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Rumour Xbox First Party going third party/multiplat - Discussing and Summary Thread (UPDATE: 4 Xbox exclusives are coming to Nintendo Switch and PS5)

Danny said:
I don't understand their gameplan that well but it seems they are doubling down even harder on gamepass with this presentation, announcing all activision blizzard games will come to gamepass in the future. So the strategy seems to be we will have timed exclusive releases and then release our games on other platforms but Xbox is the best platform to play those games because they will be free on gamepass. So basically they could be hoping that after their franchises gain more and more popularity on Playstation and Nintendo platforms people will jump over to get a gamepass in the future.
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The truth is they got a taste of dat sweet, sweet COD multiplatform $$$$, were disappointed in Starfield's sales, and now are starting to understand that the juice is not worth squeeze any longer.

With Acti-Blizzard + Bethesda, any money manager can tell you they could easily make A LOT of money as a 3rd party publisher. In fact, they stand to be easily probably the no.1 3rd party on Playstation and Nintendo/Switch platforms if they were to bring all their top games there. What happens if there's no XBox? There's no penalty for them, they'll just make more money from being the no.1 dawg on the Playstation and Switch ecosystems (3rd party). Those buyouts will turn out to be profitable for them no problem in that case.

So like on the flip side of that, you have them losing billions of dollars on XBox hardware for a hardware brand that's been declining and getting lower and lower userbase every gen since the 360.

I think they just hit the brick wall of reality of that they don't really need all the headaches the XBox brand brings. It's like a rich kid from a rich family who's trying to do something else like make it as an actor, busting his ass to try and make it, and not getting anywhere after a few years ... I mean c'mon junior, you know full well you can always make a good living going to work a cushy job your dad gets for you. You don't need to busting your ass. I kind of look at it like that. They don't need this "selling consoles" stuff, it's hard to do, the rewards aren't that big, and they're not even particularity good at it.
 
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I can also see them making older titles available digitally on other platforms. Think how cool it would be to go onto the eShop and download Fable Anniversary, Fable 2, and Fable 3.
 
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I love how after this podcast the Verge is like, "Well they may put Gears and Flight Simulator on the PS5. Oh and a new Doom game is being made and it may come out on the PS5 too!"

Jesus.
 
Maybe Phil was speaking facts about the future of platform exclusivity. Eventually, dev costs will catch up to Nintendo as well. Profit margins will lessen, games will take longer to develop, etc
 
For context:
Towards the end of the deck, Microsoft gave an overview of its digital gaming ecosystem as of April 2022, which showed that of the 33.6 million subscriptions on its Xbox consoles, 21.9 million were for Game Pass (excluding PC), with the remaining 11.7 million being Xbox Live Gold.
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(Source)

That means organic growth over the past nearly two years is like, close to zero. Honestly, out of this whole debacle, this might be the most dire news
 
hologram said:
For context:

(Source)

That means organic growth over the past nearly two years is like, close to zero. Honestly, out of this whole debacle, this might be the most dire news
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I can understand 2022 being a bad year for GamePass with the lack of new first party content, but 2023 should have seen some form of growth with HiFi Rush, Forza, and Starfield.

That is not good at all.
 
amara said:
Maybe Phil was speaking facts about the future of platform exclusivity. Eventually, dev costs will catch up to Nintendo as well. Profit margins will lessen, games will take longer to develop, etc
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The only thing that would force that to go on indefinitely is if customers stopped buying smaller scale games altogether. If the only way Nintendo can make a $500 million Zelda work is to make it multiplatform... then they won't make an $500 million Zelda.
 
Hailinel said:
To put this in perspective, Microsoft apparently wants 100 million GP subscribers by 2030.
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And I want free beer for everyone. Doesn't mean it's happening.

The only games that have sold more than 100 million copies are Minecraft, Tetris (the mobile port from EA that doesn't exist anymore to be exact) and GTA5. In the case of both Minecraft and GTA5 those are both games with a really long tail of development and Tetris is pretty much humanity's culture for how much it's been rereleased before that version took off.

Somehow I think the actual market cap for GP lies way lower than 100 million. Probably moreso around 50-60 million and that's assuming they get absolutely everyone onboard and don't have competitors (which they do; remember that EA has it's own "pay x a month for all our titles" setup).
 
I honestly think GamePass even is not going to work out how they want.

They're going to realize they stand to lose too much money putting COD on there so they won't do that, but it's not going to have Netflix like growth either.

Their future honestly is being the world's no.1 3rd party, and really that's not a bad place to be. They're going to make a lot of money doing that, they're trying so hard with XBox and GamePass, but these initiatives are just not taking off.
 
amara said:
Maybe Phil was speaking facts about the future of platform exclusivity. Eventually, dev costs will catch up to Nintendo as well. Profit margins will lessen, games will take longer to develop, etc
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Yeah if Nintendo starts making ultra realistic cinematic AAA games that take 8 years and cost 300 million to make then yes Nintendo would be in the doldrums pretty quickly.
 
sagadego20 said:
You're the admin, ummmmmmmmm
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I know this is in response to a joke, but just for clarification‘s sake - admins are not mods, and have practically no say in mod matters. The only thing they’re a part of, mod-wise, is signing off on permanent bans.
 
Hailinel said:
To put this in perspective, Microsoft apparently wants 100 million GP subscribers by 2030.
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To put that into perspective, Netflix has about 260 million subscribers currently. Looks like Amazon Prime and Disney+ are the only other video subscriptions with over 100m.
 
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Hailinel said:
To put this in perspective, Microsoft apparently wants 100 million GP subscribers by 2030.
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And I'm sure they'll get there as long as they keep redefining Game Pass to inflate their numbers like they've done by renaming Live Gold to be a part of Game Pass 🤗
 
Even if you round up to the optimal scenario of everyone paying them $15 a month that’s still only like half a billion a year. Like a handful of AAA game licensing deals eats though all of that in one year on their own forget everything else.
 
Really this shouldn't have been all that complicated. They could have just said hey if you want to play Call of Duty or w/e then buy an Xbox, fuck off Sony. That's kind of how the whole console war thing has worked since forever. But they can't do that because on Xbox, if Call of Duty comes to Gamepass they can't sell it, so even if it sells a bunch of systems they aren't making money off of it and a huge increase in subs isn't good enough either. They've put themselves in a weird scenario where they'd prefer you buy their own games on their competitors platforms than their own because they get more money that way which makes no sense at all.
 
Phil Spencer on the Xbox Podcast: Starfield and Indiana Jones are not a part of these four games. I don't want players on these systems getting these four games and thinking we are bringing more. That is not the plan.

Phil Spencer via industry interviews literally the same day: I will not commit to saying Starfield and Indiana will never come to PlayStation.



So.. what was the point of this then? Classic Xbox PR message flopping where they say one thing and then immediately undermine it. As someone who stuck with Xbox through the Xbox One days and now the XSX gen, I can firmly say I think this is the beginning of the end of Xbox.

Also, it was said that all of their bonuses are no longer tied to gamepass growth and now they are tied to content revenue, which includes game sales on other systems. All they care about now is getting their easy bonuses before they bounce from Microsoft. They'll release the flood gates when they realize they'll get literal millions themselves just doing it. They'll burn the Xbox ecosystem to the ground for yearly bonuses.
 
Síriocaz said:
Well, the change isn't going to be abrupt as a few of the rumors were suggesting, so yeah, it was blown out of proportion a little bit. In the long term, I think games like Starfield and Indiana Jones will appear elsewhere after a year or so. Meanwhile, Halo, Gears and Age of Empires will remain on Micro's side.

This, I think, is how it's going to work for at least the next three years.
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Microsoft is bleeding money if they focus on their miniscule install base. An active install base of 33 million for Gamepass is not good. And then they conditioned all of their players to not purchase games on top of that.

Games will go third party. And quick too.
 
Danny said:
I don't understand their gameplan that well but it seems they are doubling down even harder on gamepass with this presentation, announcing all activision blizzard games will come to gamepass in the future. So the strategy seems to be we will have timed exclusive releases and then release our games on other platforms but Xbox is the best platform to play those games because they will be free on gamepass. So basically they could be hoping that after their franchises gain more and more popularity on Playstation and Nintendo platforms people will jump over to get a gamepass in the future.
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A very good video from GVG offered more or less the same analysis.



And frankly, it seems to me to be an appropriate strategy: they increase their revenues in the short term, they increase the weight of their Game Pass ecosystem in the medium term. Note the usual hypocrisy about the loss of relevance of exclusives, when the whole future of Game Pass will be based on them: just because you're promoting a subscription model doesn't mean you need less differentiating content. In fact, as Netflix perfectly demonstrates, you need it more than ever, to keep people subscribing to your stuff and accepting price increases, without which your profitability doesn't exist.

JoshuaJSlone said:
"Hi, I'm Phil Spencer, and let's start the discussion with... what does 'exclusive' really mean, anyway?"
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As I said above, I think their change of direction may be a good solution for them, but I honestly burst out laughing when he said that.

I mean, declaring that a market doesn't really exist once you've failed to dominate it by trying to crush the competition with billions of dollars of acquisitions and fire sales is hilarious. "If I don't dominate this thing, then this thing doesn't really exist" is simply the most Microsoft thing imaginable. And now they want everything to become cross-platform, i.e. everyone should play on Gamepass in the same way as "everyone" have to use Windows. That just sums up their shitty philosophy.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
The only thing that would force that to go on indefinitely is if customers stopped buying smaller scale games altogether. If the only way Nintendo can make a $500 million Zelda work is to make it multiplatform... then they won't make an $500 million Zelda.
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a 500 million zelda is ludicrous anyway. what are they spending all that money on, links 300 different mocapped bow reload animations?
 
Tron1 said:
I'm missing it. What are the four games coming to switch?
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they said two are "community driven" games and two are smaller games that are at least a year old, so I think the general consensus is they're probably Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, and Pentiment (not necessarily in that order, obviously)
 
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This is the part where I hope for physical releases of Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment so they can be housed right next to Cuphead and Ori 1+2.

... Apparently their Switch releases are a winning idea.
 
Just to be clear, all four games are confirmed to come to both platforms, right?

Hajeman said:
But I didn't like this 4 games (Hifi Rush, Sea of Thief, Pertinent, Grounded). I want COD from Microsoft
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That's happening anyways. We already know it's coming to Switch, Microsoft confirmed it when they bought the company.
 
Magic-Man said:
Just to be clear, all four games are confirmed to come to both platforms, right?
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SoT is at least PS5, they put out a Tweet that hints to a Switch release as well
HFR is at least PS5, according to Nate and another Era insider a Switch port was planned but cancelled (personal speculation: may come to Switch 2)
Pentiment is rumored for Switch, don't see any reason for it to skip PS5
Grounded is unknown but I can't see it not at least come to PS5
 
Microsoft is playing a game of public opinion. Phil in an interview is already whining about Hell Divers not being on Xbox, even though Sony is the one who fronted the money to get it made and took on all the risk. Of course it’s going to be exclusive to PS5 and PC.

But really what Phil is trying to do is reframe the conversation around their failure as video game developer and the Xbox divisions inability to develop exclusives that move consoles. By going after the very notion of “exclusivity” Phil is hoping that public opinion sours on Sony and Nintendo, and Xbox comes out of this situation looking like pro-consumer “heroes” who want everything to be open and multi platform.

The thing is that it’s all facade. Microsoft will port their games to PS5 to make back revenue since their games are expensive and want a solid return on their ROI. However, this is likely just an attempt to “boost the brand” and have public opinion of Xbox shift in their favor. They’ll port the games that make sense to port and we’ll likely see games like Starfield and Indiana Jones get ported months after they launch on Xbox. The message will be that they are doing people a favor by making games multi platform. That they’re trying to radically change the industry for the “better.”

The real play is once the Xbox brand has been rehabilitated they’ll be the first to launch next gen hardware. The hope is that through “goodwill” they’ll finally be able to lure dedicated ps5 players over to Xbox by having the next cutting edge machine early. Then the narrative will be “play the games you’ve enjoyed on ps5, but on the next gen Xbox, and subscribe to gamepass so that changing to a new digital ecosystem is more palatable to you as a consumer.”

This is also compounded by the fact they are giving up on physical media. So if they get a next gen console out early and beat Sony to market, people will have no choice but to “buy into” a digital ecosystem that snares them into the Xbox ecosystem. That puts them in them in position to keep people there via gamepass. And makes it harder for Sony to get people to “jump back” to PlayStation.

So basically, Microsoft’s immediate plan is to positively boost their brand by emphasizing “exclusives are bad” which in turn makes Sony and Nintendo look like bad guys. Put their games on other platforms to generate goodwill with consumers and as a form of advertisement for the Xbox brand. Get a next gen console to market quickly and using that goodwill to gain a head start on the competition.
 
Paxie said:
SoT is at least PS5, they put out a Tweet that hints to a Switch release as well
HFR is at least PS5, according to Nate and another Era insider a Switch port was planned but cancelled (personal speculation: may come to Switch 2)
Pentiment is rumored for Switch, don't see any reason for it to skip PS5
Grounded is unknown but I can't see it not at least come to PS5
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My guess is Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment and Grounded have native Switch ports but Sea of Thieves has a xCloud version. Era insider lolil said HFR is no longer in works at Tango, could be because they hired a specialized studio to do the port.

I don't think any of them is coming to the successor, no way any of those studios, Rare included has the devkits. The successor launch should be good but not THAT good and it shouldn't kill Switch right away.
 
I don't think Hifi Rush is being canned for Drake. mainly because Tango probably wouldn't get dev kits until very late. and given how long it seemed to have been in the works, it's still alive
 
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Magic-Man said:
Just to be clear, all four games are confirmed to come to both platforms, right?


That's happening anyways. We already know it's coming to Switch, Microsoft confirmed it when they bought the company.
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I actually don't think they specified any platforms in particular

If I had to guess, Pentiment at least should be able to come to both; Josh Sawyer has even talked about wanting to see it on Switch and how he thinks a port should be technologically possible. Hi-Fi Rush feels like it's probably been moved to Switch 2 (iirc they canceled the Xbone version because they insisted on 60fps and I can't see that happening on the current Switch)

The other two, I could go either way on; Sea of Thieves almost makes sense as a cloud game since it's always online anyway

Part of me is wondering if some of the weirdness about the vague messaging here is because at least one of them is being held back as part of the Switch 2 reveal/showcase and that's why they left it at "these ports will be talked about elsewhere"
 
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