By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Puppyroach on 29 January 2015
Edit Thread
Jadedx said:
Puppyroach said:

But why would it matter if games came to XBox on PC together with releases in X1? MS might sell fewer X1:s but sell more software and therefore make more money. It would mean that PC got included in the whole XBox brand together with console, smartphones and tablets. That is a pretty large user base for them to make cash from.

They would actually make less money, a lot less actually.

When you lose exclusives it gives consumers less of a reason to buy your console, and any short term gains you make off of selling the game on pc would be negated (by a large margin) by the loss of the yearly xbl sub and the platform fees off of any game they buy on your platform.

So anyone who says MS is stupid not to put all their games on pc is just downright ignorant of how the business works.

The perfect example was the original xbox, it was one as the pc port console and that made its sales suffer greatly.

EDIT: Shika makes another great point, less sales for xbox means less games for xbox owners, again og xbox was another example, because ps2 was so far ahead of the xbox in terms of sales PS2 got WAY more 3rd party exclusives.

Now before I am done let me make one more point. If porting all your exclusives to pc was the "smart decision" why don't Sony and Nintendo port their games to PC?

You mean the way everyboydy steared away from 360 when Gears of War released on PC? The PC audience and console audience can often be alot different from each other, and MS knows that. Just as consoles sales aren´t negated because multi-platform games are released on PC aswell, the same would most likely be true with exclusive games.

The original XBox is kind of a bad example, but at the same time a very good example of what I am talking about. It is a bad example because it was a new console that was in competition with the highest selling console of all time, the console that caused both Sega´s and Nintendo´s offerings to plummet in sales. That generation is more of an example where a dominant console weighs on the sales of its competition than anything else.

It is, however, a very good example of how console sales and PC sales are quite irrelevant from each other. Just look at sales of Halo on original XBox and PC. Do you seriously think sales on the original XBox would be so much higher if Halo wasn´t released on PC? Besides, alot of 3rd party games were released on original XBox, so it was quite succesful. Its sales were only about 5 million behind those of the genesis aswell.

MS are also taking a very smart route here. They are promoting cross-platform gaming which means it doesn´t really matter if I get it on XBox (where I get the convenience of a dedicated console) or PC. It will still be an XBox game, money will pour into MS´s pockets and they will establish themselves as a publisher that has several platforms: Console, Smartphone, Tablet and PC. Sony are taking the same strategy but in another way with PSNow.