony’s other answers are amusing tho. I get the context is gonna position them to wanna talk it up but at the same time their own marketing and what they tell their investors is at odds with the framing the regulatory agencies are getting from them. Sony needs Bungie to allow them to compete as a publisher in the same space, but then says nobody can compete with CoD! In the real world, there are tons of games to compete with CoD, even big ones in its genre. The other pubs questioned are much more sensible in their replies. Sony comes off as awkwardly desperate, lol.
The same Phil Spencer who said “We didnt buy Bethesda to take games away from Sony”…and then did?
And yet here we are. Microsoft emphasising CoD being limited to one platform won’t have meaningful impact and Sony clutching pearls saying the world will implode if it does.
Almost like neither of them actually believes CoD is going to be multiplatform.
COD will be multiplat until it doesn’t need to be. Thats the one franchise MS will use as leverage for Gamepass.
Phil probably knows its too big for a yearly franchise like COD to go exclusive right away.
Starfield? Nah, Sony tried to money-hat Starfield and money hatted multiple bethesda games so no fucking way am I putting that or future bethesda games on PS if I was Phil. So yeah bethesda situation much different.
Its clear from their declarations to the FTC Microsoft wants CoD exclusive and Sony believes it.
Nothing would have closed this deal faster then “We will continue to release Call of Duty on Playstation indefinitely”…and yet thats not there. Not even a hint
I literally dunno what could convince someone insisting it’s still up in the air.
I can’t wait for this to be over so we can finally get on to what really matters. Discussing whether or not the NEXT publishers games will be exclusive.
“Microsoft has demonstrated that it is not withdrawing content from other platforms,
having made multiple public statements that it will continue to make Call of Duty and
other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement and beyond. Microsoft has also publicly stated that it is
interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo’s platform.”
If you imagine MS is lying to these regulatory agencies to get the deal through, you are not well informed. These agencies have been itching for excuses to take these big tech corporations to task in court for anticompetitive practices and lying to the govt just to facilitate those kinds of practices is the sort of thing guaranteed to nuke the deal retroactively. That isn’t happening.
Would help if and when the studios MS bought…actually put the games out. Since they bought Bethesda…they’ve put out more new games exclusively for Ps5 than any new games on Xbox.
While that’s not happening…lets not think every Activision game that hasn’t been announced will come to PS as well. Sony can’t do jack shit if Crash 5 isn’t on PS. What are they going to do? complain? While they lock away FF from Xbox? ha. Sony or the FTC can’t do shit really.
“Not withdrawing content from other platforms” and “will continue to make games available” can easily be interpreted as not removing existing games off of other platforms.
I remember when people (including myself) wanted MS to tear up those contracts after Zenimax. The way MS handled that acquisition and kept their promises will have a massive flow on effect into this acquisition as well.
Only if someone ignores the rest of the statement about doing so beyond existing agreements as well as what they note wrt Nintendo (and ignoring Phil’s tweet, Brad Smith’s interview response referencing Minecraft, his blog post, etc).
MS has suggested that everything with an existing, big following will stay multiplat. Which makes sense since the purchase was done for the revenue streams on offer most likely, moreso than to push Xbox ahead of PSX. But that still leaves a lot on the table. Even some successful titles didn’t have a strong recurring rev stream, after all. Crash is a good example of that I would imagine. And they have new IP coming from Blizzard too.
OTOH, most here seem to really underestimate how big a deal this all is even with zero exclusivity on the table. Even under that circumstance (which we have heard isn’t the case, but for argument’s sake imagine it was) just leveraging all the marketing and Game Pass framing and bundles and timed beta access and branding synergy…it’ll be huge regardless. Like, super huge. Sony is right to freak out, but they don’t have a great argument to make against the deal.
I mean they had to otherwise theyd have ended up paying sony a hell of amount of money. And those 2 games did nothing for sony. Or ms. Because hardware is selling out regardless. So would have been ppintless for ms to do anything especially since you can now get the best versions of those games.
When that exclusivity ends. You cna bet your bottom dolar MS will go all out with the marketing for deathloop on gamepass. It will gain more players on xbox in 1 week than it had on ps5 up to this point.
That is hilarious that Sony is implying Game Pass is anticompetitive. Sony makes billions in profits each year. They could make their own games Day 1 on PS plus if they wanted to.
Only thing I disagree with here is the connection you draw between hw being sold out and a game ‘not rly doing anything for the platform if exclusive’. If Deathloop was exclusive, it’d still have convinced some ppl who rly wanted it that Xbox was the system to get, even if they can’t find one on shelves for another year or so. It helps establish mindshare that isn’t easily shrugged off imho.
I do agree it wouldn’t be worth it though. Last year they had tons to rely on as is. Sure, Deathloop woulda helped too but they weren’t the ones with a dearth of top quality content last Fall. And god knows what it’d have cost MS to back out.
