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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)

Lozjam said:
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.
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Quick for me would be a handful of big titles within the next year, which I don't think will happen just yet. This just screams testing the waters, I think, by almost fully submerging yourself in the pool (it will happen), but still a test.
 
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Gotta say, I adore the game choices Microsoft is making here. Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Grounded are all amazing games that got overshadowed because of the platform they were on, and Sea of Thieves is one of the best live service games on the market that is slowly dying after reaching the limits of the available playerbase. None of them are realistic, and all of them play differently from each other. Plus Microsoft gets to keep the system selling exclusives. It's a win all around.
 
Lucifer said:
This doesn't change much except save them some cash. Xbox messaging and product proposition is still very vague.
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I'm really interested in seeing how each game does on other platforms. Hi-Fi Rush should blow up on Switch provided the port is good, and Sea of Thieves should do really well on PS5 and Switch, but Grounded and Pentiment are the big question marks here.

I wonder if Microsoft will port all the non-realistic games from their studios and keep the graphics showcase titles exclusive? None of the games that Microsoft have ported to other consoles have had a realistic artstyle (Minecraft, Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, New Super Luckys Take, Quake 1 and 2 Remastered, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, Grounded).
 
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TurtleRock said:
But really what Phil is trying to do is reframe the conversation
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I think that's his biggest strength, actually. Diverting attention away from one point to another, attempting to disrupt the way people tackle or think about a topic, ideally making Xbox look less ... bad / lost.
Where he fails, in my eyes, is to actually have these changes manifest in a meaningful way. They're shortlived for the most part (for good reason in many cases, in my opinion).
 
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Look, i didn't watch / listen to the podcast, it was late, i was having club meeting and had to do fam stuff before and after, so i was just tired.

But i've read up about the things in the podcast.

... Did they really have to wait almost 2 weeks for this?

Also, i kinda had to lol in real life reading that "reassurance" about the super powerful next-gen Xbox. Even in the case that future Xbox developed games have a 6 to 12 months exclusivity window on their own hardware ... why would i want to buy said hardware? I could just wait for the few games i might be interested in to become multiplatform.

I mean ... Phil couldn't even flat out say "No" when asked about Starfield and Indy Jones going multi.
 
Lmao Xbox is so fucking cooked. They're already in third place by a huge margin and I would not be shocked if the dedication to day 1 Game Pass is killing their operating income. They've mostly given up retail which is still a huge chunk of sales as Insomniac leaks have proven. They lose so much money per console unit, it further eats into profitability. Their studios have no sense of release cadence for multiple reasons, like an overreliance on contract workers and the games they do ship are generally a nothingburger, even Starfield. And I also would not be surprised if the ABK acquisition just up and deleted the majority of Microsoft's cash on hand, because borrowing money with these interest rates would also be real bad for them.

All Phil Spencer and crew did was provide lip service by trying to soften the blow with only four exclusives going multiplatform (more WILL come over, this is a guarantee), trying to not back out of day 1 Game Pass even though it's killing their business, and make some nebulous claim about "the biggest jump in power yet" for their next box. Like hell they'll be able to supply that, if it even ships. And even if it does, how much better will it actually be over a PS5 Pro, then later get sandwiched by a PS6?

Xbox needs a radical idea no one else here can think of, a complete reinvention of how we perceive games like the Switch was. Game Pass isn't that at all, it's not a passive medium like music or movies so it just doesn't work as well as those types. And honestly I don't think Xbox can deliver.
 
Why did they need to do a podcast to just say a lot of fluff and not even name the games being released on Playstation/Switch ?
Guess some of those announcements are supposed to happen in a direct or something which is pretty funny.
 
Evil Lucario said:
Lmao Xbox is so fucking cooked. They're already in third place by a huge margin and I would not be shocked if the dedication to day 1 Game Pass is killing their operating income. They've mostly given up retail which is still a huge chunk of sales as Insomniac leaks have proven. They lose so much money per console unit, it further eats into profitability. Their studios have no sense of release cadence for multiple reasons, like an overreliance on contract workers and the games they do ship are generally a nothingburger, even Starfield. And I also would not be surprised if the ABK acquisition just up and deleted the majority of Microsoft's cash on hand, because borrowing money with these interest rates would also be real bad for them.

All Phil Spencer and crew did was provide lip service by trying to soften the blow with only four exclusives going multiplatform (more WILL come over, this is a guarantee), trying to not back out of day 1 Game Pass even though it's killing their business, and make some nebulous claim about "the biggest jump in power yet" for their next box. Like hell they'll be able to supply that, if it even ships. And even if it does, how much better will it actually be over a PS5 Pro, then later get sandwiched by a PS6?

Xbox needs a radical idea no one else here can think of, a complete reinvention of how we perceive games like the Switch was. Game Pass isn't that at all, it's not a passive medium like music or movies so it just doesn't work as well as those types. And honestly I don't think Xbox can deliver.
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Considering there were +16x jumps in Ram amount and +10x jumps in GPU power in previous generations I‘d call that impossible. Tech is advancing much slower, the only way they could hold that promise is either a surprising breakthrough for chips or they are waiting 10+ years instead of 7-8.
 
just to be clear

is there (in their words or PR) official mentioning of the Switch, for these 4 games?
I've read only "4 unannounced games coming to platforms"

am I right?

rumors had Pentiment and Hi-Fi rush as Switch bound, but we don't have anything more right now, have we?
 
I’ve never heard a gaming company try to defend themselves harder than the Xbox executives in that podcast lol. If they actually wanted to save Xbox the least they could do is try seeming more confident about their plan.
 
boodream said:
Coming from a company that has been punished a trillion times over for abusing its dominant position, the nerve of this kind of statement is absolutely breathtaking. Fortunately, I have the impression that a lot of people aren't fooled by this bullshit.
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The irony is ... Nintendo being so "our games, only on our systems" is among the reasons they're doing so well. It's a reason the Switch does so well (on top of being a smartly designed system to begin with).

Phil's basically "asking" Nintendo to come down to their level.

I know the current suits at Nintendo would never pity someone else in public, but i would bet money that Furukawa had an actual laugh in private when reading this.
 
Bonejack said:
The irony is ... Nintendo being so "our games, only on our systems" is among the reasons they're doing so well. It's a reason the Switch does so well (on top of being a smartly designed system to begin with).

Phil's basically "asking" Nintendo to come down to their level.

I know the current suits at Nintendo would never pity someone else in public, but i would bet money that Furukawa had an actual laugh in private when reading this.
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There‘s a small chance (almost impossible) that Microsoft could force them to allow GamePass pn there system, but Nintendo games on Xbox will never happen.
 
Bonejack said:
The irony is ... Nintendo being so "our games, only on our systems" is among the reasons they're doing so well. It's a reason the Switch does so well (on top of being a smartly designed system to begin with).

Phil's basically "asking" Nintendo to come down to their level.

I know the current suits at Nintendo would never pity someone else in public, but i would bet money that Furukawa had an actual laugh in private when reading this.
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If inflation and the loss of consumer purchasing power has the slightest negative impact on Switch 2 sales, which I think it probably will, you'll see that it won't be five minutes before incompetent "analysts" start asking Nintendo to abandon its dedicated hardware again, precisely on the grounds that Xbox and Sony games are now incresingly multi-platform. I think that the next time Nintendo runs into difficulties, we'll be able to see whether Furukawa is in fact a docile yes man with his shareholders or a guy who understands and defends the identity of his company because he's literally spent his entire professional career there.
 
Now that the dust has settled a bit, I think what we can take away from all this hullabaloo is that we're entering an new era, not one where the home console is dying, but one where in order to sustain the now astronomical costs of game development the value of console exclusives is going to diminish in the face of needing to maximise profits. If the need to generate revenue is seen as more of a necessity than having a unique console library then these won't be the only first party games to make the switch, and that applies to both sides.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Sony are experimenting with this too. They have multiple big first party games now available on PC, they've kept Bungie's projects multi-plat, and only this month they themselves published Helldivers 2 on Steam the same day and date as PS5.

I definitely think the days where you could confidently say that a first party game is going to remain exclusive in perpituity have now passed, and we're entering a new era in which the lines between all gaming devices - be they console, PC or what have you - are going to become a lot more blurred. Which theoretically should be a good things as gamers get more choice of games regardless of what console they buy...

...well everyone except Nintendo naturally. It's more likely we reach the heat death of the universe before we see them consider putting Mario on Playstation
 
Darknut85 said:
There‘s a small chance (almost impossible) that Microsoft could force them to allow GamePass pn there system, but Nintendo games on Xbox will never happen.
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I'm curious what (legal) options MS would have to "force" this on Nintendo. Because i legit can't think of any.

boodream said:
If inflation and the loss of consumer purchasing power has the slightest negative impact on Switch 2 sales, which I think it probably will, you'll see that it won't be five minutes before incompetent "analysts" start asking Nintendo to abandon its dedicated hardware again, precisely on the grounds that Xbox and Sony games are now incresingly multi-platform. I think that the next time Nintendo runs into difficulties, we'll be able to see whether Furukawa is in fact a docile yes man with his shareholders or a guy who understands and defends the identity of his company because he's literally spent his entire professional career there.
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They survived the mobile phone craze, even if they ended up doing some "lip service" for that. (Though, i guess Intelligent Systems is happy that FEH exists.)

In case such statements appear, they can just play the "Dude, we're making millions-earning movies and theme parks now, come again?" card.
 
boodream said:
If inflation and the loss of consumer purchasing power has the slightest negative impact on Switch 2 sales, which I think it probably will, you'll see that it won't be five minutes before incompetent "analysts" start asking Nintendo to abandon its dedicated hardware again, precisely on the grounds that Xbox and Sony games are now incresingly multi-platform. I think that the next time Nintendo runs into difficulties, we'll be able to see whether Furukawa is in fact a docile yes man with his shareholders or a guy who understands and defends the identity of his company because he's literally spent his entire professional career there.
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Nintendo already started their diversification path many years ago
Unlike Sony or Microsoft with PlayStation or Xbox, it's not the multiplatform strategy, but (somehow on the contrary) the process of make their IP stronger than ever, even outside their own specific hardware, investing in Theme Parks, Movie and (probably) TV series

Super Nintendo World in Osaka is already a reality
Super Nintendo World in Orlando is opening next year
Super Mario Bros. Movie set record for the entire animation industry
The Legend of Zelda Movie has just been announced


they set the path: they won't need other platforms, their IP are going to take over the entertainment world in other ways, exactly to sustain them and their IPs despite a possible less succesfull hardware (basically backing up the lack of a "3DS" to sustain a "Wii U")
 
Aostia82 said:
Nintendo already started their diversification path many years ago
Unlike Sony or Microsoft with PlayStation or Xbox, it's not the multiplatform strategy, but (somehow on the contrary) the process of make their IP stronger than ever, even outside their own specific hardware, investing in Theme Parks, Movie and (probably) TV series

Super Nintendo World in Osaka is already a reality
Super Nintendo World in Orlando is opening next year
Super Mario Bros. Movie set record for the entire animation industry
The Legend of Zelda Movie has just been announced


they set the path: they won't need other platforms, their IP are going to take over the entertainment world in other ways, exactly to sustain them and their IPs despite a possible less succesfull hardware (basically backing up the lack of a "3DS" to sustain a "Wii U")
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Yes, they have taken steps to diversify other than by killing off their integrated hardware/software model, and that's excellent news, but I just wonder how much they'll be able to resist strong pressure to challenge their model at the slightest difficulty.

It's no coincidence that they announced that they were going to finance a major part of the live-action Zelda. They want to speed things up. But it still takes time to build up another pillar of income, and the characteristic of financial pressures is their constant impatience.
 
HockeyBird said:
www.videogameschronicle.com

Phil Spencer wants Sony and Nintendo games on Xbox, but says he doesn’t expect it | VGC

He says Xbox’s multiplatform plans are “not some kind of bartering system”…
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com
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The nerve of this guy 🤣🤣
His company spends billions to take away games from Nintendo and playstation fans
And he wants both company to release their games on Xbox
The funny thing they wasted all that money for nothing
Starfield was medicore game and sold like crap lol
And gamepass failed to reach Ms expectations
And now they are going third-party
I guess the higher-ups in MS are fed up with Phil failures and wants results now to justify their spending
 
boodream said:
Yes, they have taken steps to diversify other than by killing off their integrated hardware/software model, and that's excellent news, but I just wonder how much they'll be able to resist strong pressure to challenge their model at the slightest difficulty.

It's no coincidence that they announced that they were going to finance a major part of the live-action Zelda. They want to speed things up. But it still takes time to build up another pillar of income, and the characteristic of financial pressures is their constant impatience.
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They also managed that without acquisition of major publishers followed by lay offs like certain other companies have done.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
Exclusives are not the future of the industry

Starfield and Indiana Jones are staying exclusive (for now ... maybe ... maybe not ... to be honest even we don't know)

Nintendo and Sony should put their exclusives on our system
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Fixed that middle statement. ;D
 
HockeyBird said:
www.videogameschronicle.com

Phil Spencer wants Sony and Nintendo games on Xbox, but says he doesn’t expect it | VGC

He says Xbox’s multiplatform plans are “not some kind of bartering system”…
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com
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“I will say, when I look at a game like Helldivers 2 – and it’s a great game, kudos to the team shipping on PC and PlayStation – I’m not exactly sure who it helps in the industry by not being on Xbox,” he said. “If you try to twist yourself to say, like, somehow that benefited somebody somewhere.
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This is borderline unprofessionalism from Phil here. Why would he guilt developers like this in a public interview?
 
I do find the coverage of this to be so odd, and there's so little thought as to why this is happening, and it's all the funnier and sadder that even in articles which draw the comparison to Sony's push for PC games, nobody is actually explaining the connection: neither Sony nor Microsoft can afford to keep their own games exclusive because the competition the two of them have engaged in has created an industry which is high-cost, low-margin, resource intensive and deeply unfriendly to secure working conditions.

What should alarm people is that, even with different business models - and with PS5 a big success by any metric - Sony have failed so badly at controlling their costs that they need PC ports to juice their margin, and that's even in the background of hardware, software and subscriptions all moving up in price. Microsoft need their content on other formats because, by attempting to push to a business model that's wildly unproven and which has even been demonstrably bad for other industries and other enormous entities (hello, Disney Plus), they've dug themselves into an even bigger hole where the business model and products they're selling don't make enough money to be financially viable.

It's like all that lovey dovey coverage of GamePass from a few years back. Yes, I get it, it's excellent value for money, and I've been subscribed more than once to play games I'd otherwise not afford. But, and this really should be the job of the professional journalists and analysts, any shift like this has implications, and no giant corporation is doing this for the sake of The Gamers. They're doing it to claw back investments that are increasingly on shaky ground. I'm not getting at fans here by any stretch, because I understand why people are positive about having more options; but it would be nice to see some economically and historically aware reporting which connects the last 20 years of two tech giants slugging it out to a contemporary industry which is rife with layoffs and spiralling costs.
HockeyBird said:
www.videogameschronicle.com

Phil Spencer wants Sony and Nintendo games on Xbox, but says he doesn’t expect it | VGC

He says Xbox’s multiplatform plans are “not some kind of bartering system”…
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com
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This is really funny given the lengths he went through to insist Xbox is still commmitted to providing exclusive games to its users.

I mean, he tries to nuance it by suggesting multiplayer games especially will benefit from multiformat, and that line about exclusive games being a mysterious 'legacy' in gaming, but the fact he wants Nintendo and Sony exclusives shows their value.
JazzPotatoes said:
Exclusives are not the future of the industry

Starfield and Indiana Jones are staying exclusive

Nintendo and Sony should put their exclusives on our system
Click to expand...
Exactly!
 
MisterSpo said:
I do find the coverage of this to be so odd, and there's so little thought as to why this is happening, and it's all the funnier and sadder that even in articles which draw the comparison to Sony's push for PC games, nobody is actually explaining the connection: neither Sony nor Microsoft can afford to keep their own games exclusive because the competition the two of them have engaged in has created an industry which is high-cost, low-margin, resource intensive and deeply unfriendly to secure working conditions.

What should alarm people is that, even with different business models - and with PS5 a big success by any metric - Sony have failed so badly at controlling their costs that they need PC ports to juice their margin, and that's even in the background of hardware, software and subscriptions all moving up in price. Microsoft need their content on other formats because, by attempting to push to a business model that's wildly unproven and which has even been demonstrably bad for other industries and other enormous entities (hello, Disney Plus), they've dug themselves into an even bigger hole where the business model and products they're selling don't make enough money to be financially viable.

It's like all that lovey dovey coverage of GamePass from a few years back. Yes, I get it, it's excellent value for money, and I've been subscribed more than once to play games I'd otherwise not afford. But, and this really should be the job of the professional journalists and analysts, any shift like this has implications, and no giant corporation is doing this for the sake of The Gamers. They're doing it to claw back investments that are increasingly on shaky ground. I'm not getting at fans here by any stretch, because I understand why people are positive about having more options; but it would be nice to see some economically and historically aware reporting which connects the last 20 years of two tech giants slugging it out to a contemporary industry which is rife with layoffs and spiralling costs.

This is really funny given the lengths he went through to insist Xbox is still commmitted to providing exclusive games to its users.

I mean, he tries to nuance it by suggesting multiplayer games especially will benefit from multiformat, and that line about exclusive games being a mysterious 'legacy' in gaming, but the fact he wants Nintendo and Sony exclusives shows their value.

Exactly!
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It‘s all okay, uncle Phill is a gamer who does everything for the best of the industry and gamers. Bad Sony and Nintendo don’t want all people to enjoy their games and even is blocking Xbox from doing so by not allowing GamePass on their Platforms./s

That is literally Xbox PR, you would think such a big company could do better…
 
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It's been nearly 25 years since the "Really? So we didn't just buy Donkey Kong?" incident and there's still exactly the same unsympathetic "we've got lots of money to spend, we don't need a plan" vibe.
 
ILikeFeet said:
Probably wouldn't.

That said, I think that would only magnify the issues with gamepass as day one GP eats into revenue
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I might be in the minority, but I don't like the direction they're trying to to take gaming. Cloud gaming is fine and all, but if they had a hold on the market would they eventually try to shift everything to cloud? If game pass was on PlayStation, would they actually port games natively or just have a cloud version? I'm leaning towards the latter.

It'd be interesting to peek at that timeline and see how many more subscribers they'd get though and if they'd be successful enough to sustain themselves.
 
2B said:
I might be in the minority, but I don't like the direction they're trying to to take gaming. Cloud gaming is fine and all, but if they had a hold on the market would they eventually try to shift everything to cloud? If game pass was on PlayStation, would they actually port games natively or just have a cloud version? I'm leaning towards the latter.

It'd be interesting to peek at that timeline and see how many more subscribers they'd get though and if they'd be successful enough to sustain themselves.
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It doesn't appear that Microsoft's strategy is working. Or at least it's not working well enough, and so we have Phil here trying to appeal to the fanboys and make Sony and Nintendo look like bad guys for not supporting Xbox.

If whatever numbers Microsoft wants to see go up don't go up in the next couple of years, there's a chance Phil will be the ex-head of Microsoft Gaming.
 
I maintain my previous comments that I still believe Xbox as a console is still on its way out.

Microsoft is begining the transition from being the 3rd place console to the biggest 3rd party publisher of software around.

More than these 4 games will be ported. The series consoles are stalling out sales wise and these moves will only hurt that, not help.

Once they release their next gen console in a couple years that will sell much worse than the series.

At some point they are gonna pull the plug on their hardware line. Only a matter of then. Xbox continues its death spiral.
 
it would be funny if the Rare game were the only one of the four not planned for a Nintendo platform (yet)
 
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If the Switch 2 did get delayed like the rumors say, that means all four of these are coming to OG Switch and not Switch 2. Microsoft would have known the Switch 2 got delayed before making the podcast.

You know what that means? HI-FI RUSH ON SWITCH BABY LET'S GO.
 
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I think massively online games will be a priority for the Switch 2, just as Hi-fi Rush has nothing to look forward to given the specific nature of that game. But we'll see.

That leaves us with one likely game on Switch 1 in the short term. This is, of course, pure speculation, and no doubt the same deduction as some of our revered insiders.
 
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TheMindOfThomas said:
This is borderline unprofessionalism from Phil here. Why would he guilt developers like this in a public interview?
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It's ridiculously stupid

It benefits Sony. They have a product called the PS5 they are trying to sell to people. It benefits them when they make games and they tell people they should buy a playstation instead of an xbox and sub to their online service if they want to play it instead of Gamepass Ultimate or w/e. This isn't very complicated. Make your own games that makes people want to buy an xbox. It's completely pathetic to see a CEO of a gaming company port begging.

Why even stop at Helldivers. Might as well port beg for Mario Wonder while we are at it Phil.
 


Hi-Fi Rush is coming to PS5 only. Nate turned out to be right! I guess Steam Deck remains as the only way to play this on the go...
 
I'm surprised that Grounded is coming to Switch. I thought only Pentiment would make while the other 3 would be saved for Switch 2. Based on the footage, maybe it should have been that way...

Also, RIP to anyone who was still expecting Hi-Fi Rush on Switch
 
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