I think there’s a difference between a game that has one release on a few platforms like Hellblade vs games that have dozens of releases across dozens of platforms like Cod and Doom. I think it also boils down to franchise visibility. Doom and CoD are infinitely more visible and known than something like Hellblade or Avowed. Indy is a wildcard, but I would tend to agree that it should probably be everywhere.
I honestly don’t have any stake in this argument, but I found your take to be a bit disengenouos if I’m being honest.
Because, and I didn’t think that this would need to be stated, not every Xbox first party that has a history of being multiplatform is Doom and Call of Duty, which are so intrinsically multiplatform. Doom, for goodness sake, has a meme about it being able to be run on everything, which is why putting it exclusive is almost antithetical to what Doom is, and same goes for Call of Duty.
The wilfully obtuse part is taking what I said and applying it to Hellblade, a game that can’t even really be considered a franchise considering it has a total of three instalments.
I think it’s almost, possibly important to state that “multiplatform” is not the same as “existed on more than one platform”. Just in case, what I specifically mean, is that Perfect Dark is a game that’s been on more than one platform, but is actually not a multiplatform release, as in Perfect Dark and Perfect Dark Zero (and the GBC game) were all single-platform releases. Indiana Jones is a complicated one again, as several of it’s instalments have been single releases that appeared on one platform, like Infernal Machine which was released on PC then ported to N64.
There isn’t really any logic to test, because it’s not a binary choice, and that’s the exact reason I have came back to mention and to stand up for the wilfully obtuse comment; if you were asked to pick any massive selling series that Xbox owns, I don’t think you could pick two more exacting examples of “multiplatform” games than Doom and Call of Duty, and that’s my point. That’s it. And extrapolating it to include “Hellblade” or “Avowed” is, frankly, attempting to make my point say something that I am explicitly not saying.
I think the “case by case” issue has been discussed to death, and really is shouldn’t be stoked by “insiders” or fan YouTube channels. Xbox have a strategy and releasing the four games they did has demonstrably been successful, and if they decided to continue to do it, it will be because they think it’ll be successful. That’s really all we should be paying attention to, because it directly will help the console of choice for us.
With all those insiders saying how much MS is considering releasing stuff everywhere, you’d think they themselves would consider not leaking everything as to lessen the damage on the brand and the hard work of the developers!
They think more about their paycheck than other folk’s feelings. Its the way of “insiders” unfortunatly, you find them everywhere not just on Xbox. Nintendo also has it rough.
However i do think eventually Phil will have to set things right for its userbase, not playstation or nintendo but their own, in regards to exclusives cause saying more games going to other platforms kinda do not make folks invested only on Xbox happy. At least that’s my opinion, i could be proven wrong but its hard to say cause you cannot trust an interview at face value.
I’m cool with the direction Xbox chooses so long as it satisfied with the service. This multiplatform idea has never been done so there really isn’t any real thing to point to that the results would be so and so everything is all just speculation.
Xbox tried the Games for windows thing and when it didn’t work they stopped and pivoted back to consoles in 2013 they went for the all-digital that backfired, and they pivoted back again. Multiplatform would either work or fail if it fails you can be certain they will pivot back again.
Also, there were ideas that were supposed to manifest with strategies like the family sharing and being able to sell digital games back again, non of this materialized as the strategy failed too quickly. Xbox can at any time make all their games exclusive or not. I say let them dabble and find out. For all we know this might be the best thing to happen to gaming.
In my opinion I think Phil Spencer and his team are trying to bring videogame entertainment to the same place as other entertainment media where barriers are gone. Today you produce a single movie and can sell it everywhere without needing to spend months optimizing it for different platforms. If games were to follow the same format where you can buy a game and play it anywhere that would be something. Buy from the Xbox store and play it on any platform be it Steam, Epic, PlayStation even Nintendo platforms and vice versa. This makes me believe at the end of the day Project Latitude is really there to use the learning from other platforms in building a universal format that works on everything might be also why Xbox seems to have built an internal team that specializes in unreal engine as the games so far ported have been unreal games and might be why some are now being ported to unreal.
I mean I’m Xbox and PC only (with a side of Switch) and it’ll stay that way. The way I see it we still get priority on the games and will have them a year or 2, if not more before the competition. The wording to me is also quite clear but maybe that’s just me. More doesn’t equal to All, if they wanted all games to release elsewhere they’d use that word. They have a sizeable userbase that want to stick to Xbox and they know it. They also already have a sizeable userbase on PC and I personally don’t think they need Playstation numbers for any of this to make sense. They do need to keep the status quo though, so no reason to take COD away from PS for example and lose hundreds of millions of dollars for no reason.
Same with new titles. Sea of Thieves for example had run its course on XBox and PC and wasn’t going to grow any more. If Playstation players wanted to play it on Xbox or PC they would have bought it when it’s on sale for like 10$ but yet they didn’t and instead prefered paying full price to play it on PS5.
Just goes on to show the reasoning from MS’s side and why it makes sense. The PS players will just not budge, they’re people in their 30s/40s and are just used to that ecosystem. Same with Xbox players and I’d even add Switch players to that. They might expect a few people to jump ship, but how big of a loss is it actually? The person paying 18$ a month is now giving them 70-80$ per game, so basically, their loss and MS’s win in terms of money. MS is also probably looking at expanding to Gen Z and Gen A and that will happen on mobile and on PC, which is where they already have a presence with ABK (mobile) and PC. So I think they are well positioned to get new blood in the ecosystem, plus Gamepass being accessible pretty much everywhere in cloud gaming services so not constrained to xCLoud.
At the end of the day it’s about giving people options while sucking dry people in competitors’ ecosystems who were not planning to switch over to your side anyway. Those users are, to me, the same as old people who just won’t change with the times and so it’s pointless to fight and try to win them over, it will just never work as those people are stuck in their bad habits. Why would anyone with any judgement pay 40-50$ on PS5 right now for Sea of Thieves when they could have paid 20% of that or less on PC years ago, the math just doesn’t add up!
When they say it’s about reaching more gamers, that’s what I think it means in the end. I don’t see millions of Xbox gamers moving to Playstation and all of a sudden MS making less money, that just won’t happen. Gamepass will make sure of that, over 30 studios pumping out games will make sure of that, and having more hardware possibilities and Play Anywhere will also make sure of that!
Yeah, if its a flagship like Forza Horizon as some a saying than am done with the Hardware next gen and moving to playstation or nintendo. Cause at least they have more sense to not screw their playerbase with their first party gatherings as well as destroying their hardware brand . But will see, this feels like it will be short term profit yet again without much long term success.
Yeah, if its a flagship like Forza then that pretty much means no game is safe. I am still unsure what it all means, but its kinda telling me it’s wiser to invest in playstation or a gaming pc because you’re most likely going to get Microsoft games if you buy a PS6
Its wait and see, but this time: If its forza as its being hinted at then Phil amd Satya will need to answer their core audience, cause it WILL harm their brand and their next gen hardware HARD.
Now i do wish we had a world with no exclusives but yet again i see as a necessary evil. Mostly because stuff more attractive for a consumer point of view. Its simple math.
Let’s wait and see. I think something like Age of mythology Flight Navigator and Killer Instinct would be okay. Forza will be a blow, and people would assume that’s the reason for third studio.
We know that they are heading into a new direction, but next week yet another game already? That’s definitely faster than I expected. We’ll see what it is.
For me it’s gonna depend on what third parties will do. Now already we’re seeing shit like “nobody needs Xbox” or whatever it was that one of the Phantom Blade Zero devs had said. Or the whole goddamned Wukong situation, who even knows wtf really is going on there. If much more of that starts to happen I might just quit Xbox too. I rather not though, and I still plan to get the next Xbox as of now.