Microsoft shouldn't be generous when it comes to Bethesda exclusivity

Yeah I'd rather have poorer folks who can't afford both consoles have access to more games.

An angle I really haven't seen discussed here is that while it's good for consumers to have games on as many platforms as possible, it's also probably good for consumers to have more than one company making high-end consoles. As someone that much prefers Xbox controllers to PS controllers and has a bought a bunch of games in the Xbox ecosystem, it would be a bummer to me if MS left the console hardware business. And if PC/Xbox exclusives, like Elder Scrolls VI, allow MS to stay in the console market...that means more console competition, right? Especially considering a lot of Sony's competitive edge at the moment comes from exactly that -- console exclusives.

@tds418: Are MS competitive? They've just been outsold 2 to 1 last generation. I'm doubt ZeniMax will make that much of a difference, most of their games weren't big sellers. And Bethesda proper only put out one game last gen Fallout 4, I'm not sure anyone would trade their library and switch platforms for a one or two games.

@thepanzini: You don't have to be a direct threat to create competition. If there were no Xbox on the market, the PS5 would cost $600.

@thepanzini said:

Yes, because if Sony had sold the PS4 for $700 or $800 it would not have outsold the Xbox One 2 to 1. So the Xbox was exerting competitive pressure on Sony.

I'm guessing the PS5 would be close to $700 if there were no Series X.

There was a time when having Bethesda made games meant something and that was about six to eight years ago. Nobody want to hear it but the only good games coming out of Bethesda are the games made by other teams they publish under Zenimax.

So, yeah, let Microsoft keep those games on Xbox/PC exclusively. The real lose would Doom, Wolfenstein, and any other iD stuff.

@tds418: @hatking: I mean, why not the other way? If the money is in the blades(games) you can practically give away the box, no? Maybe much more competitive would have been better wording.

With MS being more platform agnostic and the exclusive being so lopsided last gen. Its not hard to imagine MS moving less hardware yet gaining a lot more subs for Game Pass, especially with ZeniMax who have a strong following on PC.

@thepanzini: I don’t follow. Consoles aren’t the money maker because they’re expensive to produce. They can’t give them away. They’re exorbitantly expensive and still sometimes sold at a loss–something PlayStation is doing as a direct response to Xbox coming in low.

Xbox has been a money sink for Microsoft for decades and I doubt they’ll abandon their hardware just as soon as they invested a few billion in that platform. Game Pass is absolutely a push for them, but it isn’t a replacement for consoles. If they can make the Netflix of games and sell you the hardware you use it on, they’ll do that. And if you don’t want their box, maybe they’ll get you to sub on PC.

Anyway, there’s a sudden underselling of Bethesda here. We might not like their recent work, but that’s very online bubble thinking. Being the Skyrim 2 box is all a lot of people will need to hear in five years to know which console they’re buying. It’d be nice if that shook out differently, but unless PlayStation allows a Game Pass app on their store, it doesn’t sound like that’ll be the case.

@tds418: If Microsoft's subscription service is a hit and their games are desirable, i don't see why they would want to leave the hardware market. It's true that these boxes themselves are sold at a loss, but at the same time all these boxes act as vectors for people to give their money to Microsoft. You want to have a deep market penetration, and offering a console-solution is a way to capture an important slice of the pie. There are tons of people that will never turn to a desk for their entertainment needs and want to use their very expensive and very bigly monitor in the livingroom for their relaxing hours. Even Playstation is now drip feeding some games to the PC with the idea that it wouldn't affect their hardware sales all that much and that the Playstation audience will continue to buy a console to sit in front of their big TV for gaming. I imagine the same goes for Xbox. (Yes there's nothing stopping people from hooking up a PC to their TV, but that's an awkward hassle for most households and those people rather buy a dedicated gameconsole that fits their furniture)

Hell, as a PC owner, if i bought like 80 games in the next decade, knowing that they would also function on a console and i decided to buy the latest Microled 16K HDRGoldGoldPlusPlus + Dolby Omegasphere Brain support TV in 2030, i would want to make use of that new TV with all it's groundbreaking new features while sinking away in my sofa.

@hatking: If I read wrong then ignore but you seem to indicate if MS was not in the picture it would cause Sony for some reason charge a much higher for their box than necessary, if they had complete market dominace they very easily take a bigger loss knowing they'll have a bigger share in game sales.

I'm not underselling ZeniMax but outside a handful of titles Fallout, Skyrim, and Doom most of their other games sell around ~2m they're not going to move substantial hardware. Even then Fallout 4 doing 10m is very different than Skyrim 30m and the latter is a long way off, Doom 2016 was only a 4m seller and with it predominantly being from PC and a sequel to Eternal is not coming any time soon.

Starfield is a big question mark it could and should shift consoles, but we are early in the generation and most people buying atm will already be somewhat invested. Would one game cause any of them to shift in significant numbers given Sony's been releasing 2-3 prestige games every year since 2013 the exclusive ratio is weighted so much in their favour, even then in an ideal world MS are probably 2-3 years away and that's just matching, by then the general consensus will likely already be set.

@thepanzini: IDK ps3 and PS4 were abject failures in Japan. I imagine the giant box that is PS5 will do worse. With even Switch conquering some of the next gen graphic intensity with their own cloud gaming for games like AC: Odyssey and Control most Japanese customers already have a box (in the Switch) that can handle the edgier non-Sony exclusives, which they didn’t care about anyway. Microsoft has a bigger in to everybody’s phone and computer (nobody is clamoring for Horizon or a days gone on pc.. no groundswell to speak of). and if they are still manufacturing the One-S and can leverage xcloud through a one-s browser I might not be so keen on picking up a Series-X because the price of that translates to about 30 months of game pass a the full month to month rate. I’m playing the latest games without a big sloppy PS5 that the assumption is will be available but when manufacturing push comes to shove manufacturing at a loss prior to competing with fridge manufacturers and every other kind of device is going to put the squeeze on Sony who is expecting economy of scales in 2022 not 2025 (we all assume thing go back to normal.. don’t think so). The pandemic darlings that come out are going to be the Indy games and remasters. Not the well trodden 3rd person Sony repetitious ad infinitum staples. Game development in the world of telephone is going be terrible and I’m looking forward to remasters and what Microsoft can do with their old catalog that is minus microtransactions which are going to ramp up exponentially as a means to save studios.

Bethesda has more than enough games for me to get cracking on my oldish laptop which is going to keep me in PC ecosystem for months while games for PS5 underperform. 4 million doom sales. If everybody that owned a PS5 in 2021 bought ratchet that might be 4 million copies. Doubt it.

@senorsucks2suck: I don't see how the decline of the console market in Japan is proof of anything. Also PS4 moved more software in Japan than the PS3 did and it was much more profitable. Sony are clearly much happier with worldwide success, than a title with modest success in Japan failing to gain any traction in the rest of the world.

Despite the Switch's enormous success Sony still has the lion share of the console market. Success for the Switch is not mutually exclusive, their targeting different markets.

I'm pretty sure last months NPD only had one indie darling most people are buying the usual suspects, Mile Morles was the 4th best selling game in the US and did not chart on the PS4, and landed on the top 10 best selling chart last year with little than a month out. And a quarter of PS5 owner were new into the ecosystem.

This is simply not how monopolies work. If Sony is the only company selling a high-end console, they will sell it for more than they would otherwise. If they could easily sell it for a "bigger loss," why not do that now and crush the Xbox's market share?

@tds418: That's not true though. Games are where the moneys made, pricing your hardware at a much higher cost will only impead your growth and user base. Atari is a prime example of this they had a monopoly in the US and they took big losses on hardware to push software.

@ryusko: yeah tell Sony that when they're moneyhatting exclusives away.

Too much bias over here. When Sony do it. Noone cares. Ms do it. They're evil and should share games.

@thepanzini: Miles was a budget game. It's not hard to hit the NPD charts when the games people actually are playing are older releases like Rainbow, Fortnite or Warzone.. Fall Guys probably made as much money or more than Miles Morales did despite being free, all things considered. Evidenced by Sony buying the studio. As streaming picks up on planet earth more and more people are going to drift to a PC. Everybody wants to be the next Tatman or whatever and doing that from a PC is really kind of the gateway to the impossible. Which is bigger? The controversy leading up to Last of Us 2 or the discourse around the game post release? Single player games need that pre-hype to have any kind of launch hype. And post launch hype of a single player experience is just not a thing anymore.

@senorsucks2suck: Wasn't Mediatonic bought by Epic, not Sony? Fall Guys was just a Playstation Plus reward for a bit.

@lapsariangiraff: Whoops. You're right. Buying away a cash cow.

I literally have no idea what any this has to do with me saying ZeniMax will probably not make a menial difference pushing Xbox's.

What does more people playing FTP games have anything to do with new PS5 owners buying Miles Morles, and if you think Falls Guys made more money your not living in the real world.

If streaming picks up at all, the console market is not going to just simply dissappear these are not mutally exclusive. Netflix hasn't been the end of TV & movies. Streaming also has a very very long road Stadia has woefully underperformed, even Spencer's described streaming as an additive not a supplement.

Nintendo & Sony have 30 years plus in games and legions of fans, even the Xbox One at its lowest point still sold ~50m all three have a core audience that is not going anywhere. Content is king Disney+ is a prime example all three could easily pivot if necessary.

Folks buying FIFA & COD are never going move to PC its a vastly different experience and no logical reason to think so.

Spiderman sold 20m copies it has been consistently on the charts over the last two years, without any controversy unless you count puddlegate or live service elements. GoT, God of War, Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon are all 10m plus sellers, are they not a thing anymore?

Singleplayer games by their nature are one and done experiences they will never be high on any most played charts outside the first few months, but that doesn't refute their value just cause Fortnite is more popular.

Post launch hype of a single player experience is just not a thing anymore.

I have no idea why anyone should care about a game having more or less hype around it over another, these games are still selling and moving hardware.

"When Sony do it. Noone cares" - Empirically false. But don't let facts stop you.

I know this post was made five days ago and maybe someone else has made this point...

...but it seems like MS is way more interested in being a service with Xbox consoles as the "easiest, official point of entry" for that service. What if Microsoft gets some sort of stripped-down version of Game Pass running on the Playstation and Nintendo products? Then they're making money on every games console. This would make it easier for users to jump over to Xbox if they so chose, or if they chose to go to Playstation, that's not a lost revenue stream. Sure, it's less of a revenue stream, but they could still get something from that user.

Is that absurd? I mean, compared to the way consoles have been done in the past, sure, but the way things were in 90's and 00's seems to be disappearing anyway. Microsoft has pretty much achieved Netflix for games in the form of Game Pass, and unlike Netflix I don't see Game Pass splitting off into a thousand different services because getting those services up and running doesn't seem to be easy or cheap.

In any case, I would agree entirely that Microsoft isn't doing anything from the bottom of their hearts. Some of their actions might be good for the consumer and I like a lot of what they're doing, but I don't want one company to have their hands in every cookie jar.

I think there's a reason to why they recently said "platforms where Game Pass exists" vs "Xbox and PC". I could just as likely be reading too much into things.