Keyword "basically" - if you read the articles they won't commit yet. The decision is not made yet, and I bet my lunch it all comes down to how many Elyria copies and DLC were sold on PS platforms.
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Microsoft have bought Activision Blizzard
- Thread starter Phantoon
- Start date
Exclusivity generally gives a console maker too many benefits to not do. You have to be a 100M+ seller game by yourself to merit going on other platforms like Minecraft where the brand’s value by itself is bigger than any other consideration.
The money they’ll lose by not being on PlayStations, will be more than made up by gamers choosing Xboxes as their consoles. Every Xbox sold is not just money you’re making on the hardware, but licensing fees for every other game that gamer buys on that system. And being on PC too means at the very least, anyone choosing to be console agnostic or a PlayStation loyalist will still likely play it and give MS money anyways.
If this wasn’t the case, then there just wouldn’t be exclusives at all. Anyone who is trying to tell themselves that Activision’s and Bethesda’s IP libraries will remain multi-platform are deluding themselves. At best you’ll have one token franchise that remains cross-platform so they can keep up the facade for the easily convinced that they’re not a monopolistic predator.
And MS is very intentionally keeping things grey because if the last half decade has taught anyone anything, it’s that they know the public has the memory of a goldfish. If they just keep their intentions vague, everything will blow over, people will forget and eventually accept that this is just the way things are now. And it’ll work so long as government regulators give them a pass.
The money they’ll lose by not being on PlayStations, will be more than made up by gamers choosing Xboxes as their consoles. Every Xbox sold is not just money you’re making on the hardware, but licensing fees for every other game that gamer buys on that system. And being on PC too means at the very least, anyone choosing to be console agnostic or a PlayStation loyalist will still likely play it and give MS money anyways.
If this wasn’t the case, then there just wouldn’t be exclusives at all. Anyone who is trying to tell themselves that Activision’s and Bethesda’s IP libraries will remain multi-platform are deluding themselves. At best you’ll have one token franchise that remains cross-platform so they can keep up the facade for the easily convinced that they’re not a monopolistic predator.
And MS is very intentionally keeping things grey because if the last half decade has taught anyone anything, it’s that they know the public has the memory of a goldfish. If they just keep their intentions vague, everything will blow over, people will forget and eventually accept that this is just the way things are now. And it’ll work so long as government regulators give them a pass.
Thing is - Microsoft is not that interested in moving hardware anymore. They rather have the mindshare and the profit. So while I'm sure there'll be exclusive benefits to ESVI on Xbox (better on Xbox, timed exclusively, early DLC drops, "free" on Gamepass, Master Chief minion, who knows what else?) I'm also sure they want to keep stablished profitable franchises in as many platforms as possible. And if announcing exclusivity early is detrimental, what's with Starfield? If anything you want to announce it now so people have time to get into the platform and start subscribing to Gamepass to keep those dollars flowing.
Anyway, this is all speculation. We'll find out in three years or so when the game starts gearing up for release =p
Anyway, this is all speculation. We'll find out in three years or so when the game starts gearing up for release =p
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
Microsoft tends not to be so tight with its IP. Even after the MS purchase, Rare continued to make games for the Game Boy Advance, and now, we've seen Super Lucky's Tale and Cuphead come to Switch (and the latter to PS4 as well).
I don't think they'll be that stingy with Activision and Blizzard. If Call of Duty becomes an Xbox exclusive, that just means Battlefield will pick up the slack on Playstation, or Sony creates its own franchise in response. As for Crash and Spyro, I'm confident the two characters will be spread across all the consoles, MS owned or not.
I don't think they'll be that stingy with Activision and Blizzard. If Call of Duty becomes an Xbox exclusive, that just means Battlefield will pick up the slack on Playstation, or Sony creates its own franchise in response. As for Crash and Spyro, I'm confident the two characters will be spread across all the consoles, MS owned or not.
Here’s the deal. Ever since the 80s, consoles have been about one thing to their makers: their ability to skim off the top of the gaming industry by convincing gamers to enter into their ecosystem so that they can collect licensing fees off of every game sold. Making money off the hardware is nice but it’s a bonus. It’s why every non-Nintendo console has sold at a loss at launch for the past several decades. Because market share is more important than anything else because it determines how much that company can skim off the top.
Buying up developers and publishers is just a new trick in the same game. It’s classical vertical integration. Why skim off the top when you can have the whole pie?
And Microsoft taking Gamepass to PC, having Xbox-PC integration, streaming cloud gaming, all of it is just 21st Century adaptations to the same old game of luring gamers into their ecosystem so that their money is spent with them instead of their competitor. They’re not just competing against Sony right and the PlayStation right now. They’re competing against Valve/Steam too. Anything that eventually lures gamers into their ecosystem is a win in their eyes. And exclusivity still does that. If it didn’t, Halo would be on PS4/5 right now. This isn’t that complicated. Maybe they let a few token titles through to maintain the illusion of fairness, but all that is, is clever back doors into their ecosystem. They’ve watched Apple do their thing over the last few decades. They know how the grift works now in the 21st Century.
Buying up developers and publishers is just a new trick in the same game. It’s classical vertical integration. Why skim off the top when you can have the whole pie?
And Microsoft taking Gamepass to PC, having Xbox-PC integration, streaming cloud gaming, all of it is just 21st Century adaptations to the same old game of luring gamers into their ecosystem so that their money is spent with them instead of their competitor. They’re not just competing against Sony right and the PlayStation right now. They’re competing against Valve/Steam too. Anything that eventually lures gamers into their ecosystem is a win in their eyes. And exclusivity still does that. If it didn’t, Halo would be on PS4/5 right now. This isn’t that complicated. Maybe they let a few token titles through to maintain the illusion of fairness, but all that is, is clever back doors into their ecosystem. They’ve watched Apple do their thing over the last few decades. They know how the grift works now in the 21st Century.
But Halo is back on Steam.
Microsoft is trying a new strategy here, once that doesn't depend on them moving hardware, but more on a platofrm-agnostic ecosystem. It fits with the pivot of the whole company into a service orieted company instead of a software company. Whether it's successfull or not, and if they go back to their old ways when it fails or succeed, we'll find out.
Becksworth
Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
While I doubt Activision's catalog will remain on PlayStation indefinitely, this is why I'd imagine we will probably see the next CoD game on there anyway. There are probably already some agreements in place for at least the upcoming years software lineup.
Microsoft of all companies has a complex history with exclusivity. It's not as simple as taking the maximally exclusive stance; nor is it as simple as choosing exclusivity from a position of strength and interoperability from a position of weakness.
These days, their overall corporate strategy seems to be "Let users use whatever they want. Let them run competitor's software, let them run our software on a competitor's platform, whatever. As long as one link of the chain is ours, we have an in." And so we have Office 365, which can be used from any operating system, but the best client is the Windows one; we have Azure, which is specialized for running Linux VMs, but is the only cloud provider that also supports Windows; we have a whole slew of quality programming tools that are platform-agnostic, but don't suck complete ass on Windows. All their walled gardens leave the gates unlocked.
Xbox is not a hardware platform, nor an account system, nor a publisher, nor a store, though it does contain all of those things. Simply put, they're not picky about which direction they expand in. The platform being multifaceted means that they have multiple ways to advance their strategic goals. That means they can sell Minecraft on Playstation and Halo on Steam, and even though it's not increasing their market share of consoles or storefronts, it's still growing the number of Microsoft account holders, a benefit that does not require them to forgo the revenue from those sales.
For that reason, I think that Elder Scrolls or Call of Duty snubbing the Playstation is probably only something they'll try once they believe they're in a dominant enough position to try to force Sony out of the market altogether and absorb their market share. That's not going to happen as long as they lack a foothold in certain major markets, including most notably Japan, where a lot of their acquired properties are popular but their hardware is not.
These days, their overall corporate strategy seems to be "Let users use whatever they want. Let them run competitor's software, let them run our software on a competitor's platform, whatever. As long as one link of the chain is ours, we have an in." And so we have Office 365, which can be used from any operating system, but the best client is the Windows one; we have Azure, which is specialized for running Linux VMs, but is the only cloud provider that also supports Windows; we have a whole slew of quality programming tools that are platform-agnostic, but don't suck complete ass on Windows. All their walled gardens leave the gates unlocked.
Xbox is not a hardware platform, nor an account system, nor a publisher, nor a store, though it does contain all of those things. Simply put, they're not picky about which direction they expand in. The platform being multifaceted means that they have multiple ways to advance their strategic goals. That means they can sell Minecraft on Playstation and Halo on Steam, and even though it's not increasing their market share of consoles or storefronts, it's still growing the number of Microsoft account holders, a benefit that does not require them to forgo the revenue from those sales.
For that reason, I think that Elder Scrolls or Call of Duty snubbing the Playstation is probably only something they'll try once they believe they're in a dominant enough position to try to force Sony out of the market altogether and absorb their market share. That's not going to happen as long as they lack a foothold in certain major markets, including most notably Japan, where a lot of their acquired properties are popular but their hardware is not.
So why isn't it on PlayStation then if they're truly console agnostic? Or why isn't there an Apple version of the game you can play through Steam?
Because like I said, this is all about convincing people to join their ecosystem.
Someone playing games on Steam already has an easy-in to crossing over to the Xbox ecosystem. Xbox software is already loaded into Windows 10. You are required to use it to play Halo Infinite's FTP multiplayer. Every time you join a game with friends, the software asks do you want to do it here in the Steam version of the game, or maaayyybeee do it over here in Xbox? Yeah you can buy the campaign on the Steam Store for $60... but there are advertisements all over the game how you can play it on Game Pass for free! Don't you want to play the game for free? It's only $15 a month, and there's even a free trial! Isn't that enticing? Cmon, just try it, it's so easy!
If even like, 20% of people who try Halo Infinite for free on Steam decide to take the plunge on Game Pass, that's a MASSIVE win for them. Most people who sign up for recursive payment services like this just let the service keep charging them indefinitely. There are still millions of people who keep paying for AOL! In [current year]! Releasing Halos, or any of their IPs (save for the one or two exceptions like Minecraft) on PlayStation does not further this agenda. There's no easy ability to just fall down the rabbit hole if they put their software on PlayStations. Making the jump from Steam to Xbox is now just a few easy clicks of the mouse button and requires nothing from the user except putting a credit card on file. Something e-commerce has very successfully trained the consumer to not think twice about over the last two and a half decades. Making the jump from PlayStation to Xbox would require completely new hardware that would be completely redundant if you already own a PlayStation. It's a way bigger ask that wouldn't remotely be worth it.
Why is this hard to understand? "Hardware doesn't matter" is nonsense. It matters a lot. Because they need to be able to control enough of what's going on to get people into their new Apple-like ecosystem. Believe it or not, they control your PC. Did you know Windows is owned by Microsoft? And they make it so you can't install Windows without Xbox and Cortana hitching a ride. They don't control shit on PlayStation. It's not their walled garden, and they have no ins there that MS can exploit. There is immense financial incentive to put Halo on Steam. There is zero to put it on PlayStation.
The wild part is they even admit it themselves! Have you guys seen that recent Xbox documentary they put out for themselves for their 20th Anniversary? The entire reason they entered the gaming space was specifically to compete with Sony and to try and take their lunch. They saw what Sony was doing with the PS2 and Linux, and what Sony was doing with their VAIO in general, and were terrified the big scary Japanese megacorp was gonna try and eventually compete in the home PC market. Maybe they were right even, but this reaction is what monopolies do.
They will do the bare minimum to deflect the worst criticisms and keep either a revolt or government regulation from cramping their style. Which may mean one or two games make it over. But this nonsense about Xbox suddenly not caring about consoles is just that. Fuckin' insane nonsense. They care about platforms, just their definition of platforms have changed in order to keep competing in the gaming space. And it's working pretty well enough if they've convinced the lot of ya to deny the evidence of your own eyes and their very consistent, very public track record for how they've operated as a company for the last 46 years.
They are interested in selling gamepass subscriptions. You can't get that on ps5 of switch. You don't spend what Disney paid for Star wars and marvel plus another 60billion so everything remains the same. They don't want to publish, they want to sell pass.
Microsoft is more open to multiplatform than most, but I'm no fool. I know it's going to be on a case-by-case basis and that there will be far more stuff that's exclusive to Xbox and Windows than multiplatform.
We' ve definitely seen some multiplat stuff...Minecraft, the Oris, Cuphead, Super Lucky's Tale. But a common thing they share is that they have appeal to a younger crowd* and that they're largely indie or indie-ish things. MS has a lot more to gain than lose by spreading those kinds of games to a wider audience...namely far more sales than they would get on Xbox. And in Minecraft's case loads and loads of DLC too.
And if these games pique people's interest in what other titles might be over in Microsoft land, all the better for them.
But stuff like the Halos, Crackdowns, Gears, and what all is gonna stay MS exclusive. The older crowd has money and MS knows the power of words like "Call of Duty Only On Xbox". They'll multiplat occasionally when they think having a game on multiple consoles is the most lucrative route (Crash and Spyro basically, Overwatch maybe) but they want people to buy Xbox and subscribe to Games Pass.
* Okay the Oris get pretty frickin' dark but still it's a beautifully animated game with a cute animal thing.
We' ve definitely seen some multiplat stuff...Minecraft, the Oris, Cuphead, Super Lucky's Tale. But a common thing they share is that they have appeal to a younger crowd* and that they're largely indie or indie-ish things. MS has a lot more to gain than lose by spreading those kinds of games to a wider audience...namely far more sales than they would get on Xbox. And in Minecraft's case loads and loads of DLC too.
And if these games pique people's interest in what other titles might be over in Microsoft land, all the better for them.
But stuff like the Halos, Crackdowns, Gears, and what all is gonna stay MS exclusive. The older crowd has money and MS knows the power of words like "Call of Duty Only On Xbox". They'll multiplat occasionally when they think having a game on multiple consoles is the most lucrative route (Crash and Spyro basically, Overwatch maybe) but they want people to buy Xbox and subscribe to Games Pass.
* Okay the Oris get pretty frickin' dark but still it's a beautifully animated game with a cute animal thing.
Because Sony and Apple don't want to give Microsoft the platform Microsoft wants. I seriously doubt Sony and Apple would be open to giving Microsoft access to more customers potentially signing up for Microsoft accounts (yes, Mac users can use Office 365, but that's workplace computer software and not video games).
Also porting Halo to PS needs investment in porting costs and would be of little benefit - the game was born in Xbox two decades ago and already runs in PC, releasing it in Steam is really cheap and there's not much market to gain by making it available for PS. By this point anybody who wants Halo already has a way of playing it. If it was really about making people 100% on MS's platforms, it would still be a Windows Store exclusive - they backtracked that for a reason.
In contrast, if they make CoD an Xbox exclusive, they will get a sizeable portion of the players into the ecosystem, true, but a significant percentage will remain in the PS system and those are lost microtransaction sales. But by letting the game remain muliplatform (and this is a game that uses a multiplatform engine at its core anyway) they can retain all the players and potentially hook them into their service ecosystem (hey, that nice gun you bought? It's also yours here in Xbox!)
Game by game basis.
EDIT: The difference is - Microsoft doesn't want to "win" the console wars, they want to maximize profits. And just like Nintendo has figured out they don't need to compete in hardwareto make money over fist, I do think that MS is trying their own version of the "blue ocean" strategy instead of the old walled console approach.
In contrast, if they make CoD an Xbox exclusive, they will get a sizeable portion of the players into the ecosystem, true, but a significant percentage will remain in the PS system and those are lost microtransaction sales. But by letting the game remain muliplatform (and this is a game that uses a multiplatform engine at its core anyway) they can retain all the players and potentially hook them into their service ecosystem (hey, that nice gun you bought? It's also yours here in Xbox!)
Game by game basis.
EDIT: The difference is - Microsoft doesn't want to "win" the console wars, they want to maximize profits. And just like Nintendo has figured out they don't need to compete in hardwareto make money over fist, I do think that MS is trying their own version of the "blue ocean" strategy instead of the old walled console approach.
I don't! Granted, my only real interest is vague connections to Bungie lore from the Marathon days, and realistically there's a good chance I wouldn't get around to it even if I had the right platform, but yeah, I have no XBoxes or game-spec Win machines so it's out of reach.
Exactly. Because, typically you don't help your direct competitors gain market share at your expense by allowing trojan horses onto your platforms.
I looked it up and was mildly surprised to learn it should theoretically work on my iPhone (through Safari, even!), though (a) I doubt my internet and wifi are reliable enough to make it smooth, and (b) lol, no.
Aren't a lot of them BC already?
I sure hope so! Hoping that maybe some old stuff gets ported, too -- bring on the Pitfalls!
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
They cited the main obstacle to further work being legal, so they might (I don't know which A-B titles are already BC)
And technical. Still doesn't explain some that were left out, though.
As for those that are BC...
| F.E.A.R. | Vivendi Universal Games | Disc Only |
| November 15, 2021 | ||
| F.E.A.R. Files | Vivendi Universal Games | Disc Only | November 15, 2021 | |||
| TimeShift | Vivendi Universal Games | April 25, 2017 |
All 360, nothing from the OG Xbox, it seems. At least, going by Wikipedia.
I saw that this morning and have a hard believing it's a real thing someone made. I mean, it's not out of the realm of believability, which in itself is not... a good thing.
Carbon blobs. Lol