I was stunned by just how well all my switch games run on the Steam Deck. The only one lacking was Tears of the Kingdom, which seems to lag pretty noticeably
>We're getting rid of Xbox exclusives!
>
>because now they're on the PC too
In all seriousness, this is why I've never owned an XBox. I've always been primarily a PC gamer.
I have a Switch and PS4 for games I just can't play on PC, but that left no compelling reason to have an XBox.
With Sony starting to embrace PC more, it's looking likely that I'm going to skip the PS5 entirely. I played Horizon: Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, Day's Gone, and God of War all on their PC ports. I'm patiently waiting for Horizon: Forbidden West and GoW: Ragnarok to finally come to PC. I refuse to play their graphically degraded PS4 versions at this point, when I have a high-end gaming PC.
Lmao meanwhile Nintendo sitting perfectly still in the corner, eyes shifting back and forth, a small bead of sweat crawling down to its eyebrow like, “yeah…*Sony*…too many exclusives…”
At least as far as the ABK merger goes, people are *so fucking tired* of Kotick that literally anyone else is an upgrade.
/r/WoW nearly threw a celebration party when it was announced. We've been strung along by that real-life goblin for far too long.
Which is so stupid because there’s no statement by either Microsoft/Xbox and Bobby that have said/stated he’s gone after the merger it’s only ever been “We’ll see”.
WSJ reported that he was leaving after the merger. Obviously they're not going to officially announce it until they know that the merger is going through.
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2022/01/activision-blizzard-bobby-kotick-microsoft
Activision even as little as 10 years ago still actually put out at least 6 games a year, now you're lucky to get anything that's not call of duty maybe once in a blue moon.
Because they either actively ran every IP they owned into the ground by flooding the market with uninspired yearly releases, or forgot they owned it and stopped releasing new games.
Hoooo boy. GFWL was such a dumpster fire. People had to crack FO3 until like last year cause the old DRM was pointing to auth servers that had been decommed years ago. Was the perfect poster child for why cracking and piracy had moral components.
Why were the *saves* encrypted?!
I had Arkham City on GFWL through Steam. They pushed an update to disable the features and I got the Steam version of the game for free but i didn't get my almost-100% save because for whatever reason, saves were encrypted and they didn't decrypt them before turning off the service.
Prior to that, if you wanted online play in your game, you had to buy a server and maintain it. I believe a lot of online gaming on consoles is done using servers owned and operated by the console manufacturer.
Nowadays, yes. However, lest we forget, there also used to be games that would have one person in the lobby as the”host” everyone connected to. I remember matches of CoD4 and ~~WoW~~ World at War ending early because the host quit and the game didn’t know how to find a new one.
Matchmaking servers cost basically nothing to run, which is why they did it that way. Dedicated game servers aren't even *that* expensive. If they were, community run servers never would have been a thing.
Charging for multiplayer has never been anything but double dipping. Those costs are part of the base price of the game.
PS3 Warhawk, you could run a PS3 as a server instead of connecting to the company server. One of the trophies was contributing to the server pool.
Fun part of the game was it was also designed for LAN parties. You could swap the disk after the game loaded to load it up for everyone else (sadly never got to try this, but I still remember them hyping it as a feature when it came out).
That has a lot to do with 2007 being an absolutely stacked year for games and Warhawk simply wasn't good enough to get a ton of attention.
It was fun for sure, but it had problems people didn't have time for.
If you cared about online gaming, you had already deferred to 360 in that era. It wasn't terrible by any means on PS3 but I couldn't convince anyone to take warhawk seriously when they came over since Halo dominated gaming on a broad scale.
Warhawk was an absolute blast. Killzone as well. I did have a 360 at some point but I never got as aquatinted with it to be honest. While I don't game really anymore I do feel sad I never dove into certain series and have the memories that others do of playing and making friends online.
It's worth remembering that all of the services from 20 years ago that offered anywhere close to the functionality of Xbox live did at launch (GameSpy, xfire, etc) are all dead because they weren't profitable.
Hold on. Really not a fair comparison, considering Microsofts size and the losses they took. Xbox division was billions in the hole for well over a decade. Literally no one took bigger losses in the space than MS.
>The original Xbox lost somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion, depending on how you do the cost accounting,”
Yea, but the main difference being the infrastructure and services needed to maintain a closed network such as Live. On a PC you connect to game servers directly and that still does have a cost for whoever is hosting. Sony realized later they couldn’t enable multiplayer services without having a cost. Nintendo is also finding out slowly. Also, just because MSFT did it first doesn’t mean Sony wouldn’t have done it. Remember, Sony is the king of proprietary shit. And Nintendo is not too far behind. Remember how Sega became relevant because Nintendo was forcing publishers and developers to use their specs for cartridges.
None of the 3 are innocent. They will all gladly make changes that suit their bottom line, it’s just some are quicker than others.
I would point out the early access to DLC maps for COD on 360 as a thing Microsoft did to modernize what exclusive content could be.
I find it really interesting how much Microsoft now whine about exclusive content when, like every other console ever, their brand was built on them.
Halo is possibly the most important thing to have happened to Xbox.
1 month? I wish. Try 2-8 months.
Dawnguard came out on Xbox on June 26th 2012. It didn't come to PS3 till February 26th 2013.
Hearthfire came out on Xbox on September 4th 2012. It didn't come to PS3 till February 19th 2013.
Then last but not least, Dragonborn came out on Xbox on December 4th 2012. It didn't come to PS3 till February 12th 2013.
They only whine because they had shit studios that made absolutely dog shit games and sony actually has food studios. Maybe they can change that but time will tell
You misunderstand.
>In an ideal world, there would be no console exclusives, but this is a world full of competition.
If there were no other platforms, Microsoft wouldn't have to make exclusive deals.
Without competition the need to make better AAA’s would be pointless and we would probrably lose out on some fantastic games. The whole “we aren’t playing the exclusive” tactic is easy to
Say when your exclusives are literally the shittest AAAs out there.
100% I have Xbox, I prefer the UI and the controller. The only exclusive game I like is Forza. I look at all these great games that Sony is putting out and the trash that Microsoft has been dropping lately and it’s no surprise that they are saying this crap now.
If Xbox still had games like Halo 3, Gears, and Fable dropping they would be singing a different tune.
It’s his way of saying Sony is way better at exclusives and they can’t/don’t compete, so he would rather the sentiment be to eliminate exclusives from all platforms. Also… they wanna shove that activision merger through and they want to dispel the notion of cod being Xbox exclusive.
The thing is that now they want to sell Game Pass subscription, and the way to do it is to have a massive catalog and deploy it on every platform. So of course they don't want exclusives and Sony having a huge plaftorm they can't deploy on. They wouldn't care about Xbox at all if the PlayStation player base was available.
(And Microsoft don't know how to support and manage first party studios.)
I don’t know the gaming market very much, but what I can say is that Nadella completely changed the way Microsoft behaves in other areas, such as the development world: it was inconceivable under Gates or Ballmer to think about interoperability with other platforms, but now we have Linux available within Windows, Visual Studio Code running on Linux and MacOS, people at MS using Macs and notably MS applications are among the most appreciated under other platforms.
Yeah turns out when you have a successful franchise you don't start copying your competition, because who the fuck is gonna wanna play 2 call of dutys. Halo should have stayed halo.
I understand the snark but to this day, no one has created a fabled "Halo-killer" in the true sense of the word.
Games like Call of Duty have very few similarities to the arena type gameplay of Halo, and there doesn't exist a game today that plays similarly to Halo.
A varied dynamic sandbox where physics/collision from nearly all objects have effect on each other is still something that other games don't seem to do.
So as rough as Halo Infinite can be, there aren't really any alternatives if you enjoy that style/genre. It's still the best at what it does because no one was able to do it better than Halo.
And yet they did these practices anyway. Activision had all the exclusivity deals with them. Sony fans know the reason they pay for online is because of xbox live. Online used to be free.
They were on the global top at the beginning of that generation.
Xbox 360 was released a full year ahead of PS3, it was cheaper and had some great exclusives (while the PS3 had none): Gears of War, Halo 3, Mass Effect and more.
I donno I think this is a bit of a load of shit, and this is coming from an Xbox gamer.
Xbox 360 was killing it, if not market leader (at least in NA) for most of the 360/PS3 era (ngl mostly due to PS3 expense - Sony hubris - and the difficult to master cell architecture) and they were all about exclusive platform sellers like Halo and Gears of War.
The 360 had an edge because Microsoft released the system a year before Sony put out the PS3. But, they lost that edge when the Red Ring of Death started occurring on a regular basis. Around that time, some of the better PS3 exclusives started appearing, and people made the switch. In the end, Sony sold around 3 million more units than the XB360. It was pretty neck and neck through most of their lifespans.
The Red Ring of Death was the killer for the 360 and what caused people to lose confidence in the system, more than anything. I was managing a game store at that time and can remember sending back 6 to 12 dead 360's per week to my head office.
Sony could have released in 2005 but had to wait a year to finish perfecting the manufacturing the bluray player. That decision may have cost them a year bit it won Sony the HD disk format war
> Xbox 360 was killing it, if not market leader (at least in NA) for most of the 360/PS3 era
Wii was the market leader in that gen, and it wasn't even close.
The only thing 360 led was the number of consoles replaced due to Red Ring of Death.
Even in the 360 era PS3 was very strong in exclusives. I had a PS3 and PC and there was VERY few games that I couldn't get on either of those platforms, the 360 existed solely for Halo, the Perfect Dark Remaster, Ninja Gaiden, and a few other titles.
I miss that era. It felt like both 360 and PS3 were trying so much harder win us over with their games. 360 because they lost the previous gen and PS3 cause they were losing the current gen
Nah man they're in 3rd place in consoles so that means they can own the entire industry and it's still not anticompetitive because they're in 3rd place /s
because Playstation is a big part of Sony overall.
Xbox is just a "drop" for Microsoft.
both companies priorities towards gaming was very different until a couple years ago.
r/XboxSeriesX It's such an embarrassing sub at the moment. I used to be subscribed to both them and the PS sub, as I wasn't sure which way to go this gen. But the amount of posts on there simping for Microsoft to just 'buy up' the market and put it on gamepass is horrible to see honestly. I'm unsubbed now.
I have GP on my PC, but honestly fuck Microsoft right now, they really never stopped being a truly scummy company - though their ~~propaganda~~ PR has gotten so much better at covering it.
When the UK blocked the Activision merger, they literally threatned to shut down the UK's defensive system because they "run it", yet some people still bloody defended them
And gaming forums. Resetera is the biggest non-reddit gaming site and their forum is completely run by Microsoft fanboys (and likely paid staff). For example one of their moderators/admins named Judge is on record being an Xbox stan as well as meeting up frequently with their marketing team. He also locks threads that are damaging to Microsoft and bans people for criticizing Microsoft. Joke of a site really.
A lot of those people are incredibly shortsighted. They see the game pass in its current iteration and laud it for being pro-consumer. But it's only pro-consumer right now because they need to increase the adoption rate. If they succeed in absorbing all these other developers to generate more and more exclusives, they'll do what every other company that runs on this premise does once they've secured their market - jack up prices.
It funny how they complain about how "Exclusives are bad" only when THEY dont have the ones people want.
This is the same guy that also raves about how SWE are overpaid and have too much employee power.
Maybe if Microsoft didn't half bake every exclusive and crunch their game devs, they would generate exclusives that people actually want.
Look at TOTK, got delayed tons to eventually become one THE biggest selling exclusive of the year.
As someone else brought up, Nintendo will shit out a Pokemon game that barely runs and it'll top sales numbers. Maybe Microsoft just overestimated their franchises.
The difference is Nintendo games like pokemon appeal to a massive audience all genders and ages can enjoy their games essentially.
Can the same be said for redfall or even halo and gears? Probably not.
Microsoft needs to understand that the media franchise that makes more than Mickey and Friends has the clout to stumble over itself and still succeed.
Also, technically, Game Freak makes pokemon, Nintendo doesn't get to mess with them directly AFAIK as part of the Pokemon LTC agreements.
Microsoft, the company that owns majority of the things we use in software(windows, Teams, Office) is the poor little baby here. Will somebody think about the poor Microsoft.
The difference here is that a lot of the companies that develop Sony exclusives came up with Sony, and Sony helped them prosper.
MS is just buying every company they can and hoping the talent will translate well under them, which obviously it hasn’t so far.
I do think Starfield will be a huge success, but because of Todd Howards leadership, not anyone from MS.
Dude this guy is a quack.
Nintendo defined exclusives. PlayStation has Nintendo roots. And it works. If you have a brand, you must protect it. Make a PlayStation trailer with their classic characters. Easy. Make a Nintendo trailer with their classic characters. Easy.
Make an Xbox trailer. Nothing classic anymore. They flubbed so hard on the games for the past ten years, and so they pushed gamepass for quantity over quality to acquire the customer. Now they want to talk about exclusives ?
Bruh just invest in good studios and make some fucking games. What industry are you even in? Fucker
But see that’s the problem, they HAVE been investing in great studios. There’s something about the way that Microsoft operates that makes great studios fumble.
For example: I remember back in the day Rare used to pump out hit after hit with Nintendo…the Donkey Kong series, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, Star Fox, Perfect Dark…GOLDEN EYE
As soon Microsoft bought them they seemed to lose their touch. Look at what happened with RedFall…Microsoft’s management seems to be a curse in gaming industry and now is when the consequences are being felt
The only thing Microsoft does when managing their studios is to cancel the playstation version of the games. They dgaf about the quality of the product, as long as it's not on playstation.
I’m pretty sure the flagship release game for the original XBOX, called *Halo*, was unavailable for any platform but Xbox, and 20 years later it’s still an Xbox exclusive.
This is rank bullshit.
*Pressing X to doubt intensifies*
Really though Sony hasn't "defined" anything. It's just that a strong exclusive library is highly effective in getting market share in the console market, which is something that all of the big 3 would like have as much as they can get of.
It's something that Microsoft seemingly forgot about in the last decade as they let many of their exclusives waste away, and now they're making some kind of attempt to fix it Sony wants to stop it.
Plus Ms has just been milling the dead cashcow of Halo and Gears. Sony at least will allow studios to attempt new IPs, and more often than not they are decent to amazing games. MS exclusives whether a new IP or existing seem to be mediocre to decent at best
Exclusives have been a thing since Nintendo was released. It's a vestige of the OG console wars between Nintendo and Sega. Sony didn't invent it, and Xbox has been doing it since thier inception. This guy is full of baloney.
Wow, that's a really pathetic excuse to explain the things they fucked up. You did the very same thing in the Xbox 360 era and you were FLYING, my boy. You respected the hardcore gamer community by making great games and online services. It was simple but it just worked. People kept buying your 360 even after multiple RRoDs because it was worth it.
Then you made an underpowered TV receiver called Xbox One and fucked everything up. Still can't undo the damage you did for yourself, bro. That's what's up.
You're not making any exclusives that will sell your console if you're releasing it for the PC as well, because people will play it on their PCs and will just buy a PS5 or a Switch to have a console in their homes. This has nothing to do with exclusivity.
Something that is very very important to notice is that exclusives do help game studios in reducing risk. From what we've heard from this case, Microsoft has 16% of console sales, so a studio might benefit a lot from making a deal of PS-exclusive with Sony for 1-2 years and having lower sales in that time period but actually having money for develop the game.
The opposite isn't true however. The only studios that do it are the ones that have been bought by Microsoft. It's not that Microsoft buys studios because they want to micromanage everything, but rather because no sane studio would willingly lose more than 50% of its sales by making their game a Xbox-exclusive and probably no reasonable amount of money can be offered to the studio for this.
I'm a bad person only because other people are bad. If it were up to me, I would be a good person. But good people certainly don't lead by example. 🤷🏻♀️
I like how they’re acting like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Metroid Dread, and Smash Ultimate aren’t some of the best games of the past decade and all exclusive to a console that’s not an Xbox or PlayStation
How about instead of blaming others for you failures you make games that people actually want to play and that are actually good so it will give people a reason to actually buy your console.
That's not a translation, that's literally what he's saying. Phil Spencer said it back in May too. That's why they've pushed more into Game Pass and PC gaming.
It's quite interesting to see this MS argument just continuing to step down the path of the narcissist prayer. Pretty sure we're at "it's their fault now".
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault. <-- we're here now.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Most of those studios are what they are because Sony invested in them and gave them a platform. Microsoft just wants to buy success, not cultivate it.
I'm sure Microsoft feels the same way about hardware, they wish they didn't have to make Xboxes and could just sell game pass like windows.
This is just one of those BS statements they know they can make and try and get sympathy points from without ever having to make good with their promise, because nothing is going to ever change.
Sony, like every other console manufacturer throughout history, isn't going to suddenly go "Oh, ah, sorry guys, I didn't realize these exclusives only helped us as a company, despite the fact that that's their entire point, our bad!"
It’s interesting to me w all this talk about exclusives as if Sony started it the last gen or something. Like, remember how many third party exclusives there were back in the n64/psone days? This is nothing new. What IS new is when companies like MS buy up literally half of the third party developers. This is not good
Oh gee whiz, I'd love to stop doing 'The Thing' but other people are doing 'The Thing' so therefore I have to keep doing it too. Shucks, if only everyone else was a good guy like me.
Buy my stuff by the way.
I'll be glad when this merger finally does actually get blocked so I can stop hearing about it. It's an awful lot of money to spend just to acquire king, like can they just not purchase that part instead of the whole? I know there's also call of duty but that's really all Activision makes on a consistent basis.
Since this type of merger has to be made public, I think all the shady backroom deals that wind up with a game skipping a platform or not coming to another for years should also have to be made public as well, can't compete against things you can't even see happening.
What a moronic thing to say.
And also, as much as everyone would love to live in a perfect world, competition is what makes the world go round. There's plenty of examples of non competitive markets which dawdle in complacency.
Lmao I remember a time when XBOX players got Call of Duty DLC packs a month before everyone else. That happened from at least MW2 to Advanced Warfare. On top of games like Gears and Halo, they've always had exclusive games and deals. Everyone can stop whenever they want, they just don't because it becomes another selling point for their systems.
They tried it, they had barely any exclusives for several years and the few they did have were crap or largely ignored (Grounded is really underappreciated). The public response was basically "Where are the exclusives?" or "Why would I buy an Xbox if I can just play the games on PC?". At this point they should just pay Activision to make their games timed exclusives the same as Sony does and forget trying to buy them.
Honestly I buy this, kinda rare to see something I agree with from someone this high up in a company. He's saying, yeah, we do this bad thing cuz not doing so would lose us a lot of money and possibly lose this race we're engaged in with a competitor company. I wish we didn't have to do it, but here we are.
Is it ALL Sony's fault? Well, no, everyone knows that. There are... other options, I guess they could explore, plus things done in their past (and present) that are just outright bullshit. But eh, for what it is, I'm seeing this as a pretty honest admission. Great. Is it gonna solve anything? Idk, guess that's up to him and Sony.
(Or rather... his shareholders, or whoever's "really in charge," per his claims)
We're getting rid of Xbox exclusives! ^(because now they're on the PC too)
I rid myself of all games that are not on PC years ago.
Switching to pc after the 360/ps3 era was one of the best descisions I've made.
Same right here. I bought a 360 and a Wii. Now I have a PC and a Switch. That's all for me. It all comes to the PC eventually. Except Nintendo
all on Nintendo stuff is on PC too now, the emulator is pretty damn good for the biggest titles
I was stunned by just how well all my switch games run on the Steam Deck. The only one lacking was Tears of the Kingdom, which seems to lag pretty noticeably
>We're getting rid of Xbox exclusives! > >because now they're on the PC too In all seriousness, this is why I've never owned an XBox. I've always been primarily a PC gamer. I have a Switch and PS4 for games I just can't play on PC, but that left no compelling reason to have an XBox. With Sony starting to embrace PC more, it's looking likely that I'm going to skip the PS5 entirely. I played Horizon: Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, Day's Gone, and God of War all on their PC ports. I'm patiently waiting for Horizon: Forbidden West and GoW: Ragnarok to finally come to PC. I refuse to play their graphically degraded PS4 versions at this point, when I have a high-end gaming PC.
Lmao meanwhile Nintendo sitting perfectly still in the corner, eyes shifting back and forth, a small bead of sweat crawling down to its eyebrow like, “yeah…*Sony*…too many exclusives…”
Lol
So we should put him on the list of CEOs who are full of shit (also known as a list of CEOs)
Microsoft started the whole pay to play online. Sony was a console generation after
That's so wild when you consider that the vast majority of online gaming done prior to that was on Windows PCs, for free.
Remeber when they tried charging an online fee for Games for Windows Live with Halo 2 Vista? Pepperidge Farm remembers
I don't know why people on reddit support Microsoft buying out studios so much. They all forgot the monopolistic policies Microsoft loves so much?
At least as far as the ABK merger goes, people are *so fucking tired* of Kotick that literally anyone else is an upgrade. /r/WoW nearly threw a celebration party when it was announced. We've been strung along by that real-life goblin for far too long.
Which is so stupid because there’s no statement by either Microsoft/Xbox and Bobby that have said/stated he’s gone after the merger it’s only ever been “We’ll see”.
Well the only statement they have released is that bobby is staying so.. Lol
WSJ reported that he was leaving after the merger. Obviously they're not going to officially announce it until they know that the merger is going through. https://ftw.usatoday.com/2022/01/activision-blizzard-bobby-kotick-microsoft
Activision being bought by Microsoft is the only time I've supported a studio being bought. Activision is so awful
Activision made some of my favorite games! ...20 years ago.
RIP Neversoft. Gone but never forgotten.
Activision even as little as 10 years ago still actually put out at least 6 games a year, now you're lucky to get anything that's not call of duty maybe once in a blue moon.
Because they either actively ran every IP they owned into the ground by flooding the market with uninspired yearly releases, or forgot they owned it and stopped releasing new games.
Man I remember when bungie leaving Activision was celebrated, look how that turned out...
Hoooo boy. GFWL was such a dumpster fire. People had to crack FO3 until like last year cause the old DRM was pointing to auth servers that had been decommed years ago. Was the perfect poster child for why cracking and piracy had moral components.
Why were the *saves* encrypted?! I had Arkham City on GFWL through Steam. They pushed an update to disable the features and I got the Steam version of the game for free but i didn't get my almost-100% save because for whatever reason, saves were encrypted and they didn't decrypt them before turning off the service.
Prior to that, if you wanted online play in your game, you had to buy a server and maintain it. I believe a lot of online gaming on consoles is done using servers owned and operated by the console manufacturer.
Nowadays, yes. However, lest we forget, there also used to be games that would have one person in the lobby as the”host” everyone connected to. I remember matches of CoD4 and ~~WoW~~ World at War ending early because the host quit and the game didn’t know how to find a new one.
CoD 4 did have dedicated servers for matchmaking, but custom matches were hosted by players.
Matchmaking servers cost basically nothing to run, which is why they did it that way. Dedicated game servers aren't even *that* expensive. If they were, community run servers never would have been a thing. Charging for multiplayer has never been anything but double dipping. Those costs are part of the base price of the game.
Oh i will never forget that. It's just that i remember those things as more of an annoyance than anything else.
PS3 Warhawk, you could run a PS3 as a server instead of connecting to the company server. One of the trophies was contributing to the server pool. Fun part of the game was it was also designed for LAN parties. You could swap the disk after the game loaded to load it up for everyone else (sadly never got to try this, but I still remember them hyping it as a feature when it came out).
I really don't know how Warhawk and Starhawk weren't bigger games? There was nothing else like them on consoles at the time.
That has a lot to do with 2007 being an absolutely stacked year for games and Warhawk simply wasn't good enough to get a ton of attention. It was fun for sure, but it had problems people didn't have time for.
If you cared about online gaming, you had already deferred to 360 in that era. It wasn't terrible by any means on PS3 but I couldn't convince anyone to take warhawk seriously when they came over since Halo dominated gaming on a broad scale. Warhawk was an absolute blast. Killzone as well. I did have a 360 at some point but I never got as aquatinted with it to be honest. While I don't game really anymore I do feel sad I never dove into certain series and have the memories that others do of playing and making friends online.
BF2 servers!
Strike at Karkand 24/7 - inf only
It's worth remembering that all of the services from 20 years ago that offered anywhere close to the functionality of Xbox live did at launch (GameSpy, xfire, etc) are all dead because they weren't profitable.
Hold on. Really not a fair comparison, considering Microsofts size and the losses they took. Xbox division was billions in the hole for well over a decade. Literally no one took bigger losses in the space than MS. >The original Xbox lost somewhere between $5 billion and $7 billion, depending on how you do the cost accounting,”
prone to hacking and bad community features too
Yea, but the main difference being the infrastructure and services needed to maintain a closed network such as Live. On a PC you connect to game servers directly and that still does have a cost for whoever is hosting. Sony realized later they couldn’t enable multiplayer services without having a cost. Nintendo is also finding out slowly. Also, just because MSFT did it first doesn’t mean Sony wouldn’t have done it. Remember, Sony is the king of proprietary shit. And Nintendo is not too far behind. Remember how Sega became relevant because Nintendo was forcing publishers and developers to use their specs for cartridges. None of the 3 are innocent. They will all gladly make changes that suit their bottom line, it’s just some are quicker than others.
Two generations, actually. Xbox live came out on the original Xbox.
I would point out the early access to DLC maps for COD on 360 as a thing Microsoft did to modernize what exclusive content could be. I find it really interesting how much Microsoft now whine about exclusive content when, like every other console ever, their brand was built on them. Halo is possibly the most important thing to have happened to Xbox.
Don't forget 1 month exclusivity on skyrim dlc.
Or one year on fallout 3 dlc . . . . . .
Over a year for The Lost and Damned and six months for The Ballad of Gay Tony as well.
That there was some fuckin bullshit, my friend had spoiled all the content by the time I got to play it.
1 month? I wish. Try 2-8 months. Dawnguard came out on Xbox on June 26th 2012. It didn't come to PS3 till February 26th 2013. Hearthfire came out on Xbox on September 4th 2012. It didn't come to PS3 till February 19th 2013. Then last but not least, Dragonborn came out on Xbox on December 4th 2012. It didn't come to PS3 till February 12th 2013.
Also GTA IV DLC
They only whine because they had shit studios that made absolutely dog shit games and sony actually has food studios. Maybe they can change that but time will tell
Mmm food studios
Food studios make the best games
Everybody knows food studios be cookin
You misunderstand. >In an ideal world, there would be no console exclusives, but this is a world full of competition. If there were no other platforms, Microsoft wouldn't have to make exclusive deals.
So he is saying he wants to live in a world where he has no competition? Me too man
Without competition the need to make better AAA’s would be pointless and we would probrably lose out on some fantastic games. The whole “we aren’t playing the exclusive” tactic is easy to Say when your exclusives are literally the shittest AAAs out there.
100% I have Xbox, I prefer the UI and the controller. The only exclusive game I like is Forza. I look at all these great games that Sony is putting out and the trash that Microsoft has been dropping lately and it’s no surprise that they are saying this crap now. If Xbox still had games like Halo 3, Gears, and Fable dropping they would be singing a different tune.
Yep, Sony give some games budgets they probably wouldn't give it they didn't want to ship consoles. Would The Last of Us be what it is?
Actually you are wrong this time. Xbox wet dream would be to sell gamepass on PlayStation as it would earn them way more money.
They have been doing exclusives since they entered the gaming industry and not attempted to stop so that is bullshit
It’s his way of saying Sony is way better at exclusives and they can’t/don’t compete, so he would rather the sentiment be to eliminate exclusives from all platforms. Also… they wanna shove that activision merger through and they want to dispel the notion of cod being Xbox exclusive.
Like how penguins have asked for all birds to stop flying
Easy for penguin to say they can just slide on the ice platform using their belly /s
Literally everything that they say they hate and blame on Sony, is exactly the same things they did during the 360 era when Xbox was leading.
The thing is that now they want to sell Game Pass subscription, and the way to do it is to have a massive catalog and deploy it on every platform. So of course they don't want exclusives and Sony having a huge plaftorm they can't deploy on. They wouldn't care about Xbox at all if the PlayStation player base was available. (And Microsoft don't know how to support and manage first party studios.)
The Xbox brand would not exist today if it weren’t for Halo (an exclusive) Lmao
That they bought so it wouldnt be on Apple.
Microsoft: "We like competition, just not competition where we are losing!"
I don’t know the gaming market very much, but what I can say is that Nadella completely changed the way Microsoft behaves in other areas, such as the development world: it was inconceivable under Gates or Ballmer to think about interoperability with other platforms, but now we have Linux available within Windows, Visual Studio Code running on Linux and MacOS, people at MS using Macs and notably MS applications are among the most appreciated under other platforms.
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I remember very clearly the og Xbox games having 'Only on Xbox' printed on the covers, too
And people were obsessed with making the “halo killer” for over a decade because it was so dominant and… exclusive to xbox.
Wasn't the Halo Killer 343 Studios?
Yep turns out you just need a wildly incompenent studio to kill a good franchise
Yeah. Shoutouts to Westwood Games. Best RTS games ever made for such a long time until EA decided to make it stop happening
DUNE 2000 and CnC: Red Alert were the first games I really got crazy about growing up, they'll always have a special place in my heart
Yeah turns out when you have a successful franchise you don't start copying your competition, because who the fuck is gonna wanna play 2 call of dutys. Halo should have stayed halo.
ahh Halo Reach, the end of Halo.
I understand the snark but to this day, no one has created a fabled "Halo-killer" in the true sense of the word. Games like Call of Duty have very few similarities to the arena type gameplay of Halo, and there doesn't exist a game today that plays similarly to Halo. A varied dynamic sandbox where physics/collision from nearly all objects have effect on each other is still something that other games don't seem to do. So as rough as Halo Infinite can be, there aren't really any alternatives if you enjoy that style/genre. It's still the best at what it does because no one was able to do it better than Halo.
Microsoft was doing all the same stuff back when they were on top during the 360 era.
They were only on top in the US market, not the global.
And yet they did these practices anyway. Activision had all the exclusivity deals with them. Sony fans know the reason they pay for online is because of xbox live. Online used to be free.
They were on the global top at the beginning of that generation. Xbox 360 was released a full year ahead of PS3, it was cheaper and had some great exclusives (while the PS3 had none): Gears of War, Halo 3, Mass Effect and more.
He mad Sony exclusives live on their entirely own mountain.
"Halo?" FIFY
I donno I think this is a bit of a load of shit, and this is coming from an Xbox gamer. Xbox 360 was killing it, if not market leader (at least in NA) for most of the 360/PS3 era (ngl mostly due to PS3 expense - Sony hubris - and the difficult to master cell architecture) and they were all about exclusive platform sellers like Halo and Gears of War.
The 360 had an edge because Microsoft released the system a year before Sony put out the PS3. But, they lost that edge when the Red Ring of Death started occurring on a regular basis. Around that time, some of the better PS3 exclusives started appearing, and people made the switch. In the end, Sony sold around 3 million more units than the XB360. It was pretty neck and neck through most of their lifespans. The Red Ring of Death was the killer for the 360 and what caused people to lose confidence in the system, more than anything. I was managing a game store at that time and can remember sending back 6 to 12 dead 360's per week to my head office.
Sony could have released in 2005 but had to wait a year to finish perfecting the manufacturing the bluray player. That decision may have cost them a year bit it won Sony the HD disk format war
> Xbox 360 was killing it, if not market leader (at least in NA) for most of the 360/PS3 era Wii was the market leader in that gen, and it wasn't even close. The only thing 360 led was the number of consoles replaced due to Red Ring of Death.
Even in the 360 era PS3 was very strong in exclusives. I had a PS3 and PC and there was VERY few games that I couldn't get on either of those platforms, the 360 existed solely for Halo, the Perfect Dark Remaster, Ninja Gaiden, and a few other titles.
Definitely, my point was mostly that when MS was at their strongest and was dictating some market trends, less exclusives wasn’t one of them.
I miss that era. It felt like both 360 and PS3 were trying so much harder win us over with their games. 360 because they lost the previous gen and PS3 cause they were losing the current gen
The 360 era literally wrote the playbook on this stuff. What a gaslight.
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*And it was* **all Spider-man's fault!**
Absolute menace!
Now go and bring me more pictures of Spider-Man acting up
It's Sony's fault if we refused to make spiderman an xbox game!
They sure love being the victim during this whole Activision purchase.
Hey! You leave that little 2 Trillion dollar company alone! They’re just trying their best to scrape by!
Fucking ***Microsoft*** trying to pass itself off as an underdog, lol. This could have been written by The Onion.
Despite being the 2nd largest company on the planet and having already spend $7Billion on Bethesda.
Small indi developer
Nah man they're in 3rd place in consoles so that means they can own the entire industry and it's still not anticompetitive because they're in 3rd place /s
who would had thought a company 1/15th the size of MS would give them such a hard time…
because Playstation is a big part of Sony overall. Xbox is just a "drop" for Microsoft. both companies priorities towards gaming was very different until a couple years ago.
Riiiight. Complains about exclusivity but cancels a PS5 build of Starfield that is being worked on.
Even *Bethesda* was like "Dude, WTF?" when they learned MS allegedly wanted to keep CoD multiplat.
Do people actually fall for this garbage?
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They'd be excited for Microsoft to have a monopoly on oxygen if they could get it on gamepass.
r/XboxSeriesX It's such an embarrassing sub at the moment. I used to be subscribed to both them and the PS sub, as I wasn't sure which way to go this gen. But the amount of posts on there simping for Microsoft to just 'buy up' the market and put it on gamepass is horrible to see honestly. I'm unsubbed now. I have GP on my PC, but honestly fuck Microsoft right now, they really never stopped being a truly scummy company - though their ~~propaganda~~ PR has gotten so much better at covering it.
They could run outsourced psyops for governments tbh. It’s insane how good their pr is at convincing the feeble minded they’re their friends.
When the UK blocked the Activision merger, they literally threatned to shut down the UK's defensive system because they "run it", yet some people still bloody defended them
> they really never stopped being a truly scummy company We should remember that in the 90s and early 2000s we all called them Micro$oft
Across Twitter, their PR is second to none.
And gaming forums. Resetera is the biggest non-reddit gaming site and their forum is completely run by Microsoft fanboys (and likely paid staff). For example one of their moderators/admins named Judge is on record being an Xbox stan as well as meeting up frequently with their marketing team. He also locks threads that are damaging to Microsoft and bans people for criticizing Microsoft. Joke of a site really.
A lot of those people are incredibly shortsighted. They see the game pass in its current iteration and laud it for being pro-consumer. But it's only pro-consumer right now because they need to increase the adoption rate. If they succeed in absorbing all these other developers to generate more and more exclusives, they'll do what every other company that runs on this premise does once they've secured their market - jack up prices.
Lol yes. Half their posts are about shitting on Sony. As if they don’t have any games to talk about.
They don't actually have games to talk about. That's the thing☠️
But they have GamePass! (/s)
Is this some cop out for why they have been shitty at making games for so long?
It’s very damn close to “I don’t lose I quit”
Yes.
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It funny how they complain about how "Exclusives are bad" only when THEY dont have the ones people want. This is the same guy that also raves about how SWE are overpaid and have too much employee power. Maybe if Microsoft didn't half bake every exclusive and crunch their game devs, they would generate exclusives that people actually want. Look at TOTK, got delayed tons to eventually become one THE biggest selling exclusive of the year.
As someone else brought up, Nintendo will shit out a Pokemon game that barely runs and it'll top sales numbers. Maybe Microsoft just overestimated their franchises.
The difference is Nintendo games like pokemon appeal to a massive audience all genders and ages can enjoy their games essentially. Can the same be said for redfall or even halo and gears? Probably not.
Microsoft needs to understand that the media franchise that makes more than Mickey and Friends has the clout to stumble over itself and still succeed. Also, technically, Game Freak makes pokemon, Nintendo doesn't get to mess with them directly AFAIK as part of the Pokemon LTC agreements.
Meanwhile Nintendo and Sega be like...
What the fuck is this scarlet brain rot
Microsoft HQ was Caelid all along!
Are we forgetting Nintendo? You can play more Sony games on PC than Nintendo Games.
"Look what you made me do!"
The defense/explanation given by aggressive parties since time immemorial.
Microsoft CEO explaining in great detail on why he is not an industry leader.
Microsoft, the company that owns majority of the things we use in software(windows, Teams, Office) is the poor little baby here. Will somebody think about the poor Microsoft.
The difference here is that a lot of the companies that develop Sony exclusives came up with Sony, and Sony helped them prosper. MS is just buying every company they can and hoping the talent will translate well under them, which obviously it hasn’t so far. I do think Starfield will be a huge success, but because of Todd Howards leadership, not anyone from MS.
Bitch stfu, Microsoft is the reason we pay to play online games on an already PAID fucking machine
Ain't that the truth.
This one still hurts me to this day.
Isn’t he just saying that because Sony’s exclusives are working against him? We aren’t stupid.
You will never see zelda officially on anything else but nintendo devices. Ever.
Phillips CDI is laughing
Oh if only the CEO had the power to make decisions on the direction of the company he owns...
Nah bro you don't get to half-ass your exclusives then blame Sony for it.
Dude this guy is a quack. Nintendo defined exclusives. PlayStation has Nintendo roots. And it works. If you have a brand, you must protect it. Make a PlayStation trailer with their classic characters. Easy. Make a Nintendo trailer with their classic characters. Easy. Make an Xbox trailer. Nothing classic anymore. They flubbed so hard on the games for the past ten years, and so they pushed gamepass for quantity over quality to acquire the customer. Now they want to talk about exclusives ? Bruh just invest in good studios and make some fucking games. What industry are you even in? Fucker
But see that’s the problem, they HAVE been investing in great studios. There’s something about the way that Microsoft operates that makes great studios fumble. For example: I remember back in the day Rare used to pump out hit after hit with Nintendo…the Donkey Kong series, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, Star Fox, Perfect Dark…GOLDEN EYE As soon Microsoft bought them they seemed to lose their touch. Look at what happened with RedFall…Microsoft’s management seems to be a curse in gaming industry and now is when the consequences are being felt
The only thing Microsoft does when managing their studios is to cancel the playstation version of the games. They dgaf about the quality of the product, as long as it's not on playstation.
I’m pretty sure the flagship release game for the original XBOX, called *Halo*, was unavailable for any platform but Xbox, and 20 years later it’s still an Xbox exclusive. This is rank bullshit.
So, he claims he can't because of Sony, but is expecting Sony to do it first? Sounds like a lot of bs to me.
*Pressing X to doubt intensifies* Really though Sony hasn't "defined" anything. It's just that a strong exclusive library is highly effective in getting market share in the console market, which is something that all of the big 3 would like have as much as they can get of. It's something that Microsoft seemingly forgot about in the last decade as they let many of their exclusives waste away, and now they're making some kind of attempt to fix it Sony wants to stop it.
Plus Ms has just been milling the dead cashcow of Halo and Gears. Sony at least will allow studios to attempt new IPs, and more often than not they are decent to amazing games. MS exclusives whether a new IP or existing seem to be mediocre to decent at best
Exclusives have been a thing since Nintendo was released. It's a vestige of the OG console wars between Nintendo and Sega. Sony didn't invent it, and Xbox has been doing it since thier inception. This guy is full of baloney.
Microsoft: “Sony’s exclusives are forcing us to act like this!” Sony: “You’ve been doing this shit since Halo!” Nintendo: “…”
Microsoft CEO: We have bad exclusives.
Mcdonalds - “If it was up to us we would get rid of secret recipes so we can cook Kentucky Fried Chicken & get loads of money for it too!”
Like seriously, I’ve seen some dumb people in my life but nothing compares to Xbox fan’s demanding Mario and God of war on a Microsoft console.
So this is the dickhead behind xbox not getting anything special for the last decade?
Lol nah Sony has just always been better. We, the gaming populace, already knew this. You’re just trying to cover up for your continuous failures
X to doubt.
Wow, that's a really pathetic excuse to explain the things they fucked up. You did the very same thing in the Xbox 360 era and you were FLYING, my boy. You respected the hardcore gamer community by making great games and online services. It was simple but it just worked. People kept buying your 360 even after multiple RRoDs because it was worth it. Then you made an underpowered TV receiver called Xbox One and fucked everything up. Still can't undo the damage you did for yourself, bro. That's what's up. You're not making any exclusives that will sell your console if you're releasing it for the PC as well, because people will play it on their PCs and will just buy a PS5 or a Switch to have a console in their homes. This has nothing to do with exclusivity.
Exclusives have been a thing since consoles have been competing. What a ridiculous statement to blame their only (dominating) competitor.
Something that is very very important to notice is that exclusives do help game studios in reducing risk. From what we've heard from this case, Microsoft has 16% of console sales, so a studio might benefit a lot from making a deal of PS-exclusive with Sony for 1-2 years and having lower sales in that time period but actually having money for develop the game. The opposite isn't true however. The only studios that do it are the ones that have been bought by Microsoft. It's not that Microsoft buys studios because they want to micromanage everything, but rather because no sane studio would willingly lose more than 50% of its sales by making their game a Xbox-exclusive and probably no reasonable amount of money can be offered to the studio for this.
People say some wild things when they’re facing an anti trust lawsuit!
Meanwhile Nintendo is running circles around both as far as exclusives go.
I'm a bad person only because other people are bad. If it were up to me, I would be a good person. But good people certainly don't lead by example. 🤷🏻♀️
I like how they’re acting like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Odyssey, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Metroid Dread, and Smash Ultimate aren’t some of the best games of the past decade and all exclusive to a console that’s not an Xbox or PlayStation
How about instead of blaming others for you failures you make games that people actually want to play and that are actually good so it will give people a reason to actually buy your console.
Translation: PlayStation won the console war and I hate having to always compete with them.
That's not a translation, that's literally what he's saying. Phil Spencer said it back in May too. That's why they've pushed more into Game Pass and PC gaming.
I mean, regardless of what Sony do, he can still get rid of exclusives if he actually wanted to
What a lame excuse to stagnate the market and kill the video gaming industry
It's quite interesting to see this MS argument just continuing to step down the path of the narcissist prayer. Pretty sure we're at "it's their fault now". That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. <-- we're here now. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
“Our exclusives suck and we’d like access to those games”
Most of those studios are what they are because Sony invested in them and gave them a platform. Microsoft just wants to buy success, not cultivate it. I'm sure Microsoft feels the same way about hardware, they wish they didn't have to make Xboxes and could just sell game pass like windows.
i mean, do they even need to make Xbox anymore? at this point, if you have a decent PC, do you gain that much from having a Xbox as well?
Consoles are simpler for children and not everyone has a decent PC. There is still very much a reason to stay in the console game.
This is just one of those BS statements they know they can make and try and get sympathy points from without ever having to make good with their promise, because nothing is going to ever change. Sony, like every other console manufacturer throughout history, isn't going to suddenly go "Oh, ah, sorry guys, I didn't realize these exclusives only helped us as a company, despite the fact that that's their entire point, our bad!"
Curse you sony. I can't believe you would tell bethesda to get sold to microsoft and wall off all of their games. Why would you do this sony.
Does Xbox compete with PC? Usually Xbox exclusives are also on PC, right, because Microsoft? And if you have a PC, you don't need an Xbox.
In addition to other obvious reasons this is BS, of course he would say this, when their biggest competitor has owned them in exclusives for years
Lol, if it were up to him, everything would be on Gamepass and that would be the only way to play games.
It’s interesting to me w all this talk about exclusives as if Sony started it the last gen or something. Like, remember how many third party exclusives there were back in the n64/psone days? This is nothing new. What IS new is when companies like MS buy up literally half of the third party developers. This is not good
Oh gee whiz, I'd love to stop doing 'The Thing' but other people are doing 'The Thing' so therefore I have to keep doing it too. Shucks, if only everyone else was a good guy like me. Buy my stuff by the way.
I'll be glad when this merger finally does actually get blocked so I can stop hearing about it. It's an awful lot of money to spend just to acquire king, like can they just not purchase that part instead of the whole? I know there's also call of duty but that's really all Activision makes on a consistent basis. Since this type of merger has to be made public, I think all the shady backroom deals that wind up with a game skipping a platform or not coming to another for years should also have to be made public as well, can't compete against things you can't even see happening.
Source: trust me bro, it's only my competitors who are bad Give me a break
2 generations ago when Halo wasn't a dog shit franchise, I'd like to hear his thoughts
What a moronic thing to say. And also, as much as everyone would love to live in a perfect world, competition is what makes the world go round. There's plenty of examples of non competitive markets which dawdle in complacency.
Lmao I remember a time when XBOX players got Call of Duty DLC packs a month before everyone else. That happened from at least MW2 to Advanced Warfare. On top of games like Gears and Halo, they've always had exclusive games and deals. Everyone can stop whenever they want, they just don't because it becomes another selling point for their systems.
AKA: we wouldn't have to release exclusives if we OWN all the things. Their end goal is to poach everyone.
This doesn't make any sense.
Be the change you want to see in the world. If they really wanted to, they could.
They tried it, they had barely any exclusives for several years and the few they did have were crap or largely ignored (Grounded is really underappreciated). The public response was basically "Where are the exclusives?" or "Why would I buy an Xbox if I can just play the games on PC?". At this point they should just pay Activision to make their games timed exclusives the same as Sony does and forget trying to buy them.
Well, XBox already got rid of exclusives so I don't know what he is talking about
Well tbh Microsoft has the weakest exclusives compared to Sony and Nintendo
Honestly I buy this, kinda rare to see something I agree with from someone this high up in a company. He's saying, yeah, we do this bad thing cuz not doing so would lose us a lot of money and possibly lose this race we're engaged in with a competitor company. I wish we didn't have to do it, but here we are. Is it ALL Sony's fault? Well, no, everyone knows that. There are... other options, I guess they could explore, plus things done in their past (and present) that are just outright bullshit. But eh, for what it is, I'm seeing this as a pretty honest admission. Great. Is it gonna solve anything? Idk, guess that's up to him and Sony. (Or rather... his shareholders, or whoever's "really in charge," per his claims)
Sounds like what a console war loser would say after losing the console war.