Klobrille hit the nail on the head, the problem now is the mixed message that MS is sending to Xbox fans.

Phil needs to be clear where the line is going to be drawn because now you are going to have sites and Sony fans trying to make the case that the next Fallout or Elder Scrolls are not going to be and should not be exclusive because they are as big as those ABK franchises as well. I understand Multiplayer GaS games being multiplayer because whole point of them is revenue generation.

I dunno, seems like a double-edged sword here. It's not out of possibility that Sony will see MS making COD games exclusive as a trigger to also invest in buying out publishers, which as a result will do more harm to Xbox fans than good. COD is just one game and, contrary to the popular opinion, I don't think that COD being exclusive will really turn things massively in favour of Microsoft on hardware sales. I personally would hate the idea of COD being exclusive to Xbox leading to Sony buying any Japanese publishers like Bandai Namco, Capcom or SEGA. So, I think it's fine to leave COD as is and make Sony happy for now.

Not sure where you are getting this 2m number. VGC shows FFXV at a little bit over 1m on Xbox, and that's exactly what I remember. The split of console sales is around 85%-15% in favour of Playstation. It's nice to see that at least @Ryuu96 agrees with me that FF games sell like crap on Xbox. Because 1m for a game with a budget of FF XV is really low. I said it many times, but I think Square gets way too much crap on them for skipping Xbox, when it's Xbox player base problem that they don't buy enough copies of their big games.

I'll go with bold prediction and say that new Sonic will sell less than Persona 5.

I think they main issue that a lot of Xbox fans have isn't so much that they'd like to see the things MS acquire be used to "crush" Playstation, or whatever. It's the disparity in how the market tends to react to the notion of Xbox exclusives, vs PS exclusives. We all remember things like every media outlet under the sun crying foul over a Tomb Raider game being timed exclusive for Xbox, while Sony can seemingly do whatever they want in that same vein, and nobody bats an eye.

There was a certain affirmation of belief on the part of Xbox fans, especially after the Bethesda acquisition, and how that was handled, that hey...at least when MS goes so far as to actually own these studios/IP outright, we can expect exclusivity to the Xbox eco-system, and nobody can say anything about it. Now, instead, Xbox fans are being told, actually...despite the fact that Xbox is FAR FAR FAR away from being a dominant market leader in gaming, there's actually some kind of artificial threshold on what kind of and/or the amount of games that would be ok for them to have exclusive, despite the fact that they're footing the complete bill for those games' continued existence.

When does Sony get told, actually, you can't deprive other platforms of these mega popular IP? When do they get told, actually you can't use your position as market leader to force publishers/devs to pay you for "lost revenue" from cross-play users? Etc.

It's the double standard in treatment, and expectation that Xbox fans detest.

I don't know what all this fuzz is about. Call of Duty was always going to stay on Playstation in some form, Warzone of course and maybe future f2p modes.

I don't think their statement means everything they'll ever do with the IP will always release on Playstation.

Same goes for "other popular IPs" which is very vague anyway.

Still don't care either way but I think making SP and standard MP CoD console exclusive makes the most business sense.

Just 15m, because Atlus is quite old-fashioned and doesn't understand one simple thing that many armchair analysts can understand. This can be easily increased by 5-10m with a very little effort.

I honestly don’t care if CoD stays multiplat but I see no reason for future Blizzard titles to be, Blizzard became a multi Billion dollar company on PC and their titles don’t have a legacy on Consoles.

WoW releasing on Switch/PS5/Xbox I don’t care since it’s an old game but future titles like Diablo 5 and Overwatch 3 should be exclusive, both of those franchises while successful are no where near as big as CoD and will always be more popular/have a larger audience on PC than on console.

I recommend everyone check out Hoeg Law on YouTube, he’s a lawyer that specializes in mergers and acquisitions and has been staying on top of his whole situation.

I think Microsoft’s long term strategy is becoming more and more clear. They are putting their eggs in many baskets to insulate themselves from one of them going badly.

Microsoft’s (in conjunction with Epic) long term goal seems to be to break open Apple’s iOS and google’s play store, and while they are going to try and avoid it, their statements make it seem like they are willing to sacrifice the closed system console business model to achieve that end.


From Microsoft’s perspectives assuming the ABK deal goes through, they have to view this as a win-win for them. If legislators don’t touch the closed ecosystem business model, then Microsoft keeps operating the Xbox as is, just with a huge first party lineup and a large catalogue for gamepass. If legislators do crack down on the closed ecosystem business models, Microsoft gets to sell all of their software on competing platforms without paying store fees. Xbox becomes much more difficult to sell profitably, but in exchange they get unfettered access to all platforms, and with ABK in house they become the largest games developer in the world.

Yes, and despite what anyone else think of Apple and it's policies, I hope both Microsoft and Epic fail at this. That recent law that US senate is discussing I think about enforcing Apple and Google to open up their stores is actually quite dangerous if it goes through.

First of all, it's being presented by some of it's big supporters (I mean some big corporations) as like they mostly care about small developers (who are being robbed by evil Google and Apple) and consumers (who can get locked out of some apps and games, because of these apps not being approved by Google and Apple). But actually, it's all about these mentioned (law supporters) big corporations coming to realisation that they fucked up big time around 10-15 years ago when mobile market started to shaping up as we know it these days, and now trying to break all existing rules because these rules make them earn less money than they want. Yes, allowing alternative app stores or other ways of app distribution on Apple and Google devices can for example benefit some devs and consumers who have issues with submitting certain apps. We can for example get xCloud on iPhone, as in current state Apple can easily reject it, exactly what they did.

But there are a lot of cons which also will come as a result of it:

1. It will not actually benefit small devs at all. Small devs give Apple/Google 30% cut, but at the same time they receive tools and App Store which will promote and make their app discoverable for free. This reduces the need to spend money on marketing. If US senate forces Apple to allow installing apps from the internet, do you think these small devs will spend the money on distributing apps by themselves? No, they will still go to App Store and nothing changes for them. But, at the same time, you'll definitely see all these mega corporations like Meta, Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft and so on dropping App Store in favour of distributing apps by themselves to not share revenue with Apple. So, no benefit for small devs, only for mega corps.

2. It kinda comes from the end of the last point. This really opens the door to the shitty practices which we see on more open platforms. Of course I'm talking about Epic Games Store. You can be sure that if that law goes through, Tim Sweeney will be here paying money left and right for this new mobile store exclusivity. Not only this will hurt the general user experience for consumers (the added need to go through different stores just to install Instagram and TikTok), but it will also screw over small devs who will opt for a quick check from Tim Sweeney instead of going to App Store and thus, limiting potential app discoverability.

3. Not clear what this will mean about potential malware distribution. I think this will increase the risk for any mobile user to get malware from somewhere.

4. And as for last, let's dig a bit into politics. Of course US senate only thinks about themselves, without looking at the whole world. As you know, not all countries are free and democratic like US is. What do you think will happen after this in the countries where governments try so hard to regulate and control everything. Apple and Google already has some different App Store policies for China, which probably costs them to support this different infrastructure. What will happen if US senate gives other non-free countries the way to just create their own App Store, then enforce on Apple that this will be the only way to distribute apps in that country if you want to pass certification and just regulate all by themselves. Of course, nobody is thinking about it

TLDR for this post. Giant megacorps like Microsoft, Meta, Netflix, etc. are just so mad about losing big time on mobile market front, that of course it's in their wet dreams to basically make it so the mobile platforms won't really belong to their owners.

This post is the types of discussion I hope more people start having about this press release from Microsoft, rather than fixating on the issue of content exclusivity. Much bigger forces seem to be at work here and I’m not entirely convinced all of it is good. 

Microsoft is clearly quite frustrated that their main platform (which is Windows, let is not forget), was forced open by regulators, but all of their competitors get to maintain closed ecosystems. The central hypocrisy here being that Xbox is a closed ecosystem they benefit from. 

I also think consumers benefit from the console business model too. We get excellent hardware at a subsidized cost, developers get a unified high tech platform, platform holders make their money on the back end. Who loses? 

Great time to be a gamepass sub, xbox fan not so much lmao