They are in position to dictate a lot of things in industry now.
Why do you think Playstation is pursuing GAAS strategy??
Cause Playstation doesn’t own games that basically fund their operations and all these deals.
Whatever weakness you mentioned are basically forum noise. It only applies if console is everything. If it were, xbox would be strengthening that instead.
This is delusional, sorry. Microsoft is in no way dictating that GAAS is something one should pursue. They’re following trends and customer behaviour like everybody else. And besides Call of Duty they aren’t doing so great. And Call of Duty is everywhere.
You said Xbox was in a more powerful place, if you’re not talking about console there then you’re talking about Xbox as a digital platform, yes? A launcher unlocked from brand-specific hardware?
In that space they could do well, in theory. But how can they get people onto a hypothetical digital platform without exclusives?
I would say that it’s even more important with exclusives when all you have is a launcher. Look at Epic, Ubisoft. Look at TV streaming services. Exclusives is what gets anyone to go from what they already have to something new.
And Microsoft has already tried that with Microsoft Store. Didn’t work. They upped the stakes with Play Anywhere, syncing purchases between console and PC. Didn’t work.
That’s why they are on Steam now.
So what would be the selling point? How would they manage to pull people in to their digital Xbox platform/ecosystem?
Gamepass would be one way but to grow they would need to have it everywhere, and I don’t see that happening.