Bethesda cost 7.5 billion, magnitudes more than Gears. As Xbox CFO (who knows more than Riky the fanboy) already hinted, bigger Bethesda games will be on Playstation, simply because it would lose too much money to cut 50% or more of the sales. The day Xbox has tripled its market share (won't happen), yes they could be exclusive...
Good Lord, this gave me a good laugh
Please, don't ever become involved in running a business.
Firstly, you clearly have no concept of the scope of Microsoft's wealth.
They paid $8.6 billion for Skype, and wrote off a $6 billion loss two years later. $7.5 billion is a smaller purchase at this tier; it's not enough to challenge the very concept of what an exclusive platform holder is or does. You're laughable wrong if you think $7.5 billion is somehow too much money for Microsoft.
Secondly, you clearly have no concept of Microsoft's MO. Anyone who thinks fucking
Microsoft is going to share needs to cut back on their daily intake cope-ium. Microsoft 101: walk into an industry you want to dominate and write a blank cheque. Back when they wanted to enter the video game industry, they didn't fuck around: they walked up to Nintendo and offered to buy it. For cash. They were laughed out of the room, so, they went with plan B instead: build the Xbox platform from scratch, knowing they'd lose billions until the brand was established. So, Microsoft 102: In the industry you want to dominate, stop other people from getting the milk. A couple of hundred million for Rare, a couple of hundred million for Bungie - which pissed Steve Jobs off - and a couple hundred million here and there for some exclusive deals, and boom: Xbox brand is now a thing. Easy. With Bethesda, they could've had marketing deals for pennies in comparison, like with Cyberpunk. Heck, they could've had Gamepass day one access for the next ten years for every Bethesda title for a billion and change. They didn't want either of those things; they bought the cow, because Microsoft doesn't like to share the milk.
Now, at this point you'll cling to "but.. but.. Minecraft" and magically ignore
every other purchase in the history of Microsoft including all of their other video game development purchases they've made since Minecraft. So, ok, Minecraft. That decision was made outside of the Xbox division, and according the Nadella,
it was about cultural relevance, at a time when Microsoft was on the way out in the consumer space. So, Microsoft paid $2.5 billion dollars to make sure the Microsoft and Xbox logos were associated with the biggest game in the world, and it's paid for itself many, many times over. There's a reason Coca Cola likes to get its vending machines into schools, after all.
Thirdly, you clearly have no concept of platform adoption techniques. So, pick your strategy; here, it looks like Microsoft's is some variation of the little big horn: surround you with their stuff until you crack and buy in because you just can't not do it. They just bought up so many established brands that people who weren't looking at their platforms now can't
not look at their platform. Gamers will cave and buy in because Microsoft just so happens to have a cheap console, and a cheap subscription service, where you can get access to whichever franchise you love. Oh, you're on PC? No problem, their platform is on PC. Oh, you're on mobile? No problem, their platform is on mobile. Oh, not sure if it's for you? Try the first month for $1. This approach drives platform adoption because who the heck
won't pickup Gamepass to play Starfield or Elder Scrolls VI? Microsoft are banking that once you're in, you'll realise everything else that's there and stick around. That all drives platform revenue; DLC, Microtransactions, subscriptions, game sales, and so forth. $7.5 billion is a small price to pay for the millions upon millions of new platform adopters it'll create. They're at 18 million on Gamepass as of today and they haven't even dropped big exclusives yet. Easy to say: their strategy is working and they're just getting started.
And lastly, as an extension of the above, you clearly have no concept of how platform exclusives play into adoption. Sony made close to a $1 billion last quarter off of their PS Store platform alone, mostly off of third party title purchases, because Sony have aggressively driven adoption of their platform. The sales of any one title are largely useless when we're talking that kind of money at a platform level. Your terrible opinion is basically "Xbox is too small to have such big exclusives". So, how do you propose they grow their platform
without such big exclusives? So, let's look at PlayStation with your broken logic. Obviously, Sony
must be porting Spider-man to
all Microsoft platforms because it would simply lose too much money not to on such a massive property. Marvel is the biggest franchise in the world right now, there is no
way Sony's shareholders would
allow them to cut out the entire PC and Xbox platforms for some fanboy pissing contest. Right? Lol - of course it's bloody exclusive, and rightfully so: people buy PlayStations to play Spider-man, and all the other exclusives, which is why they've sold 120+ million PS4s. Those sales mean 120 million people spending money on the PlayStation platform. That's how they made $1 billion on
third party purchases in three months. Sony would probably sell another 5 or so million copies of Spider-man if they released it on Xbox; but they'd lose hundreds and hundreds of millions on platform-level revenue from people who didn't buy a PlayStation to play it. That's how PlayStation makes its money.
For Microsoft, if they lose $200 million in revenue on Starfield because it cut out PlayStation -
but - Starfield drives new platform adopters whose spending eclipses $300 million across the entire Xbox platform, be it on PC, Mobile, or console, that's a big win for Microsoft, even if it looks like a loss on Starfield in isolation. Add up all the other exclusives, and the $7.5 billion they just paid is poultry; that purchase can pay for itself in a relatively short period of time, and now Microsoft has tens of millions of new platform adopters that'll stick around. That's how they're going to grow their platform.
But, please, feel free to cling to whatever you think Microsoft's CFO may or may not have possibly meant by a hint they may or may not have possibly dropped about a deal that is in-complete and thus illegal to comment on. I'm sure he threw a wink to all the PlayStation fans, just to let them know Microsoft, a company sued by the American government for anti-trust practices, who spent billions upon billions of dollars to dominate their industries, who spent a couple of years to set up a deal to buy a privately owned video game publisher for $7.5 billion dollars... plans to do absolutely nothing with it. Makes perfect sense :'D
www.neogaf.com
CatLady mentioned you did a review for AC Valhalla? I’d like to see this review, can you kindly link.
), MS is lucky that Google is generally shit at products (and I mean product with the capital P... clear strategy covering Enterprise, SoHo, mid sized companies, governments, etc...).
www.metacritic.com
opencritic.com
www.videogameschronicle.com
