| Ryuu96 said: Sony is publishing it so I doubt it. I think you guys are overestimating the damage that will be done to Sony, they've basically already sucked dry Xbox's userbase, whatever remains of Xbox's userbase is largely a hardcore audience who are entrenched in Xbox's ecosystem and they're likely going to stick with Xbox due to Game Pass or switch to the future Xbox/PC hybrid. And that future Xbox/PC hybrid is going to play all PlayStation games anyway because it's going to be a Windows based device so what difference does it make whether Sony ports to Xbox now, or has all their games available on a Xbox branded device in 2 years from now? Plus GaaS make the most sense to be on all devices, they need as much help as they can get. Sony will be fine, why would people leave the PlayStation ecosystem because they ported games to Xbox? All of Xbox games are coming to PlayStation anyway so all they'd be doing is abandoning their libraries, friends, trophies, etc and plopping down $400+ for another console. The only danger I see is them losing players to PC but they've already been porting everything to PC and that hasn't really hurt them, they're still selling tens of millions easily, because there's tens of millions who simply have no interest in the complexities of PC. Sony owns the "casual" market now who just want a quick plug and play experience, folk who don't want to work around the complexities of PC Gaming, the millions who are entrenched in PlayStation's ecosystem via their built up digital libraries, they may lose some hardcore folk to PC but I don't think it will be a big number as long as PC Gaming remains expensive and more complicated. |
I do see how it makes sense as Helldivers 2 is Sony's most popular multiplayer franchise, and its most dominant region, happens to be one of the few Xbox markets that they are still wildly competitive in.
But I just wouldn't underestimate how many players they can end up losing to PC. Its a growing market, and its actually one of the reasons I think Xbox really couldn't gain any traction in Europe this gen, despite having a low cost of entry machine like the Series S. Microsoft might not even reach 40M+ Xbox Series users, and if that 56M - 58M figure for Xbox One lifetime is accurate, they may have nearly lost 20M+ users already. And these are players who were already entrenched in their ecosystem with achievements, digital libraries, friends, etc.
I don't particularly think having a late, multiplayer port on Xbox would cause the same kind of damage, but I think following in Microsoft's footsteps going fully multiplatform, opening the door to day and date PC for everything, it will slowly erode their brand. They can still reach 100M+ hardware sales of course, but that will be the absolute high end. But honestly at this point, it is what it is, I'm getting older and just want to enjoy playing games the way I want to lol. I'll still be gaming on consoles until the very end.
