That rumour doesn't exist unless you mean COD in which case Microsoft already told NY Times this month that it'll remain on PlayStation guaranteed for 10 years.
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I think from a purely theoretical standpoint I have 3 different points of view
1) gamepass makes financial savings sense for those who want to choose that option. It also potentially drives that service to get more subs and therefore more content
2) the game will be Multiplatform, ubiquity is one of the major selling points of the cod platform. It's everywhere and it's frequently updated. But consumers may get stronger support for their purchases if MS decides to deannualise the product which JS has hinted at I think
3) Xbox consumers will have a stronger draw against being ignored by studios and publishers in their rollout schedules. Less chance of PlayStations advantage contracts like the final fantasy deals
bonesawisready5
In addition to all that, the nascent cloud gaming market which is already littered with failed efforts may be much slower to grow.
But those consumers are not limited to game pass only, they can buy the games on Xbox, PS, PC or Nintendo in some cases? How would it hurt to have options? It's like a movie isn't on Netflix but it's available to purchase on Amazon, VUDU, PSN, XBL, etc. yeah it would be nice if it was in the subscription they paid for but that is not a barrier imo.
Ehhh no way third party publishers didn't push it too. No way Xbox doesn't raise prices too when the time comes when their flood of next gen games from studios they bought come out. Take Two, AB and EA and ubi all love the $70. Not saying wasn't chomping at the bit but that didn't happen in a vacuum. Like Xbox one used game drm, big publishers wanted it and a console maker decided they wanted it too.
That is nice and ideal but I fail to see Xbox making that take off if google/nvidia/PlayStation/Netflix/Amazon can't get consumers to use other devices they aren't used to using for games. They're each different and we should have access from browsers, I just don't think that streaming only market will grow as much as others might think. In terms of streaming ONLY gamers who don't already own a PC or console. I certainly hope they are successful where others have failed.
More accessibility is a good thing but AB could just do that without being bought right? I mean yes I know they won't without Xbox coz Microsoft WANTS it to happen but if that's what the market wants AB would have to do it in some multi platform way (ex: put their games on PSN and Xb and any platform that streams)
Imo if two other trillion dollar companies can't make game streaming take off with all of its potential boons for accessibility, I'm not optimistic about Microsoft's chances but again, hope they do
I get it but this is a myth. Game companies will always make mind boggling exclusive deals like tomb raider 2015 or Octopath 2 not being on Xbox despite 1 being on game pass this year.
Sony, Nintendo, Apple, and even Xbox will continue to make deals and some platforms will continue to be ignored. If Xbox cared about that (and this is true for Sony and Nintendo too) they wouldn't be planning on making any of the massive multi platform IPs they purchased (elder scrolls) Xbox and Pc only.
But yes ideally everyone should get every game that is reasonable, tech permitting.
It is kind of insane to me that Sony has been able to utilise their sheer weight in the industry to push for guarantees on a merger. Surely that would never happen elsewhere? That they can essentially "whinge" enough to boards that Microsoft feels compelled to create these deals in order to better succeed is somewhat crazy of a concept.
It is incredibly difficult not to draw correlation to the fact that Sony themselves successfully remove titles from other platforms in this generation and previous ones. Sure, Microsoft could have paid more to do just that, but what if that isn't always possible due to those publishers/developers only going to Sony? Again, it's just mind blowing to me the amount of push Sony is doing with their industry weight just so they can come out with something.
It is incredibly difficult not to draw correlation to the fact that Sony themselves successfully remove titles from other platforms in this generation and previous ones. Sure, Microsoft could have paid more to do just that, but what if that isn't always possible due to those publishers/developers only going to Sony? Again, it's just mind blowing to me the amount of push Sony is doing with their industry weight just so they can come out with something.
It's The Economist, they're gonna allign with wherever the money is
This is where people lose me, this doesn't make any sense to me. Because Xbox has more Call of Duty players on their system Square is going to put out their non FF JRPG's that currently avoid Xbox because of low interest? If PlayStation loses Call of Duty marketing they'd likely use some or all of that marketing spend elsewhere. Things like their Final Fantasy deal would be more likely to happen not less.
Xbox doesn't do big marketing campaigns for big games with exclusive X,YZ currently because those games don't launch on a subscription service. It's not like Sony has cornered the market on third party AAA marketing and perks.
[1] Sure, but being on Game Pass is clearly better and cheaper for those who have Game Pass than buying separately.
[2] Sure, but the fact remains Sony was quick to raise prices in markets they dominate, in no small part because they dominate.
[3] Yes, it will take a large investment to push it. Like this one for example.
[4] It's not a myth. It's obviously going to be cheaper for Sony to pay for exclusive marketing or feature content, or exclusivity windows, to shut out a smaller competitor, than vice versa.
Eh, it's business. I'm sure there were lots of big companies arguing vehemently against NVidia acquiring ARM. In this case though, a ten year deal doesn't really cost MS anything, if they were already planning to stay on PS that long anyway. I bet they'd have been willing to stay on PS for at least the lifecycle of the PS5 at a minimum, even if no specific concessions were required.
I can't believe it's almost been a year.
By the time this probably closes I would have gone through 9 months of a pregnant wife and have a 6 month old. Ridiculous lol.
I think it's more of Sony not being a part of "Big Tech" like Microsoft. If it were Nintendo buying ABK, then they would still complain, but I don't know if regulators would use the same level of scrutiny as they do for Microsoft because of their history, OS, and cloud infrastructure.
Yes, I agree but I still can buy games off games pass. I am still paying $300 to $500 for a device and then $120-$180 a year for game pass. I am not at a disadvantage if I have to buy a game off game pass. I just got burned by this with eastward and MH Rise and it sucks but I still have options. I would never be a 100% only game pass gamer and I would not want to reduce people's options just to cater to my needs.
true. I'm sure Microsoft will have to raise prices sooner than later as Phil said. Who knows. All companies will, they are not our friends. The market will reject it if they don't like it. Sadly gamers don't reject shit lately (looking at you CP2077) no matter how bad a game launches or how toxic the developer is so I think that's a bigger problem.
Gamers let games they don't deem to the right value proposition bomb all the time. They could've done that for $70 and we still buy them. I don't like it but sony (not if it was another company) forced no one to do it.
You're right. I hope it works. That said the other 2T companies, Amazon and Alphabet, either pulled out of cloud gaming or don't really promote it much despite their extensive marketing muscles. 2/3 companies had the funds to do it, one tried harder than anyone else, and they've all largely failed or realized a fraction of their potential. I wouldn't take AB games away from others to make this happen as it seems like it's not going to happen at all imo.
True. But all companies will do that. If Xbox manages to get on top of the gaming market, have 50-100M streaming only consumers and 100M console owners plus PC market, you better believe they will make those same deals. Nintendo and Sony will too. I mean Xbox does it now, just on a smaller scale. Yakuza LAD next gen version being exclusive for half a year despite huge player base on PS, Xbox console timed exclusives like Tunic, Sable, etc (idk if THESE specific games did have deals but when you see a dozen or so day 1 game pass games not hit PS or switch until 6-12 months later i get the impression they do have a deal)
It's really not that surprising, this is very large acquisition, the largest in gaming ever and by Microsoft. PlayStation is by far the company currently closest aligned with Call of Duty and the one with the most to lose if it were to be made exclusive. Is it really the surprising that anticompetition watch dogs are listening to their concerns or want some assurances that Microsoft / Xbox won't make it exclusive?
It's not just about the company millions of people bought a box in part to play a very popular game every year, if an acquisition changes how that works or forces millions to buy it a different way the FTC or whoever will take notice.
[1] You literally just described a disadvantage. It's the difference between a Game Pass subscriber needing to spend another $70, or not. And it doesn't reduce anyone else's options in the process.
[2] Nobody is taking AB games away from others, except possibly future non-CoD games, which aren't a large amount of the games market, and were never guaranteed to be released on certain platforms anyway.
[3] True, they will all do that. With the acquisition and a more equitable marketshare to Sony, Xbox owners could benefit from more deals being made for more Xbox content, and Sony might have to spend a bit more than now to keep doing the same sort of deals. Nothing anti-competitive about a smaller rival gaining share from the larger rival.
If regulators block this deal It would hurt consumers right to be able to consume the games with a low barrier of entry.
You want to pay $70 for your ABK games? That option will always be there. Always.
Regulators would be effectively forcing a subset of the market to pay $70 instead of giving them the option to enjoy these games at a much lower price.
If they're really looking out for consumers there's basically no reason to block this.
You want to pay $70 for your ABK games? That option will always be there. Always.
Regulators would be effectively forcing a subset of the market to pay $70 instead of giving them the option to enjoy these games at a much lower price.
If they're really looking out for consumers there's basically no reason to block this.
This.
It's mostly because it's MS. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. would also get more shit than Sony, Nintendo or other non-megacorps.
They won't sit idle by and let one of the biggest corps get even bigger. And tbh that's exactly their job. To throw a wrench into certain corps plans to get bigger and bigger.
They tried to split up MS into 2 companies in the early 2000s and they surely didn't throw that idea away forever.
As much as i can understand the wish to see Activision-Blizzard get more creative freedom under XBOX, and as a Game Pass user i would love to see that, i can totally understand how regulators look at MS and shake their head at it getting bigger and bigger.
the better xbox does the more expensive those deals get for sony. with xbox getting the cod marketing it will help them sell more consoles. so it might end up being closer to how it was during the 360/ps3 gen where games came out on both consoles but had exclusive dlc
It makes the potential value of the service less and takes less options off the menu for consumers, I'm saying more people will be able to play the game if Microsoft buys it not less because of game pass + cloud stuff.
Nintendo and Microsoft have not increased prices when they could have now, sure they will probably increase it in the future to match the market. The way Sony increased the prices everywhere but the country where Microsoft is most strong is pretty telling about market leadership and how it can effect this sort of stuff and if the ABK deal doesn't go through the gap could widen or stay the same which makes this sort of stuff happen more.
The thing is people are using xCloud sure right now it's not the best thing going right now but it is still early days and I don't think Microsoft would be pushing this hard if they thought it wasn't going to work. You mention Google/Nvidia/PlayStation/Netflix/Amazon and how they didn't take off, well that's because all of those companies didn't exactly try hard. Sure Google tried for the first year or so but then gave up real quick, Amazon is in the same boat and so is Netflix and Playstation they all didn't exactly push cloud gaming that hard and stick to it for very long.
If Microsoft can crack the cloud gaming nut it will eventually allow more companies like Amazon and Google to come back and go for another attempt because if Microsoft can make cloud gaming more mainstream and get people used to this idea of playing anywhere on any device it is much easier for people to try out new offerings. It's the same thing with Netflix and video streaming, once they made a market for that type of content, it made it so much easier for new players to come in and grow much faster than they did, just look how fast Disney+ grew and I don't think that would've been the case without Netflix.
Sure it can be done without buying ABK but buying ABK speeds up everything, I also doubt that ABK were ever going to support a subscription service or cloud gaming like Xbox does as well, it actually seems like ABK are against subscription services. It seems like the only way for customers to be able to get ABK games on a sub service is this buyout.
The big difference between Microsoft, Amazon and Google is Microsoft has Xbox and has been in the gaming industry proper for 20 years, they understand how it all works through their ups and downs. Google thought they could just stroll into the industry and use their brand power and just become an instant hit, well that clearly didn't work out now did it. The reason why these companies have failed is because they just simply don't get the gaming industry and how it works.
Once Microsoft gets cloud gaming into a better spot (if they can) Google and Amazon will see how to do it and probably come back in and try again, like the Netflix model I mentioned before.
Idk if you can say it was bullshit. Its just taking one rumor for another
I think it's mostly down to big bad tech giant Microsoft, look I get they probably be more tough on huge companies like Microsoft but I don't feel like this is the case here. If this deal was about cloud stuff or OS stuff I fully get it but this is video games and they're firmly last place in the industry.
More players on a console = more potiental customers to target AKA harder for other parties to purchase exclusive rights too if there is a bigger pool of people to miss out on. Deals like FF for Sony are going to be LESS common after this deal goes through because if it does indeed cause more players to Xbox, like I said above Sony will need to cover a larger revenue hit from these publishers.
The main reason why Sony has managed to get these deals in the first place is the 2:1 sales lead, they don't need to cover as many loss sales as they do if it was 1:1. This is why the deal could hurt consumers in that way which people don't think about. If anything this if the deal does stop Sony for paying 3rd parties to exclude Xbox systems then that's a good thing for all consumers because it means more people get to play it and Sony would most likely invest in more 1st party content instead of paying for content to be excluded on other platforms which gives no consumers any benefit.
I just really doubt Xbox is somehow unable to make these deals if they wanted to with big publishers. Everything is focused around Game Pass, they just announced a big deal with Capcom for MH Rise. Make a huge deal of the P5 on gamepass and marketed it like crazy. It doesn't feel like they can't or it's hard for them to go out and get marketing for Hogwarts or whatever they just don't want to because it would never be day 1 gamepass and that's their focus.
Not really. If you listened to Hoeg (for whatever that's worth), you'd understand that in order for the FTC to get concessions from Microsoft, they would have to start putting together some sort of lawsuit. I think the problem was the word "likely" without the person writing the article understanding that it could just be a formality.
I think the FTC stuff was just BS because they always prepare for a court case part of their whole investigation process, if they sue they need a case ready to go and it would be stupid if they go "we're gonna sue! but please wait 6 months while we figure out how we're gonna do it and write up a case" lol. I think it's probably FTC just purely trying to get some headlines out there to scare Microsoft that they "might" do something, just a reminder, or it was simply someone misunderstanding how it all works.
but having games on game pass while maintaining multi platform status IS the ultimate options. Why not just put stuff on GP but let people pay for other platforms too?
You would be reducing the options for 200M consumers (switch + ps4, but I know that's not exact number for active users who knows that) just to have those games be rolled into your subscription on ONE platform. How is that MORE options?
Well yes that is taking away games from consumers who largely have gotten them for 20-30 years. Spyro, Crash, Tony Hawk and countless AB IPs have typically been on Ps, and Nintendo to an extent too. It absolutely would be taking away games. Just coz they aren't selling 20M a year like COD doesn't mean it isn't still bad. I mean if they want games to be available to all, why not continue releasing those established IPs with player bases on those systems, when there are 100M each (roughly 200M) used from Nintendo and Sony (if they repeat ps4 and switch success) if getting it to most consumer is the priority?
I mean who knows how the deal shakes out but those games add up for consumers. Again, they DO have the option of buying an Xbox, playing on PC or just finding another game but it's still very much removing an option they had for decades.
xbox isn't poor. They still sold like 60M consoles last gen while having the WORST PR possible at the start. Series is on track to do even better. I wouldn't really describe them as being "small" even if they sell less. They're still a 2T company imo. It's insane they can even fathom a 70B purchase.
Im more pointing to the fact that they were gonna sue no matter what "just cause".
I love the lifecycle of each new headline.
Politico puts out article with strong headline
"That headline seems to be clickbait, doesn't quite match the text"
"How dare you accuse Politico of such a thing, do you know who they are?"
Little later from a different analyst...
"Actually that story may be stretched a bit with the author not understanding the situation."
Politico puts out article with strong headline
"That headline seems to be clickbait, doesn't quite match the text"
"How dare you accuse Politico of such a thing, do you know who they are?"
Little later from a different analyst...
"Actually that story may be stretched a bit with the author not understanding the situation."
its not that ms couldn't afford the deals its that they didnt make business since to make them(paying more then they expect to make). which is why them focusing on getting gamepass ports of older games is there current strategy. If xbox and ps were closer in numbers companies would be more reluctant to make exclusive deals or they will be asking for alot more then they are now.
[1] They are not going to reduce options. They are going to expand options for CoD, to Switch and Game Pass and cloud, the latter two of which ABK on its own had no plan on doing. Therefore, this deal opens up CoD to more gamers, and for potentially cheaper prices since Game Pass subscribers won't need to pay full price to play the game. You seem to be under the mistaken impression it will only be available to buy or play on Game Pass. They are explicitly not going to foreclose, as shown with their 10 year written offer for feature parity.
[2] True, that's worse for some gamers, not enough to move the needle for a regulator, and offset by a larger number of gamers having more access to ABK games via cloud in the future.
We have to look at the why though, specifically with Alphabet. They wanted Stadia to feed into Google Search, Youtube, and their various other services that push ads and collect data. Once it didn't prove to be doing enough of that function, they were out. Data is still Alphabet's core business, and anything that doesn't serve that directly isn't valuable to them (and they aren't patient to make that happen over longer periods). Their business model was also short-sighted.
Luna is TBD, because for Amazon it's about selling you more stuff. If Luna, as a streaming platform, doesn't entice more spending on Twitch, or doesn't filter into user shopping through Amazon directly, they will see it as a failure. Look at how they're reducing the Alexa stuff (at least hardware) currently - it just hasn't fed into their core business the way they anticipated.
MS wants to push Azure in the cloud space in general (promote corporate users) and services outside of the corporate space. This will, undoubtedly, achieve that for them. It makes sense for them to "make it viable." Once they have, and people become more comfortable with subscriptions for games, or cloud gaming, in general, then the barrier for others to enter has lessened and competition will happen.
This reflects what I mentioned as well, in how the approach matters, but I want to highlight what you said about experience (bolded) - MS also had a chunk of time where gaming for them was in question. The people in charge at the time weren't sure of Xbox being a value-add to the company. The reason that changed, along with a new CEO, was how the brand was pitched to benefit the business overall. That's the only reason they're putting so much financial backing into all of this. Satya Nadella believes in gaming as a core business, whereas Sundar Pichai clearly doesn't.
Phil hitching the Xbox and gaming trailer onto Azure was probably the biggest thing that saved Xbox, tying Azure to xCloud and tying xCloud to Xbox hardware pretty much secured the Xbox hardware for the long term as silly as it sounds with the need to not own a console with xCloud. Microsoft is going to look at Xbox hardware more as xCloud server blades they just happen to sell as consoles to consumers.
Yeah. Concessions with the FTC were always more likely that not. Believing that Lina Khan would let a trillion dollar company buy a $60 billion one without concessions would've been wishful thinking.
Besides, if you look hard enough at a deal of this size, I'm sure regulators somewhere can find something they don't like, which would be fair.
I found the part some regulators don't like. First three words of the first PR in January.
"Microsoft to acquire"
Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device - Stories
Legendary games, immersive interactive entertainment and publishing expertise accelerate growth in Microsoft’s Gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud. REDMOND, Wash. and Santa Monica, Calif. – Jan. 18, 2022 – With three billion people actively playing games today, and fueled by a...
news.microsoft.com
I'm curious about what that looks like for MS down the line. Right now, one of the talking points being a fair price for Azure ignores that xCloud isn't really running on Azure in earnest. For someone to use xCloud infrastructure at a fair price means developing for Xbox as a platform. Will it and WIndows become more indistinguishable in their root? Will the Series W(hatever) truly just be a PC with fixed specs? Are we heading back to the 3D0 model??? /s
It's interesting to wonder what the future will look like.
I found the part some regulators don't like. First three words of the first PR in January.
"Microsoft to acquire"
Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device - Stories
Legendary games, immersive interactive entertainment and publishing expertise accelerate growth in Microsoft’s Gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud. REDMOND, Wash. and Santa Monica, Calif. – Jan. 18, 2022 – With three billion people actively playing games today, and fueled by a...
How can you possibly suggest this with a straight face? Microsoft have been in good stead with most regulatory bodies for some time now.
OP
OP
Nothing really new, it's just an opinion piece. But coming from The Economist has more weight:
What I'm mainly trying to say is PlayStation can sign all these third party games to marketing deals, Or the odd timed exclusive, not because Xbox is priced out from it to be worth it to them. it's not worth it to Xbox because those games are too expensive to launch on Game Pass. They don't seem interested in them essentially if they can't be on GamePass which is obviously the more expensive deal than just agreeing to market something for exclusive perks and then still being a day 1 purchase
Yeah. There's no way I'd go that far. It's Microsoft's largest acquisition. Microsoft. A trillion dollar behemoth tied to several markets. That's fertile grounds to investigate, just like it would be for Apple or Google if they wanted to spend tens of billions on an acquisition. I can guarantee those would go to a phase two as well and likely involve concessions.
...is it, though? Or is to to enforce laws that are on the books in order to ensure that dominant players don't abuse their market position and create an illegal monopoly or an anticompetitive situation?
If Microsoft wanted to get into media and buy, say, Lionsgate or AMC Networks, there'd be basically no legal reason to block the deal. If they wanted to get into publishing and buy Simon & Schuster, there'd really be no reason to block that. Heck, if they wanted to buy, like, Panera Bread, there'd basically be no reason to block that.
There is no regulatory-set maximum legal size for a company. All of the laws that are on the books are about how that company behaves in the market and how they effect their competition. Entering multiple markets is fine. We might think the idea of Microsoft buying Panera Bread is kind of gross but legally there's nothing wrong with it and from a certain perspective, entering and growing their position in new markets is how they're encouraged to grow. Because what's the alternative path to revenue growth? It's not "just don't grow;" we might be anti-capitalism but the laws really aren't.
I was mostly joking, and in part referring to the FTC's apparent anti big-tech agenda, where they seem willing to embarrass themselves in court pushing losing cases to try and stop acquisitions which are entirely legal.
Investigate? Yes, of course. Goal-seek an outcome because of politics? No.
In the case of Final Fantasy, some of those games legitimately sold around 10% of their totals or less on Xbox One. In a market where Xbox is selling about on par with PlayStation consoles deals like these would be much more expensive for Sony. Pretty much every IP under the sun selling worse on Xbox was the core reason full third party exclusives were relatively rare for Microsoft last gen outside of indies. Eventually it makes more sense to fund first party projects or unique titles that cannot exist otherwise than to pay to keep individual games off of competing hardware.
I suppose you could argue that a major license like Spider-Man PS4 would have been less likely to be okayed by Disney if the Xbox brand was selling 1:1 with PlayStation during that gen but the important thing here is that closer competition would require the PlayStation brand to shift their tactics by offering better services and expanding their genre/IP diversity.
It depends. Xbox could sell just as much as PS and if nothing is done to grow the audience of say Final Fantasy on Xbox those deals will still be cheap for Sony to get, even if you factor out the userbase difference big JRPGs sell disproportionately more on PS than they do on Xbox.
Just because something is technically legal doesn't necessarily make it right. That should be obvious to anyone, especially if you're familiar with corporate America's history and how they shape lawmaking. Legality is also mostly pointless when we're talking about many international regulatory laws and authorities. If one country says it's legal but several others don't, then what? Justifying large acquisitions like these as "legal" is myopic and dismissive of potential harmful effects.
Microsoft had an opportunity to work with Marvel as well. They declined. It wasn't about sales being close to their competitor.
[History of Video Games Vol.2] Early History of Marvel Games (included discussions with Activision, Microsoft & Sony)
An interesting segment on Marvel Game's early history and how they reached out to both Microsoft and Sony to explore potential first-party deals, how they had to negotiate with Activision to terminate the Spider-Man deal earlier than deadline, and some extra details on Sony/Insomniac/Marvel...
www.resetera.com
I also think the idea that Sony would "shift" their tactics is odd considering these deals have always been a part of their brand, and these deals are part of the industry as a whole. All of them do these kind of deals. They aren't going to stop.
Being legal is being right in the context decades of history, precedents and informed judgement.
I disagree that legal is myopic, especially given the speculative theories of harm pursued by regulators and the power given to them by the clayton act.
In the AKB case, all the decisions so far have cleared it without concessions. So technically it'll be one or few countries saying it's illegal and most don't, once the whole thing is over.
And it's not like we're stuck with the wrong decision. A merger is not permanent. A block is permanent. If we were being reasonable we shouldn't apply permanent effects to speculative outcomes.
That escalated.
For it clearing in the US, all we care about it is whether it's legal or not, since if the FTC tries to block it MS will go to court. Whether the deal is "right" or "moral", I don't know, seems irrelevant in this context. I think we should all expect consistency from regulators, following their domestic laws, not a vague moral compass defining the outcome. That's no way to do huge mergers.
that's ultimately what happens though, in a lot of instances. there's a lot of arbitration happening across the board. i just care for how every so often regulators come under attack in this thread for doing their jobs in earnest to keep the marketplace fair. you're good tho, bro.
While I absolutely expect PlayStation to continue being a much stronger JRPG market than Xbox this gen, Microsoft going out of their way to secure ports of franchises like Dragon Quest, Persona, Tales of, Yakuza/Like a Dragon and more means they are pretty dedicated to growing the communities within their ecosystem. They very specifically targeted these games.
Either way, lets say there is no improvement to Final Fantasy sales ratio on Xbox for the next several years and those games continue to sell 10% of their total units on the hardware. I consider it unlikely for them to entirely stagnate, but that would still be an improvement with the Xbox Series line being closer to PlayStation 5 than Xbox One was to PlayStation 4.
My Spider-Man quote was what I theorized someone could argue against the point in my post, not something I specifically believe in. I expect licenses like this to continue and am personally betting that the Indiana Jones title by Machine Games will be Xbox/PC only.Microsoft had an opportunity to work with Marvel as well. They declined. It wasn't about sales being close to their competitor.
[History of Video Games Vol.2] Early History of Marvel Games (included discussions with Activision, Microsoft & Sony)
An interesting segment on Marvel Game's early history and how they reached out to both Microsoft and Sony to explore potential first-party deals, how they had to negotiate with Activision to terminate the Spider-Man deal earlier than deadline, and some extra details on Sony/Insomniac/Marvel...
I also think the idea that Sony would "shift" their tactics is odd considering these deals have always been a part of their brand, and these deals are part of the industry as a whole. All of them do these kind of deals. They aren't going to stop.
Sony will not stop outright with paid exclusive third party titles or content no, but deals like Final Fantasy VII Remake/Final Fantasy XVI and playable Spider-Man in Avengers will become much more expensive and they will eventually have to focus on enhancing their services or expanding their markets elsewhere to increase profits. Offering downloadable retro games that do not exist anywhere else is already an example of them attempting to add value to their platform by recognizing the strength of competitors in that context.