We all thought we knew what Xbox's strategy was. Having lost the console war in the Xbox One/PS4 era largely due to Sony's dominance with exclusives, Xbox started buying studios like Bethesda and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Activision Blizzard, as well as dozens of smaller ones, to get some exclusives of its own. However, after rumours that Xbox will be bringing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:pretty much every 🎀e෴xclusive that it owns over to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation (an update on that rumour is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:due next week from Phil Spencer), it seems like that strategy is no longer in motion. So 🤡what do♈es that mean for Xbox's plans?
Earlier this week I wrote a breakdown🐭 of what this move could mean for gamers, for Microಌsoft, and for the industry, all while Xbox gamers were having breakdowns of their own. You can also check out the vide🌊o below for an even more in-depth discussion. But one of the things that hasn't been discussed as much, among the 'how could Xbox do this?' and the 'when is Starfield coming to PS5?' is what it means for the leftovers of this strategy.
We may have been wrong from the start. Microsoft could have been planning this move for a long time - other 'exclusiveဣs' have broken rank before to join the Switch before, while everything is really just a console exclusive as it also launches on PC. Add in Game Pass, and you see a clear ecosystem being built for the Xbox branding, which makes sense given Microsoft is a software company. We expected the strategy to copy Sony's, given the clear success, but it might have been buying up developers not to sell consoles to a marketplace in which it is already behind, but to sell the exclusives themselves.
Disney didn't buy 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars or Marvel to stop Comcast buying them, it did so because Star Wars and Marvel make a lot of money. Microsoft may have always been banking on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elder Scrolls and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Overwatch making cash rather than selling consoles - the King part of♚ Activision Blizzard King will keep generating cash via 🃏mobile sales without shifting a single Xbox. But whether this really is a change in strategy or the plan from the beginning, it shows those acquisitions in a new light.
This is still just a rumour, but Xbox's reaction to delay news for a week tꦏo put together its messaging suggests a🔯t least some of this smoke is caused by fire.
The assumption, powered a little bit by hope, was that Microsoft buying up all these properties would give them a new lease of life. Making 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Crash Bandicoot or Spyro an Xbox exclusive would be a significant PR win for the Green Team, even if the two former PlayStation mascots were unlikely to outsell 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War. Then there's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tony Hawk's and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guitar Hero - Activision abandoned them as it pursued the juiciest cash cows, as the returns diminished﷽ they were no longer considered viable. Even a successful remaster for THPS saw the studio pushed into the🗹 Call of Duty machine. But with Xbox having a much wider team, maybe they'd have a chance at success after years on the shelf.
If Xbox is in the business of console sales, then these titles have a lot of value. They don't need to sell by the boatful individually, if they sell the box itself. There aren't as many Crash fans as there are God of War fans, as the sales of It's About Time and Ragnarok point to respectively. But there are a lot of Crash fans who would buy an Xbox if it was the one place to play Crash, and it had a game every two or three years - especially if that Xbox was also the only place to play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gears of War, Spyro, and Fable.
Xbox's Multi-Platform Plans Could Make Me Buy A PS5, And Support Xbox More
Xbox’s repo꧟rted multi-platform strategy could be a stroke of genius
From a cynical business perspective (the perspective from which the key decisions are made) Crash is worth more than just the sales it generates, and therefore is a more viable game to develop. This current route Xbox may be on, where it makes games and sells them to Nintendo and Sony just as any other studio out there does, changes that. Yes, there is some maths out there that points at smaller overheads as Microsoft is no longer producing ꩵas many consoles (it probably sticks around as a Game Pass machine), and also conserving its marketing budget, but I don't think this move aids those mid-tier exclusives. Now, for Crash to be worth 𓆉producing, it will need to shift more copies.
This is jꦏust business, and if not enough people buy a game, it doesn't get made. But 'enough' seems like a fluid number these days, as games face unrealistic expectations of mass player retention and endless battle pass profitability, as Crash already tried with the disastrous Crash Team Rumble.
Moving away from exclusives is better for players who have to buy fewer consoles to have access to their games, and might make the industry more sustainable as it calls time on the space race that has dominated the market. But it also might make it harder for smaller games to get their shot, which has seemed to be part of Xbox's current direction through the likes of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pentiment, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush, and the upcoming South of Midnight. We've been wrong on Xbox before, but it feels as though games like that may have lessᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ of a chance when Xbox doesn't care about selling consoles anymoಌre.
