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rapsuperstar31 on 11 December 2022
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shikamaru317 said:

4 AAA hats (FF7R Part 2, FF16, Silent Hill 2 Remake, and Forspoken), 1 AA hat (Stellar Blade), and 1 AAA multiplat that Sony hatted exclusive content for (Hogwarts Legacy). This is what Xbox is up against. Meanwhile the regulators are more concerned about Xbox acquiring Activision-Blizzard and guaranteeing CoD on PS, Steam, and Nintendo for 10 years (more than 10 years in Playstation's case as those 10 are in addition to their current CoD contract which has one more game on it in 2024), than they are with preventing the market leader using deals like the above hats to weaken any potential growth by their closest competitor.

And before someone responds and says "Xbox has hat deals in 2023 as well", you are right, they do. But those deals are not all that comparable to what Sony has in 2023. Their biggest hat deal is STALKER 2 which they have a measly 3 months of exclusivity on, and they have a currently unknown length deal on Ark 2 (which I would call AA, not AAA, as they only have 85 developers at Studio Wildcard), all of their other hat deals for 2023 are indie/single A tier like Slime Rancher 2 and Replaced. Meanwhile Sony has 1 year on FF16 and Silent Hill 2 Remake, 2 years on Forspoken, and as far as I can tell, lifetime on FF7R2 (first game is still missing on Xbox after 2 and a half years when it was originally stated to be a 1 year deal, which suggests Sony paid to extend the deal into a lifetime exclusive) and lifetime on Stellar Blade. You just can't compare Xbox's hats to Sony's here. Besides, as the market leader, Sony's hat deals have more impact at reducing Xbox's ability to catch up to them than Xbox's hat deals would have at catching up to them, as people are more likely to stick with the market leader even if both of their hat deals were equivalent to one another. 

Do we know these companies aren't going to both Sony and Microsoft and telling them whoever gives us more will get the timed exclusive rights to our next game?  These companies are going to take the best deal, they aren't going to make a game exclusive for money if they haven't explored every opportunity available to them.