Kyuu said:
@BraLoD @Chrkeller
I disagree.
Sony tried all they could to block the ABK deal, because the thought of COD, a single title, leaving Playstsation scared them shitless. They managed to force a contract forcing COD to support Playstation for at least 10 more years.
Series XS did quite a few things better than PS5, and Sony did screw up on multiple fronts that Xbox could capitalize on, but none of their mistakes were close to being as terrible as a "complete lack of exclusives" which sealed Xbox's fate.
Sony's 1st party sales in the last few PS4 years hit 50-60 million annually on a 75-110~ million installbase. PS5's 1st party games are selling a lot less on a larger and more popular platform, partly because their output has been poor-ish (compared to PS4) due to the live service mess they got themselves into.
Xbox's output wasn't the best, but it was decent enough to make a difference if they went with traditional exclusives. If hypothetically Call of Duty, Forza Horizon, Obsidian's games etc released exclusively on Xbox (even against PC), then they would have sold tons of consoles and kept rhr platform healthy. Conversely, if Sony released everything they had on PC day 1, PS5 sales would have been much lower. Why is this controversial?
I'm now reminded of this Xbox fan here who challenged me with the argument that COD didn't need Xbox exclusivity to significantly increase sales YOY. He argued that marketing and GamePass inclusion in addition to Starfield were going to be enough to cause a big increase post acquisition. Well... these didn't even register as farts in the wind. Because most people kept buying them on PC and/or Playstation. Granted Statfield underwhelmed everywhere.
Xbox slowly became the definition of "redundant". I of course agree that other factors played their roles too. But the complete lack of exclusives was definitely the primary cause. No matter how good Microsoft's output gets, it will not save Xbox without exclusivity. |
Call of Duty was not a Microsoft game, there is a massive difference between Call of Duty, one of gaming most popular franchises, to any Microsoft game (well Minecraft is even bigger, but was also always a multiplat, and bought after already being a success too).
Once something that big was in the picture, yes, exclusivity could matter a lot, and Sony was indeed aware of it, but even that could not be enough either, we just saw after being bought the first CoD under Microsoft was a flop, at least compared to what the series once was for nearly 20 years.
That has really nothing to do with Halo being available on PC, Halo being available on PS5 now could have been a way bigger deal, but by now it really just doesn't matter anymore.
Microsoft was doing decently or good for years having games on PC, and the PS5 was not really affected by having some of their games on PC for years either.
I do believe in the power of diluting a brand over time with it, exclusives are indeed a very important part of a console, but I honestly don't see it being even close to the biggest reason Xbox is fading away nowdays.
It could have been, given more time, same for PS5, but at least from my POV that didn't happen to either of them. Xbox crumbled by other reasons. Sony might have prevented it happening later on to Playstation, but it still didn't happen, PS5 is as strong as ever while having other strong reasons that should be preventing it to be as successful as it is.
