Hiku said:
"it was just a way to say"
It's the way I'm refering to. It's this way of advertising the game's presence on Xbox that the deal is supposed to prevent. I'm not saying that Xbox or EA aren't supposed to acknowledge that the game will come to Xbox. They have mentioned it on numerous occasions in interviews and PR and such. But the deal for the marketing rights prevents Microsoft from advertising Battlefront in various media such as commercials, magazines and newspapers.
And part of the reason is to pretend that it's an exclusive. People like you and I who frequent gaming sites obviously know that it's not. But a large amount of people who buy games and consoles don't do further research online after they see an advertisement for a game. They are also the least likely to hesitate on buying the games day 1/pre-ordering because they don't read up on potential launch issues like we do. And then they will recommend their version to their friends, so that they can play together, etc. We're talking about people who don't even notice that you can get a free game with your PS4 purchase, (which they can sell if they don't like it) and kept buying the standalone version in droves, making it chart higher than the other SKU's at Amazon for a long time, until Amazon discontinued the standalone version. (People still buy it though from second hand sellers, and it got into the top 100 again last month...) Or parents looking for a gift to buy for their kids, and see the PS4 Star Wars bundle advertised, but not an Xbox bundle. If Microsoft puts up an "Also available on Xbox One" sign next to the Battlefront advertisement, that would defeat the purpose of the deal in this instance. And another part of it is of course brand association.
The bottom line is that this is the kind of advertising that Sony paid to get exclusive rights for. So there is a good reason for it. MS are finding loopholes to still be able to advertise like this in magazines. In this case it's making an ambiguous statement on a separate page, that just happens to be right next to the Star Wars add. This will probably be ammended into the next marketing rights contract, like the circumstances of the Destiny perfume add attempt probably were. But both MS and Sony have had these kind of deals in the past, and to my recollection they weren't trying to undermine these agreements before.
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@bolded: and the reason for that isnt because they think its exclusive to that platform, is because they associate the game with the platform that it was marketed with.
At the end of the day, Sony has gotten the Bundle, the Limited Edition Console, The E3, Paris Game week showings, The PS4 marketed alongside the game on Youtube, TV and any other mass marketing effort. they are going full force with this deal. a measly page in a magazine wont do shit. If MS are breaking any laws by doing this, then Sony and/or EA would take action, but this is literally maeningless. how many purchases would be influenced by this? really, take a second and think about it, just how effective will this be?
Again, these deals are about building mind share, all the ads and commericals of Battlefront with the PS4 attached with them is going to achieve it, this paper wont do anything. MS arent breaking the law, MS arent doing anything wrong or sneaky. i honestly still dont see what the issue is with this.
MS posted a page after a Starwars review saying "Available on Xbox One". so what?
