Shadow1980 said:
All three IPs are owned by their respective developer/publisher, so the possibility is there. The thing is, those titles were guaranteed to be Xbox exclusive even before the XBO and PS4 came out. Now that they're out and it's clear that the PS4 is the dominant sales force this generation, those third parties are not likely to forgo all the additional sales they would get by launching on both platforms. They would need even greater financial incentive, so unless MS keeps ponying up ever larger sums of cash we're not going to see these series remain exclusive. Just like last generation, the number of third-party exclusives will decline as the generation progresses, perhaps even more quickly since the PS4 is outselling the XBO by a wide margin, whereas the PS3 and 360 were fairly close. |
Not to mention that Titanfall exclusivity was explicitly stated as referencing the first title, not the IP or anything else.
I'm sure the Watch Dogs numbers, which are annihilating the sales of Titanfall, have anyone thinking about taking a moneyhat for a console exclusive furiously pumping the calculator and seeing the immense $$$ it would take for it to make sense not to publish on PS4.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-16-mario-kart-8-watch-dogs-spark-big-us-game-sales-in-may-npd
Titanfall would probably have 3M+ on PS4 by now, or $81,000,000 in lost revenue to the publisher taking this into account :
http://kotaku.com/5479698/what-your-60-really-buys
When TF2 time comes around in 2015, we'll be looking at a PS4 install base of 15M+ easily. Estimating a sales base that should exceed 25M+ by fall 2015, and the high attach rates for the first few years of a generation, that might lead to lifetime PS4 sales for TF2 in the range of 10M-12M, or roughly a THIRD OF A BILLION DOLLARS.
That's what Microsoft would have to pay for TF2 rights, and even if they offered another co-marketing deal, that would only bump their exclusivity costs to around a quarter billion (and the marketing costs would put them right back at 1/3rd billion or higher depending on how much they had to put into it).
All of this is sort of beside the point though. The real story is that Titanfall did very little for the XB1, and with Halo MCC and Halo 5 coming up, Titanfall goes from the XB1 savior to an annoyance that they need to downplay as much as possible. High TF2 sales and attachment to that franchise would potentially damage the much more lucrative Halo sales (given that THEY get 100% of the profits from Halo, they don't have to see $$$ flying off to EA or anybody else).
So yes, if there were 10,000 lottery tickets that you could scratch off to 'win' an XB1 Titanfall 2 exclusive deal, they would all come up losers, there's literally no chance of it happening. Even if the world was on it's head and the XB1 was dominating, it still wouldn't make sense for them to do considering Halo and Gears will be pumping. They don't own the IP, so it is a title that competes with their own IPs in a market where groups of players can flock to series in a loyal way. This is why mainline COD and BF sales are something of a zero-sum game in the end, as there is a limited number of customers who are willing to buy both. While a few do, most are loyal to one, or if they do buy the other series, they don't buy the one they jumped from until they're done with that game. I know a lot of people who skipped MW3 for BF3 and skipped BLops2. I also know a number of people who didn't care for BF4 and returned it for Ghosts (and I'm sure some hated Ghosts and traded for BF4). The point being, it's not an unlimited market. A titanically succesful Titanfall franchise fractures and limits the success potential of Halo titles with similar release windows.
It's ALL about money, don't believe for a second that Microsoft, Sony, EA, Activision, or any other major player gives even half a crap about anything else at the end of the day. And the money speaks to TF2 being multiplat.
