Microsoft's CEO Isn't A Fan Of Console Exclusives, Blames Sony

This is from the CEO mind you - not from his underlings.

I thought the FTC had a good case here but it seems to be weakening by the day.

I agree with him, but every console since the start has had exclusives - Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and yes, even Xbox (starting with taking Halo from Apple).

Not sure you can place all the blame of exclusives solely at Sony’s feet. They’re just continuing the tradition.

It's okay to have first party exclusives, what is not is to prevent third party Games to go on other Platform like sony did with FF7 remake. We as consumer chose a Platform for their IP not for the third party publishers which habitualy support all Platform and to prevent Games to come to all consoles is not good for the gaming community.

I never was a fan of exclusives either. I always understood first party exclusives, but the third party ones always upset me.

Exclusives are used to tie people into platforms and services. To me this is wrong. Whether it is Starfield, God of War or Mario games. All exclusives are not consumer friendly.

Every gamer should have the right to play every game on every piece of hardware. Like we buy standard blu-ray players and can play all blu-ray movies on it and we buy HDMI TVs and they all interface the same way to devices.

Jim Ryan oddly enough said pretty much the same thing. His case was a little more hypocritical because he didn't bother to show up to the trial. He phoned in his displeasure of exclusives so he could pose for pictures to promote his upcoming Kojima exclusive.

You know what he is a fan of? Candy Crush. Why aren’t we reading about that?

Image if buying an LG tv meant you could never watch Disney shows or the only tv to watch Netflix on was a Sampsung.

That's how ridiculous exclusives are.

Hardware shouldn't dictate software. These exclusive games can run on anyone of the gaming platforms. It's a choice not to. Even worse is we're in a world where the consumers are excited by these exclusions. Baffling.

@RedShirtRod that is a real thing.I have a samsung and sony tv that will absolutely not allow google play unless I get a roku. Then the goddamned roku won't play this or that.

I bought 30 or so movies on google thinking everyone would play nice - wrong.

Smart tvs are devil incarnate. there isn't a thing intelligent about them besides harnessing data on the consumer.

Nintendo just sitting back and watching a couple a-holes slap each other in the face and I love it lol

@Cashews Glad to know the tech industry has caught up. Someone must have looked at the gaming industry and said "yeah, let's get in on that."

At least people aren't bragging about it. That's what frustrates me about the gaming industry. Tech industry is going to do shady stuff for more money; it is what it is. It's the fact that people brag that they chose a specific company that is milking them for all they're worth is crazy. Image if you had to listen to someone brag that their TV works with Google Play while yours doesn't. It's silly.

This reads as someone who has never heard of Nintendo and still remains sore Xbox canned all their exclusives on the One.

@Banjo- now with game pass this has become the real competition we always wanted to see.

Ah yes because all those exclusive deals Microsoft made during the 360 gen were because of sony....

As I say somewhere else on here, and a few others mention...

Sony right now are using their market weight to get exclusivity for their system... when they don't even NEED exclusivity. They don't need to force you to buy a Sony system to play Spiderman or use Spiderman in Marvel's Avengers.
Jim Ryan effectively declared that publishers prefer monetization and profits over Game Pass... when it's really that Sony want to be able to dictate the price of your games, where you play your games...

Imagine a world where you can buy a game for $100, or rent it for $5 a month if you're a Playstation Plus member, and if the game is more than six months old, you can even get it free... but you're not getting any kind of refund or price decrease for that rental. And if you want to get it on another platform?
Tough. Sony strongarmed everyone else out of the market.

The victim mentality here from the Xbox fanboys. Exclusives are good for business because it helps shape competition. Of course the company that has a ton money wants to spread its games everywhere, Sony(PlayStation) doesn't have those deep pockets, so of course they have to do it this way. And if exclusives didn't matter, why not put Halo, Forza, SoD, and Fable on the PS?

I believe in exclusives because it drives both competitors to work and earn our money. It also gives us a reason to buy their consoles, because then, what is the point of exclusives? Why not just make a great console together.

I swear, I didn't know we were back in the PS3/360 era again.

@UltimateOtaku91 ps fans make me laugh. They believe there intitled to everything & others nothing. They are happy to ignore that Sony has bought the same amount of publishers than Microsoft as ABK hasn't been approved yet & has killed more rivals than Microsoft in consoles as Sony put Atari & Sega out of the console business with the same tactics there doing today so if fair game that Microsoft is fighting back. PS fans are scared of competition.

This guy is great for the cloud and digital world but when it comes to games I’m afraid he doesn’t really know much about history. Exclusives originated from hardware architecture being wildly different and essentially costly to develop on other platforms. Exclusivity has been around since the beginning with Sega and Nintendo both continuing this practice. Xbox themselves began in the very same way so it is a bit absent minded of him to blame Sony. He should point his fingers at Nintendo rather but even then he’d be wrong. These days it would be much easier to go multi platform with hardware being more akin to PC but still there are features of each console that they will want to tap into with their first party games to show off and make full use of.

It’s all very boring this isn’t it? My kids make very similar arguments to all of these execs across MS and Sony. “I pushed him because he pushed me”. At least my kids can make friends again afterwards. You can taste the salt with all the tears being shed in that courtroom.

How can anyone believe this BS? If this were true then MS should buy these studios, put their games on GP day 1 and make them multi format. That way they can protect the industry like their PR team constantly goes on about, but still offer a different option with GP. All I hear from PX and MS is that they don't care for console sales as GP is their business model, yet they use console sales as their classed 'market share' and are obviously trying to limit those games onto their formats.

As MS games are all available on phones and PC's surely MS have the market share in machines capable of playing MS and GP games?
Having all 3 major consoles and visiting PS, PX, NL I do find PX is 90% hypocrisy complaining about exclusives which MS were major players in such behaviour, while complaining about Sony not happy that MS are buying studios to take established franchises away from competitors. I'm pretty sure no-one has done this before - or certainly to this scale at least.
I'd argue Sony buying Bungie is the closest, however they supposedly remain independent while MS have taken away Arkane (Dishonoured), Ninja Theory (arguable? is Hellblade an established IP?), Obsidian, Bethesda (Elder scrolls, fallout), id Software (Doom/Quake/Wolfenstein), Rare (I miss them from the N64 days).
I'm sure there are more from both companies and I'm sure people won't be able to resist telling me I'm wrong.
I reckon 95% of PS readers can't stand Jim but don't really care because they have enough games to make them not care, while on PX 95% hang of every word Phil says (even though they are no different from each other - just one has a much better PR team!) and I have no idea why.

Edit: I'm happy for people to give me other examples btw. I actually started enjoying reminiscing the old games. Like Viva Pinata from Rare. Loved that game on the 360!

There has always been exclusives and there has to be. If there was no such thing as exclusives you would have no reason to purchase one console over another because they would all be the same as they all have everything. I disagree with Satya here.

What Satya actually means to say is we don't like Sony with these exclusives because they kick our ass with them and we can't make them as good as them.

Surprise more nonsense from both sides.

But because it’s from MS it has to be true.

@cragis0001 Look up the difference between Publishers and development studios my dude. You will find Sony hasnt (at least to my knowledge) bought any publishers. On top of that you will find that MS actually own more development studios than Sony and considering they haven’t been in the game as long that would logically suggest they have purchased more than them in a shorter period of time. You see higher quality and quantity of output from Sony’s studios which might be why people jump to the conclusion Sony has bought more but facts is facts.

I don’t think third party stuff should be but Nintendo,PlayStation and Xbox certainly should have their own exclusives.

Ummm...exclusives have been around long before Sony entered the gaming business. Plus while it would be nice to just play anything anywhere that just isn't a possible reality. Exclusives are the main reason why Nintendo hardware still sells. I'd never buy Nintendo hardware if I could play Mario on a Playstation or Xbox.

Heck one of the primary reasons Xbox was able to get a foothold at all in the industry was by securing Halo as an exclusive. A very strange take from this guy.

Yeah there is no denying how Sony pretty much popularized moneyballing games and exclusives.

Console exclusivity is limited to a box, what Nadella likely wants is platform exclusivity. The concept of you can play games on any device but you must be subscribed to Game Pass to do so. They're essentially trying to make Game Pass a monopoly in the same way Windows is.

This guy I'm full of rubbish is it the higher up they are the more garbage they talk between him jim ryan and phil Spencer they just don't have a clue about anything or what gamers want exclusives have always been important and always will be else there would only be only console

I find this hard to believe from the CEO of a company that had to be forced to offer choice on something such as a web browser.

Xbox literally owes its existence to Sony and an exclusive. Microsoft approached Sony to have games on the PS2 after failing with Windows Live. Sony said no. Microsoft stole Halo from Apple and the original Xbox was born.

This is the kind of thing you say when you're a sore loser and a hypocrite by using your wealth to climb to the top in the X360 days with exclusive third party games and content.

Without exclusive one of the consoles would die off eventually. Then with only one left there goes competition. And then the consumers lose without that choice because the monopoly company can take the p**s. This guy is clueless and like Phil, a sore loser and hypocrite.

It all comes down to poor management when you have more studios, more IP's and more money than your competitors. Sony is not the blame for your incompetence which you're now trying to compensate by doing what you do best. Buy everything. And try to justify it.

@EvenStephen7 You know how it goes "You made me do it."

@old-dad "Nintendo just sitting back and watching a couple a-holes slap each other in the face and I love it lol"

@cragis0001
First of all Xbox fans do the same thing. They feel they are entitled to exclusivity and don't like it when PlayStation has something they want but cheer for their "team" to buy everything under the sun. Example, constantly saying, "now they must buy SEGA, UBI, EA etc"

Second, Sony have never bought a publisher. Only developers. Mostly ones they have had a close history with.

And third. Xbox has more studios, more IP's and more money than Sony. It all comes down to mismanagement. That's why they're losing. They can't get a good game out to save their lives and money isn't going to solve that.

On a minor note. Exclusivity started long before Sony entered the market with Nintendo and Sega.

I'll write my comment differently, then.

Microsoft are all about multiplatform and the only thing they're doing is preventing Sony from keeping third-party games away from Xbox and to cut down Sony's anti-competitive exclusion deals.

Microsoft want people to play on console, PC and mobile. They just care about the value of Game Pass keeping their business healthy. More studios, more platforms and more subscribers. Sony simply want to keep their dominance by hurting the Xbox userbase.

Thank you Pure Xbox for reporting the news objectively.

So many angry posters in here😂, I've always said that Microsoft should pursue a day one on Gamepass followed by multiplatform release. Then everyone would have the option of playing ABK IP's.

@slatyatpion That's not true because a list of options doesn't mean that you are planning to buy all the publishers in the world. Secondly, Zenimax was looking for buyers and Sony bought exclusion deals for Zenimax games to force Xbox players to play them elsewhere so Sony triggered the acquisition. Finally, ABK was looking for buyers and Sony paid for exclusive content in Call of Duty before that, not to mention the exclusion deals between Sony and Square Enix as confirmed during the trial. Sony pays third parties to keep games off Xbox, Microsoft just acquires the studios and publishers that are willing to be acquired and that either stop Sony's anti-competitive deals and/or make Game Pass better value.

In feel a lot of people are forgetting a few things:

Sony didn’t start exclusives, but Natia was not involved with the industry until he became CEO of Microsoft. During his involvement in the industry, it is Sony that has pursued third party game lockdowns the most aggressively to anyone else.

@Alpha_Pulse Well said mate. This place can often leave me feeling that rationality and human decency are outdated concepts.
You regularly post considered and non emotinally charged posts that let me see not everyone has lost control or perspective. Thank you for that.
Personally, I crave and respect innovation, which can never happen with a 'lowest common denominator' platform which all games should run on, and innovative platforms will always drive a need for platform specific games which exploit the innovative features. I see Nintendo as being particularly innovative in this way, and whilst I dont always get on with these quirks, I love to see them as they advance the art and reach of what video gaming can be.
In a homogenous world where there is pressure to 'be the same', I particulary like those companies that want to be different and make their offering different from the norm. I hope and prey that never changes.

These kinds of CEO comments aren’t news, but damn they get engagement.

It’s a stupid comment too bc (1) first-party Playstation games are headed to Windows PCs after a year and (2) the argument that third-party companies shouldn’t get a choice on where they dev is insane. Go complain about not getting the new Zelda game, Microsoft.

Exclusives are there just to sell Hardware and get their 'Customers' Locked in to their Ecosystem. The more 'money' they spend in that Ecosystem, the more profit they make - and its not just on their OWN games.

Because a Console is a 'Locked' Platform, Publishers have to pay a Licence fee to release games on those Platforms, as well as 'lose' money to the 'retailer' (which is the Console holder for digital purchases). A $70 1st Party game is 'pure' Profit - no 'license' fee, that 30% retailer profit is theirs too any way. 3rd Party would lose 30% and have to pay a license fee too.

As MS aren't selling 100m+ Consoles, exclusives are therefore limited to just their Console install base. If they sell to 10% of their install base, 30m users is just 3m in sales but 100m is 10m in sales. If they release 'everywhere', it has a bigger 'Sales' potential.

However, as mentioned above, MS is a '3rd party' to Sony (and Vice Versa) so they'd be given their Competitor 'money' to release on their Platform as well as 30% of all digital sales to them as well. But also means those Customers are spending time and money in their Competitors ecosystem and not 'encouraging' them to buy into your 'own'

I'd prefer to see games released 'everywhere' - no 'exclusives' . I could buy the Hardware I prefer and not need 'multiple' Consoles to play the odd 1 or 2 'exclusives' a year I want to play on both.

Xbox is more a Choice these days, you don't 'need' to buy a Console - unless it suits your Budget and preferences with Xbox as every game is available elsewhere too - day and date. Is any 'game' Exclusive these days when they release on PC/Steam too?

In this 'case', Even if 'CoD' wen 'exclusive' to MS, it actually opens it up to 'more' gamers as its available on 'more' platforms day and date. Currently, its available on PC/Xbox and PS only. But under Xbox, it can be played on iOS/Android Mobiles, Tablets, Laptops (not gaming laptops), TV's, streaming/Windows/Steam Handhelds etc - although MS has NO intention of pulling CoD as they have stated countless times and see CoD as another 'Minecraft'...

@UltimateOtaku91 Thats a Steve Ballmer ideology not a Satya Nadella ideology.

What an absolute joke some of these comments are, I have to post this slide daily for our concern trolls:

https://i.imgur.com/Sz6qFBg.png

Microsoft needs to buy a whole lot more to match Sony in terms of exclusive output because of how Sony abuses their market share. This is not a "he he, both sides" issue like the SDF flooding in here suddenly pretends it is. We went from 10 years of "XBOX HAS NO GAMES LOL" to this "Oh no Xbox has a monopoly on all the games!" What a joke.

@Tharsman pretty much this, he is talking about the current state of affairs not Mario vs Sonic.

The thing is if consoles had no exclusives from either first or third party and all games were on everything then why would Sony or even Nintendo choose to make their own hardware if it wasn't the only place play them. If that were the case you would just have one single console because there would be no point in others releasing hardware as all the games would be on the same thing and then people would simply only buy the most powerful one. Exclusives help give your product an identity in terms of games consoles if you take that away you also would make customers ask why they should buy one generic games console over the other one as they both play all the same games.

@Jenkinss yeh cool an infographic you knocked up in your spare time that has no sources, is 2 years out of date and provides zero forecasting potential. Send this to the FTC and their whole case falls apart! Well done for solving the console wars!

Exclusives are important with branding and the image it represents to the consumer though like everything else we buy

@GeeEssEff Oh sweet irony. You think I made that, and it hasn't been sent to the FTC? Do a google image search, you're going to feel really f***ing silly.

@Jenkinss I’m working hard to feel silly mate but struggling to find that infographic anywhere through google searching. Also every image I did find gives completely different % market shares which goes back to the point of sources and how accurate they are. I will however apologise for my erroneous comment in suggesting you made it. It very much looks like something someone would knock up in 5 minutes based on limited information but in future I won’t jump to such drastic conclusions.

@LMN118 The POINT that everyone is saying here is that Sony didn't start this moneyhat thing. It's been a thing before they entered the console space. All 3 do it. Sony is certainly the most aggressive of the 3 in recent times. He probably should've worded his comment better.

@GeeEssEff

You will find Sony hasnt (at least to my knowledge) bought any publishers.

Lets rectify that: To be able to effectively compete with Nintendo at an international level at the start of their console ventures, Sony acquired the [at the time] largest European publisher, Psygnosis Limited. This was later renamed to SCE Studio Liverpool, and later Studio Liverpool. Mind you, for today's scale, Psygnosis was a tiny indie studio, but so was EA and Activision. In 95, Psygnosis games accounted for 40% of all video games sales in Europe. So, relatively speaking, they were gigantic. Find a publisher today that can claim that share of the market!

It's very likely without that publisher's acquisition, the PlayStation we know today would not exist. Sadly, on a trend that has just ramped up lately, Sony simply shut their development studios in 2012.

Getting really bored of this underdog crap now. Low share player? You have a small install base, your problem not Sony's.

Exclusives were a thing before Sony entered the console space

You used to have system selling exclusives yourself, what happened there?

@GeeEssEff

[link] (your google-fu needs more work.)

The chart provided came from a Dec 2022 filing to the FTC by Microsoft, and as labels indicate, are based off 2021 sales data. Definitively not done with "limited" information. We all here are the ones with limited information, and really not in a position to be challenging the data provided by any of these companies, unless we happen to see contradictions between them.

@GeeEssEff No, google image search. Go to google, click image search, pop in the image url. You will find this image, many times. You will see where it came from. Sorry that people don't typically jazz up documents submitted to courts with eye catching meme fonts to keep children entertained. Also as far as it being "2 years out of date," it's not. It's 1 year out of date at this point, and the consensus is 2022 was Xbox's worst year for exclusives ever. That's not a winning argument for you in any way.

"not a fan of exclusives?" > Cancels StarField that was confirmed to being worked on for PS5.

Riiiight.... (FOS)

@Tharsman Hey mate, how do you block quote on this platform if you don't mind me asking?

@Jenkinss Use:
[.quote] text

[/quote]

(remove the dot from the first quote, no spaces inside the brackets)

Edit:

You can also use:
[.quote=username]text

[/quote]

That results in something like

The usage of =username does not generate notifications. Thats a double edge sword. It wont spam users, thats good, but you will need to add @username in the text if you actually want them to notice and reply.

@Widey85
Yes, I know there was two standards for a while and the best standard did not win. That was the same for VHS/Beta and 8 track/cassette.

Standards come and go and there is often a "figuring out" of the standard by the manufacturers and the market place. Although that isn't great for consumers it usually gets to one standard.

As gaming matures and the tools mature there will be a drive towards a standard. technically it already started as consoles have morphed to be more and more PC like.

@Rafie True, but I suspect he knew the FTC wasn't going to be pedantic, bring about arguments from a time exclusives were exclusive because they were designed to be used on bespoke hardware and making them multi-platform meant making the game from scratch. Whereas today, tweaks are all that is needed since the consoles are basically small form factor PCs.

But, as you said all the players do it, doesn't make his opinion that exclusives are bad any less valid.

@Tharsman
test

You're the best! Thanks!!

@swagbag7 I'm guessing there it's more the community than the site itself that is toxic. There is some hate logic being spread I'm guessing it's because Microsoft is starting to fight back, because Sony seems to run with an as I say not as I do bully mentality.

This is why Xbox is in third place. Exclusives sell consoles.

@Jenkinss Well when I’m wrong I’m wrong…..Im sorry my friend I thought I was being clever and I wasn’t. Hope you can accept my apology @Tharsman I stand corrected on the Sony publisher comment (I did say “to my knowledge” and now my knowledge has been updated). Still I don’t think we can compare gaming 20 years ago to what it is today. I accept it’s not going to be completely accurate but according to a currency converter what Sony spent on Psygnosis in the 90s is worth about $45mil in 2023. We are talking $69bil…a number most people couldn’t even write down accurately. Everyone always talks about this acquisition in terms of the games and exclusivity but when you thinking about the good MS could do with that money through research and technology it’s actually pretty mad they are spending it on a games publisher who already releases their games on the Xbox anyway. But just my view I accept it’s an unpopular opinion on here.

@ValentineMeikin "Jim Ryan effectively declared that publishers prefer monetization and profits over Game Pass... when it's really that Sony want to be able to dictate the price of your games, where you play your games..."

Not quite. It's publishers certainly, but the important part is which publishers. We heard from Bobby hating GP and citing video streaming killing profits from the movie and music business in L.A., which he's not wrong about, and we've heard the same from him before, and 2k, and others. It's not that only Sony has that stance. But what Jim accidentally revealed is that in his world only the handful of super big mega publishers with the biggest mega games really count for anything at all. Those top shelf publishers that hate the thought of losing their status quo bankroll to a subscription model count as "all publishers" and their view is "unanimous" for the publishing business. All the other publisher just don't register as important enough to be discussed as relevant.

Publishers do hate it. Unanimously. If you only look at publishers with market caps similar to ABK. From Sega's comments earlier, it would seem even outfits as big as Sega are just too insignificant to be a part of that relevant group to Jim. I'm sure Ubisoft, too.

@GeeEssEff I do realize you stated it was your knowledge, i was not meaning to be a smart ass. Basically the same way I would had said I would "rectify" if a friend told me he had not seen Back to the Future.

Yes, even when adjusted for inflation, Psygnosis acquisition would had not been as much money but that's because gaming was much smaller back then. The point is Sony needed to bully itself into the industry. Xbox has been trying to just inch itself in for multiple decades, and it could had worked had Don Mattrick not happened. But now they are in a position where they either have to bully themselves into a competitive position, or lag so far behind they can never consider themselves competitive. Sadly, as much as it can be "fine" to be a small player, in the gaming world, if you are small enough you generate a vicious cycle of abandonment by third party developers. The longer they are that far behind, the harder it is to organically become competitive, and the more expensive it becomes to "bully" yourself to a decent position.

At the end of the day, MS would had not approved the money be used for this acquisition of anyone could have thought of a more profitable investment, or an investment that would yield more growth. Finding such investments is harder than it might sound, though. That's how they ended up with that much money in hand, because they could not find what to invest the money on. And no, charity is sadly not an option.

@slatyatpion Sony doesn't make games. Since the first Playstation, that was supposed to be an add-on for SNES, it had third parties developing games for the system, e.g., Crash Bandicoot. Some of those developers were acquired later. Sony is not an innate developer. The most popular games for the first Playstation were FIFA, Tekken, Harry Potter, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot... Only Gran Turismo was a Sony game. Sony has acquired and shut down studios. Microsoft didn't have many software studios until recently. Their strategy changed late in the last generation. They didn't even own Forza Horizon developer.

Buying studios if you are not the market leader is not anti-competitive. The anti-competitive practices are to pay third parties to exclude another platform when you are the market leader and that's what Sony has been doing for many years and more aggressively this generation.

You and others use examples from 15 years ago and I don't think that justifies being anti-competitive in the present and future. You also have to consider that Sony is the company with the highest gaming revenue in the world, mobile included. They should not be allowed to keep third-party games off Xbox. Those practices are illegal in many countries and markets but video games still are a "new" thing for most governments.

@slatyatpion If Sony was paying Bethesda, a third-party publisher, for excluding Xbox, what is expected to happen once Bethesda is owned by Microsoft? Yes, Starfield was going to be a third-party game because it has been in development for many years and if Microsoft had not acquired the studio it would also skip Xbox. Sony poked the bear.

All the games companies have always done exclusives, though mostly it was the games they made themselves being exclusively made for their hardware. Then became Nintendo demanding games published for them are published nowhere else as part of the contract. Then Nintendo got slapped down for anti-competitive practices for that.

Somehow since then the industry morphed to "standardizing' the practice of paying to exclude competitors. I like that Nadella doesn't like exclusives, I want to see a world where exclusives aren't a thing. That doesn't mean a publisher MUST release on all platforms, or that Nintendo would suddenly choose to put Mario on PS6, but the idea that the platforms lock down external content is a relic of a lawless age that isn't going to change unless laws ban it. I'm still hoping this whole trial leads to governments looking into exactly that. It's a pipe dream, but it's a dream.

@Tharsman Can they really be classed as a friend if they haven’t seen Back to the Future?

That was one of the more compelling arguments I have read in favour of the acquisition. Most of the time what I read it seems to boil down to “I want MS to own ABK so I don’t have to pay full price for COD” so I appreciate you putting it how you put it. With regards to growth though I think MS would just have a whole lot more respect from the wider gaming community if that growth came more organically. They have had over 20 years with nearly unlimited resources to foster talent and creativity and in the 360 days they did just that. Something has gone wrong internally though since the noughties and rather than address the problems they have just decided to throw money around externally taking a huge amount of IPs away from other gamers while flying the flag of “gaming for everyone!”

If they were completely innocent of all the things Sony is accused of then fair enough but they aren’t. In fact it could be argued they bullied themselves into relevance by tying up timed exclusives and third party deals throughout the 360 days. They haven’t been particularly successful with this approach recently because of the self inflicted wound that was the XBone and now everyone seems to think it’s Sony’s fault they are failing. I am lucky in that I own a Switch, Ps5 and Xbox Series X but many people are not in that position. Any fans of Bethesda and ActiBlizz games who were PS5 early adopters would not have foreseen in a million years that they may not be able to play their games in 3-4 years time. I think most of them would bite your hand off to play Starfield in September 2024 after a years exclusivity which is most likely the worst thing that Xbox gamers would have faced if Sony had their way with it. To be clear I’m not defending timed exclusivity I’m just saying waiting a year is a hell of a lot better than waiting forever. I also see a lot of arguments saying that “with a good internet connection you could play these games anywhere through gamepass” and I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I have reasonable fibre optic and my online isnt brilliant even over LAN. To stream entire games and play online I think my router would just give up.

Yes Xbox need to grow but it would be so much more respectable if they did that through clever business decisions (not TV….Sports…TV…..sports) and nurturing what they have rather than spending the GDP of a small country to take games away from other people permanently.

@slatyatpion Would Deathloop have come though? The cycle seems to be "buy timed exclusivity, claim the marketing and platform association with the title, exhaust the initial launch sales boom and media cycle, then evaluate how successful the game is. If not very successful, let it go third party, at which point sales will be anemic on any other platform which will then be used to promote the sales success on the original platform. If it's very successful, quietly renew exclusivity with no public expiration date."

I miss when a game that came out was a good game for the remainder of the hardware and beyond. But Games have unfortunately moved to mimic the movie model, where launch month is basically the only month that matters, any sales after that are practically irrelevant. It's all built on hype and fomo unless it's an MP service game. Doesn't work on me. I don't understand how it works on anyone. But it seems to work on most of the gaming consumer market. Sadly.

The reality for most games is only the first month or two matters for the most part. Only the first 6 months really matters much at all, and after 12 months it's worthless in terms of meaningful sales for most "major" games. And even most indies that thrive on hype. That's also the exact reason PS and Bobby and others are opposed to "day and date" services, because basically all their meaningful sales are in the first weeks after launch, not after. It's an absurd model and consumers are idiotic. But that's the model.

So in business terms, once you buy the first 6 months, you owned the whole meaningful lifecycle of the game monetarily. Throwing the bone to your competitors doesn't help them much more than just having total exclusivity of it forever. Deathloop and Ghostwire are unusual examples because MS bought the whole company prior to the initial launch, and they became GP headliners. Without MS owning it who knows when/if it would have launched, and if it wasn't on GP, those games barely sold on PS, the sales would have been not worth mentioning on XB. "Timed" exclusivity is a misnomer in the games industry. Imagine if Cinemark had "timed exclusivity" for the first 3 months of a 4 month run of the Mario movie, AMC gets it in month 4. At that point, why bother? They don't get much from it but the stragglers. It's better than nothing, but it's pretty close.

@GeeEssEff its very hard to get younger friends to give anything made in the 80s the time of day (or night).

I covered this earlier, but almost all the "creativity" xbox showed during the 360 gen was outsourced. I posted this a while back, bit lazy to look it up, but almost every exclusive game during that gen was made by a third party. Some were financed and owned, others were simply timed exclusives. Even Gears and Project Gotham Racing were made by third parties.

The only games made in-house were Halo, Fable and the few games Rare made. As their third partners got acquired by bigger publishers, and as they lost market share in the next generation, it became harder and harder for them to be able to cut deals that didn't involve complete game financing, unless they found a struggling studio willing to sign a deal to get the money they needed to finish their titles.

Sony timed exclusivity is not always just a year. They been more aggressive all the time, and extremely secretive about the terms. As its been said plenty of times, look at FF7 remake. We did somehow find out Forspoken was a 2 year exclusivity deal (that by virtue of its failure, will likely never get ported to other consoles.) Sony was investing hard on big and promising new IPs, beyond the usual 1 year deals.

On the point of "gaming for everyone", its just a marketing pitch. Its never meant to imply they want everyone on every console playing every game. They have always followed those lines with very specific disclaimers about "platforms where game pass exists" and the like. They have been very clear on their extended communications they mean that you don't need an Xbox to play their games day on launch day, you can buy an affordable PC, or you can just stream it if that's what you want. But its still a self-relevance thing.

They also have stated they would bring their games to any platform that accepts Game Pass, and its not that crazy of an idea. It's not like bringing PSN to xbox, its more equivalent to allowing EA Play on PlayStation. Game Pass on PlayStation, for example, would certainly only include Xbox published games, no third parties.

And yes, I understand some would see it more positively if they simply worked their way "organically", but its not a realistic expectation. Nintendo has managed recoveries from stumbles before, but only because they already own some of the biggest IPs in the world: Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, among many others.

BTW, I am not saying Xbox should be allowed to buy anything indefinitely. I feel there is a spot where they should be prevented from further publisher acquisitions. What point that is, depends on the size of their next acquisition. If its Sega, I would draw the line there, and not allow them to pursue any acquisitions that are not for specific small studios. If its something smaller, like Devolver or NIS (just examples)? Yea that barely moves the needle.

Sega and Nintendo were doing exclusives long before the PS1 was a thing. Also dude you told Bethesda they can't make PS versions anymore, you're talking BS you hypocritical corporate a$$. People wonder why i'm so hard on MS well its stuff like this.

@WallyWest He wont recognise anything in the industry before Xbox existed. Jim Ryan is the same both are execs spouting bs without a clue.

Sony should compete on the strength of it's hardware and value of its marketplace, rather than its ability to keep games off other platforms. That's what Google and Apple are doing, along with every pc maker.

@Jaxx420 Its funny because the only reason Xbox didn't crash and burn was because of one exclusive in Halo, that one exclusive made Xbox and gave Xbox something PS and Nintendo didn't have.

@WallyWest Ok have to disagree there.

Was Halo their biggest system seller at the time? Did it help them get a foothold in the market? Absolutely.

But they had other new IPs that set them apart at launch and some time after. With the money side of things included MS would have been successful enough without Halo.

What is foolish is his idea of Sony being the only one moneyhatting exclusives to disrupt competitors. He forgets the 360 era, forgets Tomb Raider, forgets they moneyhatted getting timed exclusives on a next gen upgrade (Yakuza Like a Dragon for example)

He is pot calling kettle, but so is Jim Ryan. Honestly cant pick a side in this whole saga both have come off in a really bad light here.

Its been a sad few months that gaming news has been dominated by this bs.

@WallyWest i can help with what CEO of MS said. He is saying in a world of no exclusives all MS games would be everywhere, but that’s not the world we are in so we have to have them. Sony isn’t going to call MS and say hey let’s trade SF for Spider man-2. So if SF isn’t exclusive that leaves MS even in worse shape than they are in. But they would love for games to be like office and windows and available on all hardware. But it’ not going to happen. Hope that helped, the CEO weren’t lying, the CEO just have to play a game he don’t wish to. 😊

I just want to say i have watched a lot of this case and the FTC is failing hard and almost out of continues. This is why the FTC didn’t want to go to court, cause they don’t have a case. This deal could close and soon as next week, reports are saying.

@slatyatpion That's true, to a point, but it does ignore that different people mean different ideas. It's a completely different executive team at MS with completely different ideas, goals, and strategies. Sure 15+ years ago a totally different group of people at Xbox just copied the norm for the industry and didn't really have a plan of doing something different. But it's a different leadership team with a different market position and a different corporate strategy overall today. That was two heads of Xbox and two different CEOs ago. I'm sure Gates and Balmer loved the exclusives model, it made sense to the way they think. Nadella is very much a software and services guy and his whole company vision is based on it, very different to Balmer's device-centric (copy Apple) plans, and Gates...creepy totalitarian ideas. Nadella wants to move Windows itself into the cloud and just have it run on anything. So it makes sense he'd have a very different more publisher-like view of the business.

Sony's leadership is also completely different now of course, but they've been clear about their commitment to the existing strategy as long as it's working for them. Nadella entered with a plan to basically revitalize and reboot the dinosaur that was Microsoft. I'm not always onboard with his cloud-everything, AI hive mind is our savior mentality. But I do think his ideas on gaming are on point even if I want to hit something every time he says AI or cloud.

@Titntin appreciate that mate! I do try to be as neutral as possible! I agree with you, I love when games lean into the hardware features except Killzone Shadowfall when the health bar was actually on the DualShock 4 light on the top of the pad… really poor execution. I also think if it can be ported to another console then why not? It doesn’t have to be set in stone what and when they are ported only if it’s possible and when possible.

Edit: I also didn’t like blowing into the DS for some of the Zelda games. I had a few funny looks from the fiancé playing those…

@Widey85
I don't think it is as far as way as we expect but definitely not immediate.

Both Steam and XB seem to be playing the same game. I just bought an Asus ROG Ally and am really impressed. They get the battery life up, and I would describe this as a pretty perfect mobile gaming device. I was toying about buying SteamDeck instead but ROG Ally got me because it is Windows out of the box and the screen resolution/audio is better according to reviews.

@HonestHick I get that but in a world without exclusives Xbox wouldn't exist nor would Playstation. He's acting like the issue is Sony while ignoring that Tears of the Kingdom is stuck on Switch or the fact Sonic 2 wasn't on the SNES. Exclusives sell consoles, i bought my Series S because of the exclusives. He's the twisting the narrative to make MS be the victim and Sony be the problem despite console exclusives being a thing long before they and Sony entered gaming. As i said many times i have zero issues with SF being exclusive, its most likely for the best as its getting a treatment from MS it wouldn't have got if Multiplat meaning it should launch better then say Skyrim and FO76. MS just seem to say stuff that sounds holy accept their actions are just as unholy as Sony. Both are as bad as each other but i feel MS and its fanbase really want to pretend otherwise.

@Jaxx420 What i mean is Halo was the killer game for Xbox. Xbox didn't have much early on with GTA, no Resident Evil, no MGS, no FF and such but it did have Halo and i think without that Xbox would have been another pretender trying to enter gaming and failing hard like every console in the 90's that wasn't Sony, Nintendo and Sega made. Halo changed FPS gaming forever, it gave MS something no one else had and it made people want an Xbox.

@WallyWest i do agree with you. I think exclusives are super important. I grew up with the SNES and that is to this day still one of my favorite consoles ever made. The exclusives for it were among the best a console has ever had. I don’t agree with MS that all games should be on all platforms. But that’s just not the way I grew up, so maybe some of the younger kid’s want that. But this is a nothing story at the end of the day, cause Sony and Nintendo aren’t given up their IP’s and truth told neither is MS. We can all dream of a console that lets us play every game with whatever controller we want and it’s just a dream. Some might say that’s called a PC but i disagree, tho it is the closest thing we have to it. Your points are valid on this topic as far as i am concerned.

@Kaloudz Yeah well they got to earn MS's money somehow 😜

Basically the MS boss doesn’t like Sonys business model, but according to them streaming has not taken off as predicted, so you’ll end up with a console with zero exclusives but console and PC will be the way most people will want to play? Are they going to release all their games onto PlayStation then?

Really annoys me how MS whine and moan about Sony, yet refuse point blank to follow its business model despite the fact it’s proved hugely successful for both Nintendo and Sony and did so too for MS during the 360 era.

It’s like Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot, then spending billions and going through all this hassle just to fix it. Very strange business strategy.

They shouldn’t complain about being third then try to reinvent the wheel, they will never be anything more then third with this strategy.

@slatyatpion Oh for sure the complete hypocrisy is shining very brightly here. And I suspect the judge and court will see that. I would not in any way claim MS is winning anything yet. I find how MS and Sony and the FTC are attempting to twist what Nintendo is to suit there arguments hilarious too, when they are all correct, it does it’s own thing, has endless exclusives, and never had COD on Switch but it’s massively successful. They just pick and choose snippets of those facts that fit their argument. Judge will see through that.

@Sherlock- I’m looking forward to when they announce their new console, and the hype will so high that Xbox and PS may as well not exist.

LOL to anyone claiming Microsoft hates exclusivity because their games are playable on PC as well... PC's in general run on Microsoft, so, as long as they run on PC/Xbox the game still lives on a Microsoft platform and is exclusive to Microsoft.
Yes you can play on Linux but most games need patches/extra coding etc to run properly (and even then it's a pain in the ass).
If Microsoft wanted to play nice with Linux I'd have an official Gamepass app on my steamdeck rn but I don't.

on the point of exclusives, they're the reason you buy a console. yes third party games are a big market, but people buy xbox for Halo/Forza/(soon)Starfield/... . And people buy Playstation for Spider-man/Last of Us/GoW. And Nintendo for Mario/Zelda/Pokemon... without exclusives, there wouldn't be a need for multiple consoles.

This court case is absolutely hilarious in what both these companies are claiming. In the end this type of deal is bad for the consumer (just look at Disney buying Fox for a recent example) and I hope it doesn't go through.

Nadella seemingly ignoring the last 30 years of the games industry then. Sega and Nintendo drew their battle lines on exclusivity or even exclusive features. Who can remember the Mortal Kombat blood fiasco or Aladdin?

Microsoft are just sore because they either closed their studios or canned their licensed exclusives and are now paying the price.

@NEStalgia Your comment #84 is exactly what I think. I agree with the whole comment and it's concise and clear. This part is very important:

The idea that the platforms lock down external content is a relic of a lawless age that isn't going to change unless laws ban it. I'm still hoping this whole trial leads to governments looking into exactly that.

It's also good that you mentioned elsewhere how CEOs and strategies have changed. I'm tired of reading examples from 15 years ago to justify anti-competitive practices in 2023. Microsoft clearly changed their strategy towards multiplatform and subscriptions while Sony still believes in paying third parties for excluding Microsoft. As long as they are allowed to do it, it will be cheaper to exclude Xbox than anything else. The facts that it would be more expensive for Microsoft to do the same and that Sony is the market leader, makes that practice a vicious circle (spiral?), destination monopoly.

The best thing about the trial is that not only Microsoft but also Sony are being questioned and exposed.

@themightyant Microsoft's filing with the administrative court before the hearing vs the FTC. And we all know that 2022 was worse for Xbox in terms of exclusives than 2021.

Xbox having just 10% of exclusives doesn't seem plausible/likely.

It's hilarious that after 10 years of Xbox has no games, now that it's inconvenient "it doesn't seem likely." This is reality, please readjust your arguments.

@GeeEssEff Hey brother it's all good, and a side note I love your avatar Ori is one of the all time greats.

@themightyant Ha, yes all you needed to know was that these numbers are from documents submitted to a United States federal court. You can now pretend whatever numbers you find on some video game fan site are more accurate to back up whatever nonsense narrative you're trying to push here.

@themightyant I've seen close to 70% but I have not seen 80%. I have seen that Microsoft has 16% console market share, but that is because they have 2 competitors, not 1. It is Sony/FTC making that claim, not Microsoft. Not sure where your 80% is coming from, I have not seen that and I listened to almost the entire trial, I only missed Tuesday morning.

If you want to refute the 10% of the exclusives claim, I welcome you to provide another number. Neither the FTC nor Sony disputed that document. As far as I can tell, you're the first legal expert doing so. I'm interested in hearing your more accurate numbers.

@GeeEssEff Psygnosis was a publisher. Yes the industry was much smaller but the result of the purchase fundimentaly helped Sony crack the EU/US market with the PS1.

@GADG3Tx87 I bet there are some xbox fans that want it all but from what I've seen the bulk realise that will never happen & are used to it.
Again Sony purchased Psygnosis which was a publisher. I Still don't understand why people think because the industry was smaller then that it makes it any different. Sony was like Microsoft today it had deeper pockets compared to Atari, Sega & Nintendo so buying a publisher then helped Sony become a dominant player. History is repeating itself effectively.

@slatyatpion look up Sony's early PS years & you will find Sony was no more different than Microsoft is now at trying to crush the competition.

@themightyant There are plenty of developers that skip platforms without the need of a deal, and this is [likely] due to a combination of smaller install base and perception of "what xbox players like". Many niche games, especially ones that come from Japan, tend to skip because they feel the install base is not large enough to make the "niche of the minority" not worth to target, and that in turn creates perceptions in the market.

Of the top of my head, Capcom has skipped Xbox at least two low-investment games: The Mega Man Battle Network collection and the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. I would make an argument over Square Enix games many claim are not exclusive too, but some argue there is more going on there.

@themightyant My original point, the one I think you first replied to, is that Xbox is in a situation where two things are actively happening:

A) The platform is not big enough to be able to negotiate, or counter-negotiate, exclusivity deals that are considered market-movers.
B) The platform being so far back results in many smaller titles skipping the platform because they don't see the benefit of developing niche games for an already too-limited audience. Each one of these might not be a market mover, but in aggregate, their absence becomes very noticeable.

@themightyant & in 30 years Activision blizzard could look the same. It doesn't change its impact to the industry today. That's why I keep bringing up Psygnosis as Sony buying them back in 1993 was a game changer as it was one of many pieces that helped them become the dominant force they are today.

@themightyant

Microsoft claimed 80% in Europe, 70% worldwide. They had a giant pie chart with an 80:20 split at the EU hearing to make their point.

...And you think this is skewed data? Should I even read the rest of this? Jim Ryan himself has given very similar numbers in interviews. FFS man, suddenly we're not so happy about the fortress playstation interview? " I won't believe it when Microsoft says it, or when Jim Ryan says it, because it hurts my pro Sony narrative at the moment!" I feel like I'm slumming it at GAF right now.

@themightyant

Microsoft claimed 80% in Europe, 70% worldwide. They had a giant pie chart with an 80:20 split at the EU hearing to make their point. I have no doubt that by some specific metric this was accurate, they won't have lied. But my whole point has been that this also will have been cherry picked data to make them look as small as possible, which makes it skewed, and not to be taken at face value.

I just want to leave the actual quote here.

I will let you do the math (show your work) on what percentage "at least 3 to 1" is.

@themightyant I certainly believe statistics presented in federal court, especially when the opposition doesn't refute them. And the fact that your example of Microsoft "bending the truth," Sony presented nearly the same exact truth, brother we can all have a laugh at your expense. Oh a few years passed in between, I'm sure there's been a seismic shift in the market, I guess Microsoft is lying in federal court now, got it. The FTC and Sony had no issue with that number, only you for some reason. I suppose the federal judge is gullible as well! The reams of redacted documents supporting all of this, probably doctored! What an absolute joke.

@themightyant I believe the documents Microsoft submitted to a United States federal court are not falsified and therefore Playstation enjoyed a 5:1 exclusives advantage over Xbox in 2021. I believe Xbox had a worse year for exclusives in 2022 than it did in 2021. I believe Jim Ryan was not lying when he said Playstation had a roughly 80% to 20% lead over Xbox in Europe a few years ago, and when Brad Smith said the same thing last year I also do not believe he was lying. Your bullet points are fantastic but they don't change the culture of "Fortress Playstation," or do you think Xbox also has gained significant market share in Japan? Sadly, that's not how consumer loyalty works.

@themightyant This is not a marketing document. It's included within reams of documents sent to a United States federal court, most of which are redacted from the public but not from the judge and lawyers, they can't "make the statistics say anything." They're facts. This is where our disconnect is. This isn't marketing, this is federal court. The hard data was submitted to back the arguments. It seems as though you think the way the United States federal court system works is Microsoft said "it's a pie chart, trust us ma'am." And then the FTC, didn't challenge this number, even though they made an enormous amount of the trial about exclusives, for... reasons? I don't think you actually listened to any of this hearing, I think I'm arguing with someone who has much less understanding of the specifics of what is actually going on here, and is just trying to tell me "I don't trust anything" which isn't nearly as interesting as you think it is.

And for 80/20, I don't really care, that was your example. When both Sony and Microsoft say the same number, and you don't believe either side, you're just being obstinate for the sake of not wanting to lose an argument. Bravo, I bet you've never lost an argument, congratulations. Brad Smith was way off the mark and was misleading everyone when he said Sony had an 80 20 lead over Xbox in Europe, aka Fortress Playstation, lmao.

@themightyant I think a lot of people forget or like to ignore that when Sony entered the games market they were like Microsoft today the biggest company compared to the competition.

@slatyatpion true Sony made a fair few studios but also bought a lot as well. I could see Microsoft investing money in creating studios in Asia or hunt for a few smaller studios to invest in. But if the ABK deal goes through Im not sure they need anymore western studios so some investment in those teams would be a bonus.

@themightyant everyone says but Psygnosis was small so it doesn't matter. But back then it did as they held 40% of all sales in Europe in 1995-96 which puts it in Activision Blizzard territory today & Sony is aware of that.

@themightyant fair dues. I can see how it's been twisted now. But even so 40% sales on one platform in a single region is impressive.
Where I stay Psygnosis titles were heavily bundled with the PlayStation.
Again another person to use value to discredit it's importance. Psygnosis was purchased by Sony for $20 million in 1993. Bobby Kodick & investors purchased Mediagenic in 1991 for $500,000.

@themightyant my stat was more to compare the scale of the Psygnosis acquisition as it was a turning point like is ABK today.