Third parties can’t afford to skip Xbox right now.
I disagree, they are inherently different and any effects are going to be far lower or smaller in scale.
5 Likes
As far as I’m concerned if the plan was to go third party completely or even to have ABK 100% third party they would have said that in court while trying to get the merger passed.
Maybe they are jumping on board with opening the closed ecosystem thing, where they are going to try to get an Xbox store on Apple and Android and in turn is going open Xbox’s store?
1 Like
That dude… is just a toxic youtuber, one of the worst kind, not saying that all youtubers are toxic but he… I’ve seen his videos before and had to close the tab many times, not surprised that he would overreact to this, of all things to be worried about this isn’t it.
3 Likes
Something happened to toys for bob…
Away from gaming for a while now, just wanna say that a lot of people including me took a lot of backlash for saying that trillion dollar companies and CEOs of trillion dollar companies are NOT your friends.
And if they do announce that exclusives will start being ported everywhere, it’ll be a very scummy move since it will render the xbox console far inferior to the ps5.
9 Likes
We already know it’s not all games according to leaks, and there is also an exclusivity period for Xbox. Plus you still get to play all of it for 10$ a month instead of 80$ a year late on rival platforms. Honestly it doesn’t change much for most people and the extra revenue is most likely going to be spent on more Gamepass deals and more acquisitions.
1 Like
Point is that if there was a button that they could press to instantly port everything over to ps5 and switch, along with a game pass sub, they’d do it without second thought. People were trying to portray a lot of high ranking people at microsoft as if they were saints. And even if some truly are, it really doesn’t matter much in a company like ms.
1 Like
https://x.com/chisehatorichad/status/1755320184934719967?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
Allow me to show you an example when a competition goes away…
19 Likes
Thats because they bought funimation
Sony havent bought MS. MS wil still dictate and make money off sonys platform and are in full control
While I think that selling off your console, cancelling GP, or swearing off Xbox is a bit extreme considering nothing official is out I will not blame anyone for doing so as it for some it may remind them of previous MS products (Zune, Mixer, Windows Phone) and they’re just being really pre-emptive.
But in some respects this extreme reaction is a good thing in order for various people at MS to understand what’s at stake here.
It’s possible particular folks at MS went 
when they saw some projections showing how much Starfield could sell on the PS5. That being a results driven business they thought that the Bethesda purchase isn’t paying for itself at the rate they wanted. That Starfield wasn’t the system seller they were hoping for, and consequently not the GP seller they were hoping for.
But these same people likely don’t realize how much it would cannibalize their current business. Xbox makes a ton of money on accessories, services like GP, and 3rd party game sales and monetization. With people taking some extreme measures maybe they will see this drop off as a taste of things to come. Once certain things are confirmed you could potentially see this drop off multiply itself by a factor of 10 or 50.
Xbox just released a cool lineup of new controllers and would anyone really want to invest in new controllers if these Xbox games will appear on the PS5 and the PS5 Pro (something that will have no competition from Xbox if rumours are to be believed?).
Would anyone want to buy any third party games on the Xbox if the PlayStation is going to be made the default console platform?
These are questions that people are asking and, yes, many are jumping to conclusions but hopefully those same bigwigs at MS that don’t truly understand what console exclusivity means can see that they’re letting a ton of revenue slip through their fingers.
Fortnite alone generated $14 billion dollars between 2018 and 2020 with Xbox making around 28% of that (PlayStation made around 47% of that). Map this across all gaming software.
It’s crazy that Microsoft would abandon a proven and lucrative app store, an area that they have failed in many times in other contexts, by going this rumoured route.
Maybe some people there think they aren’t sacrificing their current model, perhaps thinking that they can have their cake and eat it too, and so people taking these “extreme” measures can demonstrate to them that they actually won’t be able to have a viable console with a lack of exclusives.
And yes I know it is done on a per-case basis but this sort of ambiguity and lack of definition does nothing to build trust or understanding of what people are getting with the console.
The silliest part of all of this, IMO, is that they don’t seem to be interested in addressing some of their failures related to the lack of sales and revenue. First off they needed a Windows storefront that could compare to Steam, and they needed this 5 years ago when they first started the idea of Play Anywhere and Game Pass. Secondly is that they needed to be a bit more aggressive in marketing Game Pass and the Series consoles. There was this idea that they had to hold back while completing the Activision merger, and if that’s the case then the bigwigs trying to push for losing exclusives need to factor that in.
Anyways I don’t want to go to an around here actually just want to stay on point here in regards to some of the more extreme reaction to the rumours. I’m actually for it. At first I thought so much of it was silly and somewhat nonsensical but now I want everyone at Xbox and everyone at Microsoft to look at it and understand what brand loyalty means, what confidence in a brand means, and what creating value for their platform’s stakeholders means.
I don’t want to marry up the thesis of this post too much but the more I think about it, The more I realize that putting a game like grounded or Sea of Thieves on something like the PlayStation will have a short-term benefit but will completely jeopardize the Xbox digital storefront. The only thing it benefits is the idea of Xbox going completely third party. And when you do that you lose out on a ton of revenue and services like Game Pass will no longer exist.
I really can’t wait for this weekend’s Xbox Era podcast. 
12 Likes
Probably just moving to a smaller building? Rent is high as hell in California.
I’m referring to Xbox becomes Sega, not simply selling their own games to other platform. You can bet the moment Xbox becomes third party, Sony will go banana on business decisions.
2 Likes
Guess who owns Crunchyroll! But I am sure that would never happen in their gaming sector. Not good guy Sony.
3 Likes
We all should have seen this coming to be honest. The parent company of Xbox is called Microsoft. Micro-Soft. The Soft is for Software. There were always gone to prioritize software over Hardware. Bill Gates only go ahead with the original Xbox cause he was scared of PS2 becoming a backdoor Trojan horse to Microsoft position in Windows in the living room.
That turns out to just be FUD. They kept the Xbox around after that, but the Console hardware never made any money. Not even during the golden years of the Xbox 360. The hardware was still sold at a loss. Ever since then they fucked up with the Xbox One revealed, trying to recover with New direction, porting to PC, Gamepass. All of that give them more revenue but it did not help console sales. I think the final nail in hardware for Xbox is when Starfield release and it didn’t move any Xbox console at all. If Starfield which is suppose to be one of the Xbox system seller can’t do it. I can’t see Hellblade 2, Avowed, Fable or anything else that Xbox release soon that will move the needle, Them going fully software on all platforms rumors now can all be traced back over time. This is not something that just happen overnight.
This THIS is an acquisition that shouldnt have been allowed. Sony bought 2 competitors in the same space and somehow regulators didnt even looked at it.
2 Likes
What a week, huh.
1 Like