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Kyuu on 30 March 2023
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chakkra said:
Kyuu said:

My two cents: Sony likely allocate an annual "moneyhatting budget" to complement their 1st/2nd party studios which are at full capacity; budget isn't the only bottleneck. Also, they're probably not paying anywhere near enough to fund a full decent game. Some of these exclusivity deals are initiated by the 3rd party publisher who may have little faith in an Xbox version selling well and think "Hey, let's see if Sony can moneyhat us and help market our game". They won't necessarily ask for much.

Finally... part of the Playstation appeal (PS1 and PS2 in particular) was "high quality 3rd party exclusives" that may no directly sell that much (especially not on Xbox to warrant PS exclusivity) but constitute the reputation and diversity of the console's game library. Their sales figures don't reflect their full benefits; they add value upon accumulation.

Zippy6 said:

Most likely it's easier and cheaper to negotiate such a deal with a Japanese company as native sales for Xbox are almost non-existant and typically globally Japanese style games sell far more on PlayStation than Xbox even when simultaneously launched and even taking Xbox's lower installbase into account.

It's easy and cheap to persuade these companies to not release on Xbox and they do it with titles that are popular and will give them an advantage in the West.

They're not getting exclusive final fantasy to help them over Xbox in Japan, it's just not necessary. They're doing it for western markets and they'll get it cheaper than they would a third party western exclusive.

You know.. that is why I keep saying that this Activision deal is actually the best case scenario for Playstation owners. If Microsoft had decided to allocated at least 20 of those 70 billions into their moneyhat budget, they would have managed to convince quite a few developers to put their games on exclusively on Xbox, and like you said "add value upon accumulation".

And I actually agree that MS hasn't been aggresive enough on the japanese market; I mean, while it is true that it would be a lot more expensive for them to get the same exclusive deals that Sony gets, it is also true that they have the money to pull it off.

If it's full exclusivity for bigger titles, good chance the Japanese would not take Microsoft's money even if it's in the billions, because it would risk their IP's strength and momentum. And Xbox wouldn't benefit much from such deals because the majority of fans will be buying them on Steam, PC is the fastest growing platform. Microsoft won't go as far as to pay billions for a very small return.

I don't know if you noticed but... ABK and other acquisitions aren't preventing Microsoft from still paying for timed exclusivity for relevant games. They made a 6 month exclusivity deal for Valheim which sold 10 million as of a year ago (early access). It's arguably a bigger seller than any exclusive Sony has paid for since the PS2... but it isn't Japanese and is a new PC IP from an emerging publisher/studio, so not much is at risk here.

MS controlling ABK is a far bigger blow on Sony than moneyhatted exclusives which will nearly always be timed anyways. Playstation is too big for 3rd parties to skip, and people aren't yet grasping just how popular the PS5 really is. Giving Sony shit for their attempt to block the acquisition is flat out weird. Had they not attempted that, MS would not have extended the CoD offer from 3 to 10 years, and maybe not promised to put their games on the Switch for 10 years, and would have had an easier time acquiring their next major publisher/developers.

For the Xbox fans that were angry or pretending to be angry about the few relevant exclusives Sony is moneyhatting... Instead of cheering for MS to acquire publishers, ask them to block exclusivity deals for games that don't need it by offering better deals, and moneyhat more relevant timed exclusives like Valheim and maybe STALKER 2. Personally, I'd like to see them moneyhat/fund small and midsized games, establish new 2nd party relations, and acquire small and mid sized developers. Post ABK acquisition, MS should literally be able beat Sony in profits even if they stopped making consoles altogether. Their software alone would make them a lot more money than the entire Playstation business, but this isn't enough for Microsoft. They intend to go broader AND gain hardware marketshare at the same time. The only way for any corporation to achieve this is by acquiring several major publishers.