I’d say in truth they know it will and are actually counting on that. But they want to get the games in the platform they want and want to play the games from developers Ms own in the way the helps the least into making Xbox a stronger platform
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People misconstrue words ALL THE TIME
When Phil said it wasn’t his goal to take games off other platforms, that’s literally what he meant. They bought Bethesda to boost Xbox, not hurt anyone else. A side effect of that is hurting PS and Switch but it wasn’t the main objective.
When Todd Howard said “it’s hard to imagine The Elder Scrolls being a console exclusive game” he was literally responding by saying yes that is something that is hard to imagine, not that he’s confirming that the game will not be exclusive.
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I surely wish I could choose any platform and play any game on it. Albeit though, the world isn’t so kind.
I was thinking you could end Wolfenstein 3 with the Nazis opening the gates of hell on Mars. I’m half wondering if that’s the direction they may be going already, to be honest. There’s a lot of potential and it would be a very cool way to signal a massive investment in that franchise. Id could focus on that game with some Machinegames support while they focus on Indiana Jones.
Exactly. We can take these comments literally and acknowledge that we know just about nothing about exclusivity for just about any particular game (and may not for some time). Ultimately, all they want us to know is that every game will launch on Game Pass.
Yep, that’s how I see it too.
Yep, that’s how I’ve always seen Todd’s comment, but I meant another quote by him. I believe it was during that chat he had online along with Phil, Pete and Major Nelson I believe? I believe in this bit he also said Phil has the final say.
Oh trust me, Bethesda deal wouldn’t even happen if PC wasn’t part of the ecosystem as well. Bethesda is a deeply PC first publisher. So it makes sense for Todd to say it’s hard for him to imagine it being a console exclusive lol.
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Well said my friend.
I went to bed last night.
I WOKE UP THIS MORNING AND THERE ARE 216 NEW REPLIES.
Do you people ever sleep or stop?!
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Oh, ok. More of a tie in and wink wink than an actual cross over. For now. That would be neat to add in some hints to tie that all up. Sadly, I’m still waiting for the FPS boosts to the Wolfenstein games so I can [hopefully] finish playing through them (along with the Dishonored games).
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People are thinking way too emotionally about everything and not rationally. Microsoft didn’t spend $7.5 billion to keep things the same, so be patient and level headed. Things will become clearer in a few months. All the irrational takes I’m seeing throughout every social media channel is driving me crazy.
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New Colossus is freaking rad!
WAIT WAT TITANFALL 3 WAT WAAAAAAAT
WHO IS THIS AND IS HE RELIABLE???
I NEED ANSWERS
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Seconded
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…but the reason it is more expensive is because Sony would need to compensate for the residual sales from the Xbox version…which is our point. The same is true for something like Starfield on PS5. If it came later there are still sales to be tapped into and it’d be from die hard Sony fans who would never consider buying an Xbox to play those games.
The strategy for MS would be:
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Market Starfield as Xbox-only for holiday 2021 and get some promotional synergy going with it and the various other elements of the holiday '21 marketing push. The aim here is to peel off as many PS4/PS5 owners as possible with the explicit impression it is only on Xbox (even if timed) and associated with Xbox and Game Pass.
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For gamers in that target demographic who refuse to buy an Xbox console or can’t afford to, MS lowers the barrier of access to Game Pass as much as possible (streaming sticks, PC/X1 streaming, on all phones, TV app integration) to give these gamers lots of oher ways to access Game Pass for Starfield.
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Any stragglers left over are folks who didn’t find #1 compelling enough, even with the game marketed as a full exclusive and who didn’t find the streaming alternatives of PC options as viable for whatever reason. Maybe they are just die hard Sony fans who wanna focus only on PS5 for gaming. Those can be targeted via residual sales a year later.
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…
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Profit!
Regarding exclusivity I need people to be more critical of Sony and more forgiving of MS right now.You don’t have to be more critical of Sony but at least be more forgiving towards Xbox. Let me explain. Sony is so far ahead of MS right in terms of customers within their ecosystem. 2:1 or something. Sony can go to a 3rd party publisher or developer and ask them for exclusivity. Instead of the usual 100m sum (just a number) Sony can cut a deal for 50m because they have so much leverage being the leader (I disregard Nintendo as they’re mostly 1P). Having almost double the customers can bring in more money for these 3P publishers/developers so Sony basically has all the power to make these deals. Xbox cannot do that. When Xbox goes to a major publisher/developer they don’t own and ask for exclusivity the asking price doesn’t go down from 100m if anything it goes up. And even that might not be enough for them as they’d rather go for double the install base and customers. Even though MS is doing well with Xbox and hopefully they’ll do even better, right now they’re still far behind. That’s why MS is doing so many acquisitions so they can cut that issue and save a lot more money long-term. So it kind of upsets me when people want even less of a competition by criticisizing MS for exclusivity. That is clearly MSs path to gaining back that ground they lost in the X1 era (remember X360 went head to head with PS3, MS had so many killer exclusives). Which is why I find it very disingenious when people repeated the same rhetoric of ‘‘MS should release these games on PS5 to make more money’’.
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I really, REALLY hope not. It’d be a damn shame if they had Starfield and Halo and Forza Horizon and maybe even Wolfenstein 3 all for the holidays along with more Game Pass growth, the huge efforts to materialize streaming options everywhere, and proper holiday with All Access…only to have that all be somewhat wasted by stock issues. 
That’s why I’m starting to wondering if there could be a Xbox One version in place after all. I mean even if there hadn’t been stock issues, many players are still with their Xbox Ones and can’t play Starfield.
There was a point where Todd said that it could come to Xbox One, something along those lines it was.
He also smirked after saying that and his phrasing was deliberately facetious I think. He said “I agree it would be hard to image” then smiled. He also said in the same interview they hadn’t worked on any of those details yet. Maybe MS/Bethesda genuinely hadn’t sorted the exclusivity details when agreeing to the buyout? We all have no insight here to the complexities from the outside. The way things are stated by the CFO can be read both ways too.