That is my point, having an alternate method of obtaining the game isn’t going to diminish GP. We are talking about platform exclusivity here. Physical copies on other platforms don’t really change anything more than physical copies on the same (linked) platform. People remember with exclusives we are talking about like what double digit number of games out of 5000 over the course of 10 years or so. Average game attach rate for a console is like 7-10 games lifetime.
More platforms is more visibility and it increases sales across ALL platforms. This is how GP works for developers. They put their games on GP and their sales suddenly increase on all the platforms they are on. That’s more mtx, there is no such thing as well good enough when there is potential for more.
What’s with the strawman? Did where did I say ES becomes dumpster trash? Again visibility. There are countries where Xbox isn’t a thing, this is just a simple fact. “Exclusives” aren’t going to suddenly overcome deep seeded biases. It will take time, sometimes taking multiple (human) generations. Sony can’t even touch Nintendo in their own home country, so no amount of exclusives will get Xbox to where Nintendo is. That doesn’t mean they can’t profit from Japan though.
Not everything needs to be a win over the other guy. People set up these arbitrary victories using stats like they are playing fantasy basketball console warrior. How much of all this is just people looking for their chance to dunk on Sony fanboys? Sure it’s nice to win forum arguments, but these forums are a far cry away from the reality of who is really spending money on games and which ones are being bought.
I understand your point but I tend to think there was a lot going on there, including negotiations regarding getting Spider-Man into the MCU. I’m not sure it’s apples to apples. Lucas Arts could pull the game and go to another developer if MS demanded exclusivity and frankly the contract is probably already long past signed.
I’m pretty certain it’ll launch on Game Pass though, so I’d call that a huge win.
This whole angle that oh only new IP will be exclusive is rather dumb tbh. The whole value of Zenimax was intrinsically based on the IP it already has and how big these IP are. The value isn’t based on some future potential of new IP. The marketshare is not going to shift for some new IP, there’s a reason they called this inorganic growth. TES, fallout, Doom, etc are what give Zenimax value, they are what will sell consoles, subscriptions, so on, not an unknown potential new IP which may or may not be successful sometime in the far future. “keep all old IP multiplat, new IPs would be exclusive” is therefore a rather bad assessment of what this acquisition even represented to begin with.
Would be funny of MS came out and said:
“As people have pointed out, we need to recoup the money we spent on this acquisition. Therefore we can not afford to make our games for multiple platforms and will only be releasing them exclusively on Xbox Series X|S, PC and Cloud Gaming via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.”
Going by Klobrille’s latest tweet it seems the Bethesda “event” is not really what you’d hope, but does make sense. Similar to the Obsidian video, really. That’s probably what we’re going to get.
And really, other than Starfield, Deathloop, Ghostwire and maybe Wolfenstein, would Bethesda have enough to show to warrant an event? Although I would say that Starfield warrants its own event already. I guess it will all be later this year.
But MS can be damn sure the press will be ready and waiting as soon as the deal has closed. So I expect them to give us crystal clear details about everything in a “welcome” video, or otherwise articles online.
It would be a catastrophically bad decision to even make any of these games (minus DL, GWT, and GaaS games) even timed exclusive. If Microsoft gives even one of these games the timed exclusive treatment, it’ll set a domino effect across social media that people can just wait out these on these games and play them on PS5.
We’re early in this generation, Microsoft has made strong strides in positioning Xbox as an all encompassing ecosystem. But it’s content that drives the consumer. More so than ever, optics play a huge role in a product/service’s desirability. In my opinion, if Microsoft isn’t clear about keeping these games Xbox/PC/Xcloud exclusive, I would really fail to see GamePass ever hitting the critical mass they are hoping to hit. For most of us, the decision is obvious, but Microsoft sometimes seems to have some bean counters making decisions who’re laughably out of touch with the core gaming audience and the cascading effects of making such bad decisions.
I hope so and not doing so would not be the smart move, however the acquisition was an unprecedented move, so microsoft may make unprecedented choice. I really dont know how things will go down, but I think exclusivity to the xbox echosystem makes the most sense for microsofts goals.
It’s not a question of what matters for us as players.
Me as a player couldn’t care a rat ass about who else gets to play the game.
But as consumers of the Xbox platform, invested in the ecosystem want to see the platform strong enough that developers and publishers stop skipping games for stupid reasons. And this is a perfect opportunity for them to achieve that.
Though I agree it doesn’t even make sense to discuss, because the notion that they will make such a move to keep releasing the games on Playstation, so absurd that if it wasn’t Xbox it would never even be entertained (which goes to the point I made about making Xbox a serious player)
I think that by Obsidian event people just mean some announcement that Zenimax games will be exclusive and announcing Starfield for this year as the first one.
If those rumours are true - probably not - that Sony has a bunch of Konami’s IP games exclusive, and add to that the some rumour that Sony also wanted to buy Bethesda but only for 5 bil. at most (thus MS went with 7.5 to fend off others), with possible Starfield money it would be a catastrophic blow to Xbox.
Aside from the pre acquisition games I think they’ll all be exclusive to the xbox ecosystem. They’re picking up a he’ll of a lot of big, quality franchises that they’d be foolish not to strengthen their roster of games by making them exclusive. It gets talked about how Microsoft don’t “care” where we play but there’s still a decent chunk of gamers that will still purchase games consoles as opposed to game streaming and by having stuff like Elder Scrolls, Doom, Starfield shoved in their faces as exclusives will definitely sway a lot of gamers to buying an xbox - maybe even a Series S just so they can still play the Bethesda stuff.
I don’t really believe the argument that some outlets make that Microsoft for some reason need to keep stuff multiplatform. I’m not interested in fanboy stuff but I just can’t help but feel the same argument wouldn’t be made if Sony were the ones that had bought Bethesda.
Things like Bethesda’s games will sell well in the xbox ecosystem. You can even look at how popular Sea of Theives has proven on Steam and Xbox and say Microsoft can easily get MAU for MMOs if they kept the Zenimax Online stuff exclusive as well.
I’d be disappointed if I was a PS only of course but ultimately Microsoft aren’t obliged to make Bethesda’s stuff multiplatform despite the narrative going around. They’re all essentially first party studios now so it would be surprising if they did keep releasing stuff for the PS5.
In regards to individual sales yes. But Ms is not a 3rd party publisher it’s a platform holder. In that sense they are exploring all the potential of their platforms and doesn’t need to tap into others.
No, GP works because people try the games that otherwise they would not want to buy. It has nothing to do with availability in a sense that is platform availability. People just try the game because it is “free”.
Sony cannot touch Nintendo because Sony stopped catering to the japanese public. They took japanese games for granted and did not support their platform there That led to lower sales, which in turn pivoted developers to Switch who had bigger sales due to having a popular content. Without Square Enix, what japanese games would Sony even have today?
To fight biases you need to bring the console and make it valuable. You won’t fight biases by giving your games to the platform which already popular. Your only entrench that platform even more. Tell me this: if you have a PS and you get Xbox game, would you buy invest another 500$ to buy Xbox to play other games there? Of course not. Nobody buys anything if they get the same on their own machine - believe it or not, people don’t really buy games that often in general, much less investing in a different platform.
Platform holder - aside Nintendo - is always trying to get as many exclusives as possible on their platform.
That’s a secondary effect of having users subscribed to the service, not the main draw of the service.
You still need compelling games that people do want, so they can see the lower price of entry of Gamepass to subscribe.
The others are a ripple effect, because once people subscribe they tend to make use of their catalog and look for stuff they might enjoy but either wasn’t aware or didn’t want to risk buying.
But if the anchor games that bring people in are available in a plataform where gamepass isn’t even an option, that’s obviously going to prevent an user of that platform to subscribe.
Which is why Ms is making the cost of entry in the ecosystem so low by putting the games on Pc and Xcloud. It will soon be at a point where the device it won’t matter. So there’s nothing blocking a Playstation only user to accessing this game other than using a device they already own to access the Ms platform.
Not so much for cellphones and tablets. And you can’t play Playstation or Nintendo games on tablets. But Xbox games you can. Less about bias and more about availability.
For for 2.9 billion gamers, Xbox is the only option.
I understand that. It is kinda obvious, it is just that @Whistler implied that Xbox should publish TES and whatever on other platforms to make better visibility of GP benefits, because developers benefit from GP. But that is not how it works.
If you think about it the zenimax acquisition is not to different to when microsoft aquired 5 devs in 2018
Yes the zenimax acquisition is bigger with 8 devs and some of those devs are massive but the 2018 spree was still pretty huge.
I really dont see it that different. The multiplatform devs in 2018 did not make playstation games so why would this 2021 acquisition be any different?
I don’t know how many of you folks were kicking around on forums back in ~2008 when Final Fantasy XIII was announced for Xbox 360, but the meltdowns over that were legendary. And in that case, no one even lost access to anything on their preferred platform, it just wasn’t going to be exclusive anymore.
If the Elder Scrolls/Fallout/Starfield announcement comes down and it’s what we’re all expecting, it’s going to be on a whole different level.