Even if they were to release a number of games on PlayStation or Nintendo hardware, which we should have better insight into next week, I really believe there’s no way they would have exited the console market anytime soon - a Xbox console is the single easiest way to access Game Pass atm and they’ve made it clear that that’s their priority above anything else imo.
I kinda hope they do release some games for the other platforms and the other platforms follow suit. I get it’s not “good” business and all depending on how you look at it but gaming should be shared with everyone. Want people on your console make it the better console spec wise and feature wise, not game wise. Holding back art only hurts people!
The business has changed so much since the 80s when all these ideas were conceived. So much of what fans consider “good business” is all outdated nonsense. When all this started, the software was cheap and the r&d on the hardware was the big investment you had to pay off.
Now, the hardware is a loss leader (or at least a wash) for the first half of the generation. The big first party exclusive games are loss leaders. The only way you make money is off services, and third party game sales.
Sony is trying desperately to figure out how to make its big cinematic 3rd person action games cheaper because they are killing them. PC releases are part of the solution. But the business is still unsustainable. They made a huge bet on live service gaming at perhaps the worst possible time.
MS on the other hand has a huge “shipping games” problem. Game pass needs at least one big deal release a month to keep growing and they just don’t have it. Game pass revenue probably can’t cover buying those games in from 3rd parties every month, so they have to make their own and they haven’t been able to make hits. So, they make what they can, buy studios, and ship retail versions on any platform they can to help offset the cost.
Jeff Gerstmann’s take seemed about right to me MS isn’t only competing with Sony, they (and Sony and Nintendo) are competing with Netflix and Disney plus and every other entertainment service out there. Sony isn’t their enemy, they are a potential retail partner, just like steam.
These big single player tentpoles are an endangered species if nobody figures this out. Platform exclusivity is very bad business but it is taking the suits a few years to break out of the old culture, and the consumers even longer.
Sony, and Nintendo for that matter, are never going to release games for rival platforms. PC is already pushing it, but PC is also not considered a real rival. There will always be a market for consoles, until gaming PCs become cheaper and easier to get than consoles, which will likely never happen.
Also, theyre Japanese, so it would be more likely for them to release games on each other’s platform long before they ever release anything on Xbox, a non-Japanese platform.
Given that Sony tends to lose money on the hardware, they won’t care if PC’s get cheap enough to compete with their own hardware, they’ll still make money from game sales.
I’m just waiting for Sony to create their own storefront for PC. I’m convinced that when they have enough of a catalogue, they’ll open one and offer some sweet deals to publishers that put games on both PS and Sony’s PC store.
I hope you’re right. It should be the future we get.
Oh I know, I’m just dreaming of an ideal world for gamers. How glorious it could be.
I don’t think other platform holders would follow suit, but I’m also of the mind that exclusivity is mostly a thing of the past (possibly because I’ve only “reentered” console gaming recently and I didnt really enjoy having to buy three different consoles to enjoy all the games I wanted to play, I might be of a different opinion otherwise?).
The more people get to play games, the better, even business-wise tbh.
So basically it becomes a Steamdeck* with a subscription service?
*but with microtransactions galore and 20 different versions of the same game, and all “on sale”.
…pass
I’m not sure I get your Steam Deck comparison?
So basically you can get an xbox without a disk reader, and it is essentially a console version of an xbox, but instead of “owning” games they’re pushing you to get one subscription or another.
But other than that I see no great leaps in consoles to keep upgrading (and some games have even regressed)…especially since there is an absolute boatload of games on previous generations.
So… They’re out next generation?
Knowing Microsoft they’ll do something stupid like that, then back pedal when the flak gets too close.
And then boil the frog and introduce it a generation or two later…
my bet is on their good running live service games like sea of thieves making a transition to other platforms and maybe a few big names games from Bethesda (like indy or blade) after they had their run on xbox.
So basically the same that sony is doing with their ip’s on the pc. Release them first on your platform (or simultaneously if they are a service game) and then on other platforms.
completely fine with that since I prefer the hardware and the eco system over playstation.
It’s not the consoles we’re concerned about. We want to continue owning games.
Unfortunately it seems like everything is going that direction. Movies, software, games, even cars are trying to get subscription services going!
