
If you're a regular reader of our sister site Push Square, you may have noticed that 16 games were announced for the April 2023 PlayStation Plus lineup today, and nine of them are owned by Microsoft!
Yes, a whole batch of Bethesda titles are being added to the Xbox Game Pass rival service, including the likes of DOOM Eternal, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Dishonored: Definitive Edition, and many more.
Here's the full list of Xbox-owned games joining PS Plus in April 2023:
- DOOM Eternal
- Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
- The Evil Within
- Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
- DOOM
- DOOM 2
- DOOM 64
- Doom 3
- Dishonored: Definitive Edition
Of course, this is particularly interesting considering that Microsoft's takeover of Activision Blizzard seems to be nearing completion, with the company also adding certain other first-party games to PlayStation Plus in recent months.
It's been reported that Sony will be offered the ability to include Call of Duty (and maybe other Activision Blizzard games?) on PlayStation Plus in the future, so we expect this kind of thing to continue throughout 2023 and beyond.
What are your thoughts about this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
Comments 29
The optics for this decision are clear!
I'm happy with dishonoured - I believe its the studios most interesting work along with prey. Defs up for a double dip on this
So playstation have no choice but to accept them as its not Microsofts service to just add what they want. Otherwise I thought they would reject them as they obviously know how it will look to the courts. But then again sony surely have to pay for theses games to be included so maybe it was a deal they made years ago before the acquisition.
I imagine despite the court / regulator battles, at a level where a lot of these deals are done it's still pretty cordial and MS act just like any other publisher with Sony.
More interesting to me is that Spider Man is leaving PS Plus - it suggests Sony first-party won't stay on it, which seems a bit dumb particularly given it might drum up even more interest in Spider Man 2 later this year...
@Kaloudz PlayStation plus Essential tier is like GWG but better games, and playstation plus Extra tier is gamepass but without day one releases from Sony.
@Moonglow Well Sony must of recently paid to have them added to the service, so they should surely know how that would look in court for their case. Just shot themselves in the foot.
@UltimateOtaku91 sony almost certainly paid MS for this. I would take it as a sign that sony wants to make their service as appealing as possible.
It's very unlikely that sony would treat xbox owned titles as poison. This is a business decision to put a group of popular games on the service that they have been making an effort to beef up. It is a good sign for sony users that they would make this deal with MS. It does benefit xbox to pay them for these but it also benefits the subscribers and that should be the priority for them.
"News: Marvel’s Spider-Man Will Leave PS Plus Extra in May. Seems PlayStation First Party Titles will to not be forever titles for the service." Hmmmmm
@UltimateOtaku91 If Sony said "no, we reject these Microsoft games on our platform!" I don't think that would help their case claiming they're doomed because Microsoft will withhold the games that are critical for the survival of their platform. It's kind of an offer they can't refuse.
@NEStalgia If so then it's a very clever play by Microsoft.
@UltimateOtaku91 Yep. Though in fairness, if MS hadn't bought Bethesda, Bethesda probably would have offered these games to PS Plus anyway (they were big fans of GP before the buyout), and Sony would have accepted anyway so it's more of an office politics game of symbolism than anything else, since the end result is almost certainly the exact same result as if MS wasn't even involved and ABK never happened.
@Sebatrox CAG shared the presser on it.
https://twitter.com/videogamedeals/status/1646176773644734469?s=20
@UltimateOtaku91 Although these deals are definitively done ahead of time, I am 99% certain we are not talking about years. Whenever this deal was done, I bet the ABK acquisition had already been announced.
And no, you don't just get to push your game into these programs, these are deals negotiated and money always exchanges hand (from the platform holder to the game publisher.)
micro wants to dump xbox consoles and become 3rd party so bad.
With the news that RED FALL will be launching with quality mode 30 fps only, i really think that Microsoft/Xbox put more efforts on PlayStation than their own console.
@Trmn8r ok thats... dumb... I guess that subscription service is indeed not meant to compete with Game Pass (or with anything)
@Kaloudz longer than that, these are Sony's next months "gamepass" style additions. So they will likely be there for atleast 12 months.
@Tharsman Right? Especially, for a game that old that sits in bargain bins...
@Trmn8r My one guess: by virtue of being a Disney licensed title, they need to pay royalties to Disney to keep the game in the service and they feel it was not worth it.
@Tharsman It's actually the opposite. Sony owns the Spider-man license and Disney pays them to use him.
@Trmn8r that is not true. Sony owns the rights to make Spider-Man movies, nothing else. Everything else Sony does with the character is licensed on terms that are not as favorable as the movie license, and the only reason Sony has those movie rights are due to a pre-Disney acquisition perpetuity deal for movie rights that would only expire if Sony stops making movies for 7 years.
Marvel did that deal at the time (they did a similar deal with Fox for the Fantastic Four and XMen IPs) to be able to finance their own Avenger movie dreams.
There is zero chance Marvel would had sold all rights to Sony for the character when Spider-Man was their top selling comic book.
Edit: From USA Today
Remember, there was recently a reveal that Disney actually approached XBox first to offer them the Spider-Man license after Activision apparently decided not to renew their video game licensing deal.
Edit 2:
One thing is certain is that Sony's video game licensing deal is not in perpetuity, and the terms are likely to change on a renewal. Hell, I doubt this would happen, but Disney could very well go the way of MLB and demand any future games be multi-platform during such a renewal. We have zero knowledge on the licensing terms, though, so no clue how often it has to be renewed, how much they must pay Disney, and for what kind of distribution methods.
@Tharsman Ok then Google. They are still bedfellows out of necessity between the two. Clearly, there have been platform exclusivity exchanges with the deal they made to get Spider-man in the Avengers movies.
@Trmn8r
That is again a no, they actually came to MS first for the Spider-Man offer, that's how much that is a non-factor. Sony even almost walked away from the MCU deal recently because they wanted a larger cut than was negotiated to be part of the MCU.
Spider-Man has even been in plenty of video games since that Sony game. Of the top of my head, no need to Google, Switch exclusive Marvel Ultimate Aliance and multi-platform Marvel Midnight Suns.
The movie stuff and MCU inclusion is its own deal, were Sony keeps complete distribution rights, you might note those movies are not even in Disney+.
@BeerIsAwesome
If they see value in it, they will "play nice", same way they did with MLB The Show going multi-platform.
@Tharsman Sounds like you work for Marvel and are privy to all their behind closed doors dealings. Or you are speculating as fact.
@Trmn8r Or I actually read news, but like you said, there is Google, you can find all this stuff there. I honestly dont understand why you are reaction this way to a single correction.
@Tharsman Just not a fan of drawing conclusions with certainty based on just public information. I can at least admit I'm making assumptions (some are wrong yes). But it's a sidetrack anyways. Funny to see Sony dumping Spiderman already from their Plus platform. Shows how little they desire to compete with Game Pass and frankly, don't care about it.
Or, @UltimateOtaku91, it was simply a good deal offered by Microsoft, and Sony knew that it was good business sense to add them as everyone knows that their service is not as good as Game Pass (and I don't mean that to sound like a fan-boy, just picking up on the general discourse regarding the two services). It may simply be a business deal, rather than anything else. I agree with the comments of some that this may not be a good look for Sony (and conversely a good look for Microsoft), but ultimately Sony are in it to make money, and these games add value to their service and may entice some to join it...
@Moonglow "The reason you see Spiderman content being cut out from other console games is Sony flexing it's way with Spiderman Movie success with Disney". That was the point I was getting at in my later comments. It's not out there to assume that the movie rights can affect the games situation with the same company.
@Moonglow like what??? Spiderman is leaving soon, it’s been on a year. Miles has been on the same an that’s staying.
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