Satya Nadella says more Xbox games will be released on other platforms

[PAOerfulone]

Azzanation said:

We hear the same news every year.
Xbox is Dying/Dead
Xbox going 3rd Party
Xbox games going to other platforms.

The industry is constantly changing, software has a plethora of new system options to release on. To XB, one plastic box release makes zero sense. The games are too good to hold them hostage to a single platform. Sony are also doing similar things with PC etc.

Game budgets are just too high, it's suicidal to only sell them in one place unless you are Nintendo.

That's because Nintendo is the largest publisher and developer for their own platforms, so they get to reap almost all of the rewards when their consoles are huge hits like the Game Boy line, DS, Wii, and Switch. And why they were still able to manage and profit just fine during their consoles that struggled, underwhelmed or even flopped like the 3DS, GameCube, or Wii U. And the BIG reason for that is they understand the importance of variety.

Not every game has to be a AAA blockbuster juggernaut that has to sell a gazillion copies to break even. You can have a healthy serving of B-C tier appetizers in between the A-S tier main courses, in fact, you NEED to have those in order to make the whole meal 5 stars. If Nintendo just stuck to 3D Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda, Pokemon, and Smash Bros, that would make for a VERY dry 1st party lineup and their consoles would really struggle to sell. So they make sure they have a healthy supply of games like Kirby, Fire Emblem, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, multiple Mario spinoffs, Metroid, Pikmin, and Xenoblade Chronicles to hold over the audience in between those major releases. And those games sell consistently well enough in addition to their megatons to where they don't even have to consider releasing their games on other platforms to break even. Not only do the games sell very well, but they do so while staying at their full MSRP price for pretty much their entire shelf-life - Which sucks for us as a consumer because deals on Nintendo games are so few and far between. But it works to Nintendo's big advantage because they don't have to lean on sales and price cuts to move the units they're aiming for and they make a lot more money off of 5 million copies sold at $60 as opposed to 1.5 million at $60, 2 million at $40, and another 1.5 million at $10-20.
What also helps considerably is the fact the Switch, from Day 1 or very close to it, has sold at a profit. So, they don't have to lean on strong software sales to make back the money they'd lose on hardware sales from selling their system at a loss like Sony and Microsoft do.

Speaking of Sony and Microsoft, in addition to the "selling hardware at a loss" problem I just mentioned, They have had a terrible habit, since the tail end of the PS3/360 era, I wanna say, of "Go Big or Go Home" with their 1st party offerings. When you look at Sony's first party offerings, and with the exception of probably Astro Bot, all of their releases have been these massive, grand-scale games with HUGE budgets attached to them: Horizon, Spider-Man, God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us. A shit-ton of money has gone into making these games from production values, development costs, marketing, etc. That they kind of HAVE to sell huge numbers to make a decent profit off of them. And with no smaller releases to fill the gaps, they pretty much lean on 3rd parties to do that. Problem with that is, they don't get to reap nearly the same number of rewards in software sales because they have to split publisher fees with the 3rd party devs as opposed to taking it all for themselves like Nintendo usually does. 

And as hardware gets more and more expensive and the budgets get higher and the money coming in is not keeping up, THAT'S why they have to eventually release their own first party games on other platforms. Sony is starting to do it and Microsoft especially is being hit hard by it, as evidenced by the declining Series S/X sales, because now the consumers know they don't have to get the Xbox version right away, they can just wait for the PC, PlayStation, or Nintendo version and get it there. And unless Sony takes a couple pages out of Nintendo's playbook that I mentioned earlier, they're gonna run into the same problem.