Microsoft gives market share against PlayStation

[DonFerrari]

Machiavellian said:

The Fury said:

Many here have an issues with Sony and them buying exclusives but both MS and Sony have done this in the past. It's part of the industry, whether we like it or not. All these deals. from console exclusivity, timed exclusivity, console exclusive content or even adding to your service day 1, exist to try and get people into your service/infrastructure. I think money is better spent on new studios or expanding them, their own employees and their own IPs (like no one would even think twice about Sony, Nintendo or MS just commissioned games from 3rd party developers of IPs they owned).

The difference here is scale. A few million here and there is nothing and mostly just a deal/contract between 2 companies compared to MS buying out entire rival publisher.

Which is the point MS is making, yes they have done it in the past but they do not do it anymore.  Sony being the dominate market share company doing deals that lock out games to competitors hits along antitrust laws.  The problem for Sony is that once you become the dominate player in a market, the things you use to do are seen with a different light.  If there are agreements and contracts to lock out games from MS or any competitor, then they would be using their market advantage to strike these deals and be hit with antitrust laws.  

For MS, being on the bottom and having Sony regulated or even the industry regulated on those types of contracts is more in their favor then Sony.  The thing is buying a publisher or buying out a lot of devs studios, it really doesn't matter.  If this deal is stopped then MS may be setting up a case to stop anyone from purchasing any companies in this space.

As to your point of adding your games to your service day one, I totally disagree with this point.  The point of adding all your games to your service day one is because MS is a service company.  Meaning that they are not trying to be bound to the console space and the limitations of selling hardware.  MS wants to sell subscriptions and their aim is to put games on all platforms.  MS probably never going to catch up to Sony and Nintendo on the hardware front so why fight them where they are strongest.  Instead MS is trying to fight their competition where they are strongest.

On the business aspect, it takes a long time to build new studios, getting the right people and getting a game to market.  While it sounds wonderful in gamers head, to a business, the risk are way higher than just getting already established and successful studios.  

MS still in fact pay to devs to have exclusives, be them permanent or temporary.