The whole debate over FF16 has had me thinking about Sony's whole content exclusivity strategy over the last 10-15 years. Each individual instance of exclusive DLC, or a timed exclusive game, or a full exclusive game, doesn't compare to MS buying up a major publisher. But in aggregate and over the course of those last 10-15 they have done enormous damage to the Xbox brand, bordering on incalculable. The general expectation among the gaming public is that if you buy an Xbox, you are going to have a degraded and lesser experience with AAA third party games. You will have fewer of them, and the ones you do get will have less content or launch permanently incomplete on the Xbox version.
As Sony has whittled away Xbox's market share, the cost for them to secure these deals got cheaper and cheaper, and the cost for Xbox to secure similar deals got more and more expensive, to the point that the cost for Xbox to secure a timed 3rd party exclusive was about similar to simply buying the studio outright. Sony had to have known this, which why I genuinely think their strategy for 9th gen was to simply expect xbox to exit the console industry after 9th gen was completed. Recall the "playstation advantage" marketing campaign. It is so clear in hindsight they were going for a killshot, and they did not expect xbox to fight back, because the only way xbox could reasonably fight back was outright buying publishers en masse.
I think this is why there is so much panic in their CMA response documents. They know their exclusivity strategy is backfiring now, and they know they cannot compete if the industry is going towards an M&A lead consolidation. They are selling way more consoles right this moment, but the long term cost to forcing MS (yes, forcing) into buying publishers to ensure at minimum content parity with PlayStation is going to do huge long term damage to the brand.
Existing User Log In
New User Registration
Register for a free account to gain full access to the VGChartz Network and join our thriving community.
