Fans of anything can go a little far. Remember when Kojima said he was going to make an Xbox exclusive? There were petitions. Threats were made. People felt personally betrayed.
Oh... well in that case.
I would say there is tremendous professional risk in going against what the market leader wants (Sony wanting to kill the deal).
3rd party can do what they want.
they couldnt sell them.
PSN had a plethora of PS3's sitting in warehouses that they needed to do something with in order to keep production lines running, as retooling, and reallocating those production lines was costly. That's the primary reason why early that gen, Sony was open to using PS3's for dedicated servers. In a few cases such as Warhawk, after the devs put together a few racks of PS3's, Sony agreed to invest PS3's themselves in order to expand the server nextwork. Of course this was due to the pushback Sony was recieving for the PS3's price at the time. This allowed them to make room in order to keep production lines going. Sony sold the PS3's for the racks at a discount. Which was a good way to move units without having to expose the public market to the cheaper prices.
Do we know of any game pass blocking deals on games Sony hasn't paid for marketing rights on?
That's a mighty accusation there bud, you got proof?
Of course they can. Of course i MS not only provided the hardware for free, they also assisted in setting it all up.
1) It's not just Sony.
So is it kind of like day 1 game pass games that skip PS at launch? The Ascent, 12 minutes, medium, Ark 2, etc. Don't tell me your concern only goes one way.
This sounds like a made up story to me. Sony were losing something like $300 at retail on each PS3 made on BOM alone. There is no reason to pump out more PS3s for the production line creating PS3s with BC chips, SD card readers and everything else to shove into server racks with an even greater loss. It would have been cheaper to temporarily halt production and pay for whatever storage you need for the surplus you've made. Why wouldn't Sony have wanted to sell those to the public cheaper instead?
They were still going with their dedicated servers and 256player games like MAG well into the generation (4 years into the gen) . They were releasing hardware revisions designed to cut cost by removing chips and card readers meaning they had adjusted to any demand discrepancy already meaning they had no issue trying to sell for cheaper (even getting the bad PR for feature removal) while still having those dedicated server games.
It was cost effective to have dedicated servers and it had it for an entire generation during the PS3, it was just more profitable to use p2p and charge for online which was why MS were doing it. As people became accustomed to paying this is where all of them went.
They didn't pivot towards single player games due to infrastructure though. They were using third party cloud providers for their infrastructure. GOW Ascension, Killzone shadowfall, Uncharted 4, TLOU Remastered, MLB, GT Sport, etc all had multiplayer. The issue was that they did not maintain a multiplayer audience with most of those except GT Sport and MLB because most people loved those other franchises for their single player, so those concentrated on single player only. Other franchises by other publishers did the opposite. Cut single player and did multiplayer only.
If you're the CMA, why seek out comments/opinion from other industry/market participants? If it truly did not matter?
Stop acting like this is something I invented out of thin air.
I'm aware of that obviously and you ignored the first part to try and make a dumb point.
Even if Sony didn't block it, there was no way Activision would approve it being on gsmepass day 1. Doesn't ms have marketing with Diablo IV? Look at Elden Ring, it's not on gamepass either, i guess that's Sony's fault too even tho ms has marketing rights?
He's talking about Activision being independent and a gamepass release being blocked by Sony. The fact of the matter is most publishers of big games don't want to release on gamepass day one or MS aren't paying the money required for them to cannibalize sales.
I actually think that a renewal of 5-10 years after re-evaluation by the regulatory bodies (mainly EC and CMA) will be something Microsoft offers in it's remedy package.
If only they were PS4s, I could download my consciousness into a robot.You're remembering wrong, Sony was using PS3's as servers.
MS had nothing like it at the time.
None of that's true.
It's clear big AAA games like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, AC Valhalla and Diablo IV do not want to be on Game Pass day 1.
Sounds like compete bullshit, especially Incognito having to buy them from Sony when they are/were Sony. Sounds to me he's trying to come up with a way that having those dedicated servers was actually a loss for Sony and not a wanted win. We can summon
davidjaffe
to confirm here even though I'm not sure he'll appreciate being dragged into this thread.
So it has no connection to anyone currently at MS. Got it. You know that Coke-A-Cola had actual cocaine in it years ago? Does that have any relevance to the soda today? Addias has a history of being connected to some terrible people during WWII. You think the company still has those connections? You realize Bill Gates isn't still at Microsoft right?Stop acting like this is something I invented out of thin air.
This phrase is so infamous that it has its own Wikipedia page.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
You will note that J Allard, one of the founders of Xbox was mentioning variants of it in his memos as far back as 1994. It's part of the company's DNA even if they are trying their hardest to deny it. Of course that will require that you actually read it, but I know that you will just come back with a question about psygnosis or whatever the fuck they tell you on the discord.
I hope the bing points are worth it btw.
My concern? You mean Microsoft's? I was pointing out why it makes sense for them, there's no concern on my end.
It helps the CMA to understand the industry, and it's also a part of the standard procedure. But an indie dev saying they're fine with the acquisition does not form the basis on which the CMA can make or change their decision -- unless the theory of harm applies to them.
They're paying for marketing rights for both and a part of that marketing rights agreement includes exclusion from PS or Xbox for both. Not sure what distinction you're trying to make here.
That those are 2 different things. Paying so you can market a game is different from paying so a competitor can't put it on their service. It's not like they are paying for exclusivity rights on their console, and not even on their own subscription service. They are paying to not have it on Game Pass.
So I don't get what you're saying here. Is sony paying for marketing rights or are you saying they're not paying for that? What you're saying doesn't make sense at all.
And that's why COD will always be multiformat. The business model is to sell to everyone.
Probably to drop the baggage of theor old name. Wouldve worked for both if they actually changed their posting style. But both continued with the same drivel so it's a strange one for sure.
Kingfey/fartynoob did the same. No idea why people do this.
I'm saying Sony is paying for multiple things, and one of those things is paying a publisher to not release a game on Game Pass, which has nothing to do with all the rest of the stuff Sony is paying the publisher for, like marketing rights.
Activision themselves said in their submissions they have no interest in being on subscription services.
No, they are not. They are only paying for the marketing rights.
Super easy for Microsoft to submit it in writing then, isn't it?
Sony didn't have a choice lol.. the MLB is more powerful.
It's no different and that's not what they're even doing . They are paying to market the game and part of that is where it's distributed so they can ensure a return and its not that they don't want it on PS+, it's right of first refusal on the service. Meaning that the dev has to offer it to Sony first if they want it on subscription before they go and offer it to others.
I still believe that there's a difference between marketing the game, and paying for some kind of exclusivity. I don't know why these two are thrown together, since they are two different parts of the same contract.
In both you're paying to have increased revenue from controlling distribution but it was more the fact that it seemed like you were saying one was marketing and one was exclusivity that had me confused.
It's based on the leaked RE8 contract. There is a timed "blocking right" on subscriptions in the same way there is for other timed blocking from systems but after that it becomes right of first refusal on subscriptions. So they possibly do want it on their sub, just not day 1.
Fun fact: Coca-Cola still imports large quantities of coca leaf today, since it's part of the original recipe. It doesn't contain the active ingredients in cocaine anymore though, but Coca-Cola still contain coca leaf extract.
Makes sense. The market participant letters are anecdotal at best. The one thing I would say it does is strengthen the CMA's trust that Microsoft will honor whatever deals/contracts it makes.
OK, so there is actually a timed blocking moment. That's the part I think is pretty dirty. I also wouldn't like if Microsoft would pay a publisher to not sell it in the Sony store and only give them the possibility to release it on PS+. I understand why Sony does this, it makes business sense for them, I just don't like that practice.
Why, how is it any worse than not selling it at all on the system or service?
Exclusivity in general is pretty shitty, but in that case you are paying so that people will buy your console, and join your community. In case of the blocking rights, you are paying to stagnate the growth of a different platform. As a Playstation gamer I would like them to use that money to get me more content, instead of using that money to withhold content from another platform. There's a small difference between that, and exclusivity.
