??? The media attacking Sony for FF exclusives?? Rather, the first reactions and articles were always those of reasoning and praising the signing of these agreements
Are you from an alternate dimension? Did you read the articles the rest of us were reading?
Every time MS announces an agreement of this type we all know that the complete terms will be known the next day because the massive pressure starts from the moment it is announced...
No this is 2016 PTSD; the press haven't been against Microsoft getting exclusives in
years. Hell, the vast majority were cheering for them to buy Zenimax and ABK, and were salivating at MS making all those games Xbox (console) exclusives.
Whether it is because MS has historically been weaker against these campaigns and Sony is stronger (the famous blacklist) or whatever...anyone who sees equal treatment in that regard is lying to themselves.
What? If anything Sony are the meek ones; they just let all types of FUD fester on end to the point of being annoying. MS almost always put Phil, Sarah, Booty or paid shills like Jez, Tom Warren etc. out there to campaign for Xbox 24/7 and control every narrative they can.
??? With Stalker 2 the next question to the Studio was where the PS5 version was. Articles affirming the multiplatformity of the game to undermine the potential of the agreement and criticizing the decision..... until just days later the terms and even the exact duration of the exclusivity time were leaked....(3 months). You don't see that in every Sony third party exclusive game.
Because it was revealed as a timed exclusive. So of course they were gonna ask when the PS version would release.
We don't see that with Sony 3P exclusives because as we've seen with FF XVI and Rebirth, Square-Enix & Sony are more than happy to mention the timed exclusivity period right there in advertisement fine-print.
Ravenlok and Echo Gen?? That you point out games of this caliber says it all.You will have missed it because, indeed as always, the first reactions were those of "when on PS5?" and disregarding the suitability of the agreement even when MS funds part or all of the development
Okay if Ravenlok & Echo Generation are "no big deal" (even if there are players on other platforms not Steam who'd like to play them but can't because they're Xbox exclusives), then why are all these supposed Xbox fans getting mad over super-old games like Tomba and the Capcom Marvel collection skipping Xbox? Surely those aren't massive games at all like Perfect Dark, South of Midnight, Fable, DOOM etc. that were all revealed coming to Xbox at the Showcase as (timed) exclusives, right?
Is it perhaps because the size of the game doesn't really matter and shouldn't excuse it out of the conversation when discussing exclusivity of 3P games being done on both sides (all sides, really: Nintendo does it too)?
I see your point, but Echo Generation and Ravenlok are not even in the shadow of FF in terms of relevance and their profile. If you're going to start counting small games, it's gonna become a real long list.
Well a game is a game, is it not? It shouldn't matter if those titles don't have the profile of FF; there is still an audience for those games on PlayStation that can't play them on PlayStation because they are console exclusives on Xbox.
Also I think FF's profile is somewhat exaggerated; XVI and even Rebirth have sold at I'd assume the typical pace of prior console-exclusive FF games, yet the media has tried hard to paint them both as financial failures (and pin that on PS5 exclusivity). The FF games were never 15-20 million sellers the way a TLOU, COD or GOW have been, let alone 30+ million sellers like Mario games, GTA, etc.
Also, for the STALKER 2 deal, we already know its term from official documents. 99% of third parties don't usually reveal that kind of info.
TBF those documents were leaked, it's the only reason we know about its exclusivity status. Although IIRC Microsoft outright mentioned the 3-month exclusivity period shortly after reveal.