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Forums - Microsoft - Phil Spencer: More Xbox One/PC cross play titles coming in 2015

ice on 25 January 2015
Protendo said:
iceland said:
Outside of list warz, why should I care? lol

Most of the people that say "hope X game comes to PC", "I'll just wait for the PC port", etc aren't going to pick up an Xbox One anyways for whatever reason even if it doesn't ever come to PC. As long as mega titles like Halo and Gears stay exclusive this is a non-issue. It's only going to give MS more money.

When MS ports Halo/Gears to PC we can be worried about Xbox.

 

That's not true. I got Dead Rising 3 for the Xbox One, and I rebought it and found it much more enjoyable my second time with higher stable frames and higher resolution the PC version offers. If I knew Dead Rising 3 was coming to the PC within a year, I would have just waited for the PC version.  I would of preferred my first experience to be with the superior PC version. The same goes for other games. If it's 2 years or more however; I'd probably just pick up the Xbox One version. This obviously doesn't account for games that normally wouldn't interest me that I might pick up at steam sale pricing.

 

Halo will never be Cross-Play. If it is the Xbox One multiplayer would be unplayable. As PC/Mouse precision would destroy console controller players. 

I'm not saying these smaller exclusives attribute 0 sales to the console but it's pretty small in the grand scheme of things. As long as their big hitters are exclusive I don't see the issue.



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Jimbo1337 on 25 January 2015

Protendo said:

If they did that all multiplayer FPS would be unplayable on the Xbox One.  I doubt they would do that.  I think this is the only genre we could leave out, unless they make it so you have to use the Xbox One controller, but with the modding community I don't see that ending well.  If I was a gambling man my money would be on game slike Sunset Overdrive which already has been hinted for the PC.

I wouldn't count out the FPS genre at all.  I have played countless hours on Dust 514 where there were both PS3 users and PC users.  I never came across an opponent where I felt cheated from those using a mouse.



Protendo on 25 January 2015
Jimbo1337 said:

Protendo said:

If they did that all multiplayer FPS would be unplayable on the Xbox One.  I doubt they would do that.  I think this is the only genre we could leave out, unless they make it so you have to use the Xbox One controller, but with the modding community I don't see that ending well.  If I was a gambling man my money would be on game slike Sunset Overdrive which already has been hinted for the PC.

I wouldn't count out the FPS genre at all.  I have played countless hours on Dust 514 where there were both PS3 users and PC users.  I never came across an opponent where I felt cheated from those using a mouse.


That's interesting.  Personally I find the controls much more easy/percise/quick on the PC in regards to FPS.  



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Jimbo1337 on 25 January 2015
Protendo said:
Jimbo1337 said:

I wouldn't count out the FPS genre at all.  I have played countless hours on Dust 514 where there were both PS3 users and PC users.  I never came across an opponent where I felt cheated from those using a mouse.


That's interesting.  Personally I find the controls much more easy/percise/quick on the PC in regards to FPS.  

I was actually surprised as well because I can imagine that it is easier to be be more precise with a mouse.  What are your experiences with PC/console cross play FPS games?



Protendo on 25 January 2015
Jimbo1337 said:

I was actually surprised as well because I can imagine that it is easier to be be more precise with a mouse.  What are your experiences with PC/console cross play FPS games?


I don't think any of the FPS I play use crossplay.  I am just going off of the feeling I have when I go from Console to PC.  When playing Titanfall on the PC, I felt hindered when using the controller vs the keyboard/mouse.  That's the experience I was going by. 



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Teeqoz on 25 January 2015
Puppyroach said:
daredevil.shark said:

It will be a blow to Xbox One. Consoles distinguish themselves from others with exclusives. This will reduce the value. If you want to play a game then get that system. If Nintendo games came into PC then nobody bothered to get Nintendo systems.

But why would it matter if games came to XBox on PC together with releases in X1? MS might sell fewer X1:s but sell more software and therefore make more money. It would mean that PC got included in the whole XBox brand together with console, smartphones and tablets. That is a pretty large user base for them to make cash from.


It would matter if they sold fewer X1s because that would give them less XBL subs, less royalties from 3rd party software and smaller installbase versus the PS4 when negotiating other deals like timed exclusives and marketing deals. This would turn MS into a publisher instead of a 1st party (console manufacturer). If they're going to release every game they have on PC with the argument that "we reach a larger audience", then they might as well just go third party, but just keep their console business at the same time. I'm sure it could be possible for them to keep the xbox console brand while at the same time being a third party publisher though. But hey, I hope they do this, then I can play Halo and Gears and such on my Playstation!



Protendo on 25 January 2015
Teeqoz said:


It would matter if they sold fewer X1s because that would give them less XBL subs, less royalties from 3rd party software and smaller installbase versus the PS4 when negotiating other deals like timed exclusives and marketing deals. This would turn MS into a publisher instead of a 1st party (console manufacturer). If they're going to release every game they have on PC with the argument that "we reach a larger audience", then they might as well just go third party, but just keep their console business at the same time. I'm sure it could be possible for them to keep the xbox console brand while at the same time being a third party publisher though. But hey, I hope they do this, then I can play Halo and Gears and such on my Playstation!

At the same token they would make a lot more per unit on PC sales. PC is dominated by digital sales. So they would make a lot more profit on the average PC title sold as a result. If they sell 2 titles digitally a year that should more than make up for the yearly sub cost. As far as peripherals are concerned, if they sell the same amount of peripherals total (including Xbox Controllers for the PC as an example) than peripheral profits will be a wash.

While it's bad for Xbox One, it might actually benefit the company overall, and could be more profitable long-term. 

 

Things are completely different when you bring up supporting Nintendo/Sony consoles where they would lose profits by paying royalties to their competitors. Microsoft support for their own products (in this case Window) should be a given.



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oniyide on 25 January 2015
S.T.A.G.E. said:
oniyide said:
MoHasanie said:
As long as the big exclusives like Halo and Quatum Break stay exclusive to Xbox only, I'm happy.


it will be on xbox regardless, so why would them going to PC bother you?


Devalues the console when it ocmes to true exclusives.

The only people that truly care are forum dwellers and they mostly have their mind made up anyway. 



S.T.A.G.E. on 26 January 2015
oniyide said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:


Devalues the console when it ocmes to true exclusives.

The only people that truly care are forum dwellers and they mostly have their mind made up anyway. 


Very true, but a lot of avid PC gamers are in the know. The ones that invest heavily into their PC's and see it as superior to consoles. Those ones.



Puppyroach on 29 January 2015
Jadedx said:
Puppyroach said:

But why would it matter if games came to XBox on PC together with releases in X1? MS might sell fewer X1:s but sell more software and therefore make more money. It would mean that PC got included in the whole XBox brand together with console, smartphones and tablets. That is a pretty large user base for them to make cash from.

They would actually make less money, a lot less actually.

When you lose exclusives it gives consumers less of a reason to buy your console, and any short term gains you make off of selling the game on pc would be negated (by a large margin) by the loss of the yearly xbl sub and the platform fees off of any game they buy on your platform.

So anyone who says MS is stupid not to put all their games on pc is just downright ignorant of how the business works.

The perfect example was the original xbox, it was one as the pc port console and that made its sales suffer greatly.

EDIT: Shika makes another great point, less sales for xbox means less games for xbox owners, again og xbox was another example, because ps2 was so far ahead of the xbox in terms of sales PS2 got WAY more 3rd party exclusives.

Now before I am done let me make one more point. If porting all your exclusives to pc was the "smart decision" why don't Sony and Nintendo port their games to PC?

You mean the way everyboydy steared away from 360 when Gears of War released on PC? The PC audience and console audience can often be alot different from each other, and MS knows that. Just as consoles sales aren´t negated because multi-platform games are released on PC aswell, the same would most likely be true with exclusive games.

The original XBox is kind of a bad example, but at the same time a very good example of what I am talking about. It is a bad example because it was a new console that was in competition with the highest selling console of all time, the console that caused both Sega´s and Nintendo´s offerings to plummet in sales. That generation is more of an example where a dominant console weighs on the sales of its competition than anything else.

It is, however, a very good example of how console sales and PC sales are quite irrelevant from each other. Just look at sales of Halo on original XBox and PC. Do you seriously think sales on the original XBox would be so much higher if Halo wasn´t released on PC? Besides, alot of 3rd party games were released on original XBox, so it was quite succesful. Its sales were only about 5 million behind those of the genesis aswell.

MS are also taking a very smart route here. They are promoting cross-platform gaming which means it doesn´t really matter if I get it on XBox (where I get the convenience of a dedicated console) or PC. It will still be an XBox game, money will pour into MS´s pockets and they will establish themselves as a publisher that has several platforms: Console, Smartphone, Tablet and PC. Sony are taking the same strategy but in another way with PSNow.