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Kyuu on 01 March 2023
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chakkra said:
Kyuu said:

MS would have to pay a whole lot more than Sony if they want to make similar deals. A lot more for a small reward. We've seen that with Shadow of the Tomb Raider and other examples (Which was what likely led MS to stop aggressively securing big exclusives. They paid a $100 million for a single year Tomb Raider exclusivity lol). Japanese publishers in particular would not take MS's money for a short term benefit that could risk the IP's strength. Not to mention Xbox marketing isn't great.

Sony aren't "buying their way to victory", as A) the majority of the few high profile exclusives they secured started caming out late in the PS4 generation, and B) all exclusives pale in comparison to their own bigger 1st party titles. Playstation's exclusives are mostly unpaid. Those which are paid still aren't nearly as big as Sony's own titles. On the other hand... Minecraft, CoD, WoW, and TES are several tiers above the level of Microsoft's older IP's.

Yes, I'm fully aware that Microsoft would have to pay a lot more than Sony to get the same games, but I shouldn't have to remind you that we're talking about $70b here. And Japanese publishers have already taken Microsoft's money in the past, multiple times at that. 

Now, since you seem so convinced that they will not go all-in on the 3rd party exclusives route, let me ask you, what do you really think they will do once this deal gets blocked?

If the deal is completely blocked (doubtful) I think they'd continue grabbing other developers and maybe smaller publishers, and fund/moneyhat small/mid-sized games. I don't think they find much value in paying billions for a few system selling exclusives. If a single year of Tomb Raider exclusivity cost them a $100 million back in 2014~, a similar deal today for GTA6 would cost them well over a billion dollars, and full exclusivity would cost several billions. It's probably just not worth it. And no matter how much MS offers, Sony will try to offer just enough to keep it multplatform. Playstation's market position and the proposition of keeping the game multiplat (massive install base and a huge potential for further growth) may help them outweigh Microsoft's hypothetical moneyhatting.


There just isn't nearly as much value in securing ultra expensive exclusives as owning and controlling massive publishers/developers with dozens of IP's, an infinite number of games, and 100% the revenue/profit streams. So I just don't see Microsoft going that way. For timed exclusives, most non-Xbox gamers would wait for the PS5/Switch 2 versions or get them on PC. For full exclusives, it would be too expensive and the publishers risks losing countless fans/buyers. At worst, I can see MS moneyhatting popular-ish games (Sony style) but they're probably not going after the crazy big stuff that can actually damage Sony (CoD, GTA, FIFA etc). Perhaps the crazy bastards at ABK would support Xbox exclusivity just to spite Sony... which I'm all for because it would hurt the popularity of CoD and force Sony to work harder and promote alternatives.