I think you are confused. I don’t understand the question you’re posing. You don’t think ppl still buy Fallout or Wolfenstein or Doom? Of course they do! And they want those titles to play best on XSX and to be included in Game Pass.
Let’s deconstruct it one paragraph at a time:
Note that THIS WAS SAID FIRST. THIS was the context of the other 3 paragraphs that followed on the call and that everyone is discussing. You can’t remove the other comments from this context!
“When we think about Bethesda, it’s going to be the continuing to allow – I’ll say allow, but continue to sell their games on the platforms that they exist today, and we’ll determine what that looks over time and will change over time. I’m not making any announcements about exclusivity or something like that. But that model will change.”
Here he is clearly referring to already released games. He doesn’t say they are letting games release on new platforms. He says they will “allow” Bethesda to “continue” selling games on the “platforms that they exist today”, and that they will determine exactly how that changes over time. Then he reiterates that this release approach WILL change in the future.
“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. But what we want is we want that content, in the long run, to be either first or better or best or pick your differentiated experience, on our platforms. We will want Bethesda content to show up the best as – on our platforms.”
He is talking here about ‘pulling content out of’ other ecosystems. Future games aren’t in other ecosystems yet. Just because he is referring to future tense doesn’t mean the games he is referring to are not existing titles already released into those ecosystems. The ‘pulling content out of’ language sounds like he is indeed talking about stuff already released. This is something he CAN legally discuss as it isn’t a change to any status quo.
“Yes. That’s not a point about being exclusive. That’s not a point about we’re being – adjusting timing or content or road map. But if you think about something like Game Pass, if it shows up best in Game Pass, that’s what we want to see, and we want to drive our Game Pass subscriber base through that Bethesda pipeline.”
Note here that he is actively avoiding discussing ANYTHING about exclusives at all. Contrary to your reading of it, he is NOT saying ‘future content will not be exclusive’ at all. He DOES NOT say ‘the point is not about being exclusive’…which is how most somehow appear to be reading it.
Nor is he saying anything about adjusting release timelines. If the intended implication was to say MS would delay these future titles to be timed Xbox exclusives, that runs afoul of what he says quite directly here. He also notes Game Pass. The presumption most somehow have is that this must refer to future GP games from Bethesda/et al…but they just recently added some of these games to GP and are working on adding more. Meaning those games already released on various platforms, but the intention is that they will play best on Xbox and be added to GP.
“So again, I’m not announcing pulling content from platforms one way or the other. But I suspect you’ll continue to see us shift towards a first or better or best approach on our platforms.”
Here he reiterates they aren’t planning to remove existing content from other ecosystems anytime soon and will instead move those existing titles over to GP/xCloud. He also notes that the shift towards ‘first or better or best’ is no new but rather an ongoing shift. That only makes sense in the context of existing games where MS has been working on moving them over to GP and experimenting with BC improvements for them (like Fallout 4).
