Microsoft pays 50 million dollars for GTA Exclusive Content

[NJ5]

mrstickball said:
IMO, buying the exclusive content rights for GTAIV is a definate win-win for Microsoft.

#1 - They screw Sony out of having their biggest 3rd party game being either exclusive or definitive. GTA 3 through SA were definitive on the PS2. Thats why they sold about 10:1 versus the Xbox version. Face it, GTA being day-and date and having the added content exclusivity is bigger than MGS and FF13 combined (GTA:SA on PS2 sold more than FFXII and MGS3 combined)

#2 - They will make their money back. For all we know, MS is paying them $50m to publish the content themselves, therefore Microsoft will be the one to make the money back. If not, MS still charges for the servers for downloadable content (somewhere around 30% of the total fee goes to MS, give or take).

Sometimes you have to throw around lots of money. But really, is $50m alot of money considering they spent 10x that on Rare, and lost 100x that for video games thus far? GTAIV is a guarenteed 10 million copy seller, it's bigger than Halo. MS is going to stand to make tens of millions of dollars on the console license fee to Rockstar, and since GTA will probably sell around 10 to 12m units on the 360 alone, and will profit MS anywhere from $50m to $84m from the licensing fee alone, not including any sort of the DLC that GTAIV offers.

Again, GTAIV + Exclusive Content + Price Drop + Halo 3 + Lost Odyssey = ownage on a global scale (not against the Wii in Japan). Certainly Mr. Gates was right in saying that this Christmas would be the key Christmas for the console wars. And MS is betting billions on them winning, or atleast tying the Nintendo behemoth.

QFT. This, combined with a possible price drop announcement at E3 (or soon enough) might well be Microsoft's deathblow on the PS3.