That was an spicy conversation 
Anyways I’m with jez and rand on this one. Cod and a couple of things there multi and a couple of things there exclusive (case by case basis)
And saw a lot of familiar faces from here in the chat! Dont know why but found that cool haha!
Again, my only hangup is on “other popular titles”. I am largely in favour of keeping Overwatch and CoD multiplat. I think Diablo IV also has to be due to contracts, even if its a Psychonauts 2 situation, and will probably be a decade long game. The thing about Overwatch and CoD is that they are sports, bonding exercises and the best selling IP and second ? third? best selling New IP over the last gen. They are sports. You don’t pull street football and force people into the stadiums. That’s dumb. The only thing I will say is I’m glad MS is keeping to the contract situation because they have a position of leverage here that they should use, like they did with Minecraft. MS’s future of a platform agnostic, ecosystem driven gaming landscape is exciting but worthless without Sony and Nintendo backing it.
That said, Guitar Hero, Pitfall, Crash, Spyro, Warcraft, Starcraft, THPS (barring licensing issues), Prototype, Sierra’s IP, True Crime, etc. They could fill a shitton of current gaps for MS. And the New IP as well. I see little reason to not make those exclusive given the ecosystem-wide benefits, the lack of overall impact on bottom line (except WC and SC which haven’t graced a console in 20 years, going to Xbox and XCloud is additive). And in a world where seemingly the Bethesda IP are ok to keep exclusive, these are all equal or smaller to said IP and ABK getting special privileges is an easy way to lead to infighting.
Of course, MS can’t say shit other than their intent to not disrupt the status quo right now due to the reality this would have on the stock market. I hope we get a similar roundtable with a firm line in the sand. Legacy software, CoD, esports = multiplat. Revivals of old IP, ports of PC and mobile IP, New IP = exclusive.
I think we will have to wait for Phil’s ( the man HIMSELF not MS) words to know what that entails.
Yo, shit stays on PlayStation.
Iv always said, anything single player or new IPs should 100% be exclusive
There’s no point putting games with little to no microtransactions and no multiplayer focus on other consoles in order to sell a few extra million copies at best when you could use it as an exclusive and make your platform stand out instead
and if friggin Starfield and ES6 can go exclusive, single player games that are on another level to almost every single player game out there, why would you let those single player ABK games go mutliplat?
Phil has said repeatedly he wanted more kid friendly content, why get the potential to have a bunch of that content only to put it on other platforms?
A billion? But there might only be 4 CoDs over the next 8 years…meaning whether you are exclusive or multiplat you’re not coming close to making $70B back…so you might as well keep them exclusive.
AFAIAC Xbox stands to “lose” just as much cash by giving a $70 game thats sells 25m a year to 30m people on a $10 a month subscription service.
And yet there is no question, that is exactly what they will do.
Its not too dissimilar to this statement about Zenimax.
What we’ll do in the long run is we don’t have intentions of just pulling all of Bethesda content out of Sony or Nintendo or otherwise
No intention of pulling = continue to make available.
The Call of duty franchise surpassed the 400.000.000 sales mark and generated +$27 billion.
That even dwarfes the Minecraft franchise. It is a totally different situation from Elder Scrolls.
This franchise relies heavily on as many users as possible, to maximize the microtransactions revenue.
You just don’t risk all this.
Jeez, this again.
It’s not about making anything back.
You don’t want to destroy the value of the asset and damage the revenue stream.
I doubt removing mainline cods from Playstation will destroy CoDs revenue. Xbox would simply outsell it and take its place in that instance
It would absolutely.
The transition phase would take a while and the vacuum could be filled by a competitor in the meantime.
Not everyone is going to transition. Many would play things like Apex instead.
A lot of it due to COD being released every year over many many years. As soon it stops being annual it already loses some revenue. 70% (or something like this) of the revenue from COD comes basically from Warzone. And Warzone 2 is gonna stay on Playstation. Mainline campaign COD? After 2023 I am pretty sure they are gonna be exclusive (next COD probably is not coming until 2025 anyway).
All we need to understand that they did not provide the definitive answers - for obvious reasons - and even Brad Smith started to answer with the waterfall of words when asked about exclusivity rather than providing straight answers like Sony did.
Anyway I am off this topic.
There’s a surprising number of movies that aren’t on any of the 4 streaming services I have access to, so I still end up buying some movies. It’s less, sure, but not that much less.
Only my music is at 100% subscription now. Music is a bit different though, it is big news when a large artist removes their songs from spoitify while big movies and games cycle off their platforms all the time.
Exclusives talk:
I have a different opinion to most here about the exclusives comments and I thought it was the least interesting part about the blog post. I was way more interested in the “next-gen app platforms” they are apparently developing. Which was determined to be something other than the PC or Xbox storefronts. Only way I can see that working is releasing an xbox storefront on Android that will let you stream games you own beyond those on Game Pass.
Most of this, to me, reads like they are trying to strongarm Apple into allowing them to sell streamable xbox games through their own app store. Which is the regulation they keep refering to, not necessarily the FTC approval for the sale, but adherance to policies laid out by “United States, the European Union, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.” Along with their app store rules put forth in the blog post.
It reads like they want to create a precedent to allow regulators to make other companies let them spread their Xbox app store. Not just game pass, but their whole catalogue with their own payment method. This is a very long term goal but their “next-gen app store” is apparently still being developed. So now would be the time to start encouraging regulators to identify smart phones and PCs as common use and consoles as special use.
Framed like this, allowing a small selection of curated games (popular/legacy/GaaS/license) on a case by case basis to be allowed on competing specialist use consoles makes sense beyond making more money. I think it shows regulators they have a commitment to partaking in a fair market by not removing titles but also gives them means to advertise directly to consumers in their competitor’s platform and lay out some breadcrumbs directly to theirs. “Connect to our phone app to link your account for an exclusive skin… would you like to try game pass?”
I think it’s more interesting to try to figure out which popular franchises would even apply.
TL;DR: I think everyone is focused on the wrong parts of the blog post.
This is exactly what I have been saying. Hoeg Law’s video explains this, too. There is a reason that the whole blogpost is written regarding what you just mentioned and the one thing everybody is focused on is tucked away in a small paragraph on the second page. Media looking for clicks and fanboys are having a field day when the reality is this is much, much bigger then they think.
The CEO of Microsoft literally talked about not having to make concessions days before and people are overlooking that, too. Satya didn’t get where he is by being naive.
I’m sticking with my original prediction that I made once the acquisition was announced. Once all the contracts are legally completed, all future Activision Blizzard games will be exclusive to the Xbox eco-system.
@Shpeshal_Nick you made a lot of good points on the podcast today but in your opinion will Xbox get gamepass into ps5 weather it be as part of this aquisition or in the future?
They did say it explicitly. Twice. Both Phil and now MS’s President said it (the latter saying it repeatedly). He even compared it directly to the Minecraft scenario. As everyone knows, competing platforms got Minecraft Dungeons. He even cited Minecraft as “a clear indicator of what we hope to do if we acquire Activision-Blizzard, namely invest in more innovation, bring it to more people, bring it to more platforms”. And the pledge was to make these games available in the future beyond existing contracts. And to bring them to Switch…again, this is all future tense.
“…we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love”
Phrases like ‘will also make available’ means things not presently available today; it is explicitly future tense. He continues…
“We are also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo’s successful platform.”
They don’t currently support Switch, so this reference must be also in future tense. Yet he connects it directly to his comments about Sony’s platform preceding it. Both are explicitly about future games that do not exist today. Of course, all of that is contextualized by the paragraph preceding these statements, which directly addressed the notion that future CoD games could be Xbox exclusives:
“First, some commentators have asked whether we will continue to make popular content like Activision’s Call of Duty available on competing platforms like Sony’s PlayStation. The obvious concern is that Microsoft could make this title available exclusively on the Xbox console, undermining opportunities for Sony PlayStation users.”
^^That precedes the other statements. Here again he is referencing a future scenario where MS made future titles exclusive, and he flatly rejects that scenario. There is nothing vague here. Just because some refuse to accept the plain English, obvious meaning of the words and the context they were put in by the ppl speaking them does not make the message unclear.
Keep in mind that Phil is not the decision maker here, Brad Smith is (President of MS). He wrote the blog post and was the guy doing the interviews. He is the front man because he is uniquely suited to talk to regulators and Congress given his history working for MS as their chief lobbyist.
There is a lot of room still.
We heard about warzone 2 even before Brad’s interview.
Still far away from the deal being complete
Phil gave a permanent statement about Zenimax only after the complete Acquisition took place during the round table conference “games where Gamepass is” paraphrasing a little.
Remember ‘case by case’ phrase used back at that time?
But well, we didn’t stop speculating back then… Why would we stop now? Lol
ABK deal is just on another level. Cash that Microsoft has spent on ABK is huge. And MS being a public company would have to show how best they have utilised it. After complete Acquisition, I think MS would have to declare how much profit Xbox made or MS gaming made like other departments of MS (cloud, windows etc). Investors and share holder will definitely ask then.
This thread will remain till the conference announcement 
Yea im certain COD will be multi format. Now that the dust has settled. However MS are going to change the way its rolled out. No way they will saturate thier own service with regular installments
No choice but to change the pace of campaigns at the least
Agree on this from the point of view of improving the quality of the game. But I don’t think yearly games would bring any kind negative saturation condition to Gamepass