electrolite77

@NEStalgia

Totally agree. Exclusives are only a small part of the equation when it comes to selling Games systems. Third-party support, services, Online gaming and the hardware all play at least as big a part.

Exclusives are very significant for Nintendo because they never carry the same third party support as MS/Sony and have no interest in getting their Online and subscription services to parity.

Sonys exclusives have become a big deal on Gaming forums. They mean a lot to Sony fans, and the corporation itself likes to use them as part of their marketing as they attempt to apply a sheen of prestige to the PlayStation brand.

I think they become significant later in a generation when the mass market might be looking to buy a system to compliment their first choice. It’s a circular thing as most systems that last 4 years have a worthwhile range of exclusives even if they’re slow in coming at the start of a generation. Yet as we see this generation, PS5 and XSX are flying off the shelves despite having very few genuine exclusives. That’s because they get everything else right.

@Fiendish-Beaver

Great post on every level. I’d much rather have the existing three platform holders hoovering up gaming companies than Ten Cent getting a major foothold.

@Titntin

It only becomes anticompetitive if they make COD exclusive, which I don’t think they will. If they don’t, it’s a fairly logical business transaction that gives Xbox a foothold in a few areas of Gaming where they don’t currently have one.

I’d love to see a new PGR, absolutely. Loved he first two games (and their predecessor, MSR on Dreamcast). Don’t agree on FH5 though, doesn’t feel off to me at all. I love it.

Not as good as last month but still a solid set of additions

Sadly for a lot of people the innovation remembered will be not working very well

@Bleachedsmiles

I’m not talking about Mattrick. I’m talking about their general strategy which had taken them from a strong position in the 360 generation to people seriously discussing them leaving the business. They were a joke.

The XB1 launch was more than a PR disaster, it was the worst in the industry since the Sega Saturn. The focus on Kinect and TV had cut ties with their core market.

They’d closed studios and cut back on development capacity which is something that takes years to fix. They were known more for anti-Consumer practices than their launch games

Spencer has turned the whole business around. Their hardware is better, Back Compatibility is superb, Game Pass is great, they’ve built a portfolio of studios that with patience (because they need he games to be good) will produce results.

Exclusive games are only a tiny bit of the picture, as we see throughout the history of Xbox and Gaming overall.

A stark comparison to what’s on PS Plus Essentials this month

@Bleachedsmiles

I think people like him because A)he seems a decent guy, and B)before he ran the show Xbox was an absolute disaster that was probably headed for oblivion and now it’s doing really well.

Not bothered about GOW myself but this is A Very Good Thing. Gaming needs to grow up. A lot.

B+

Lots of gameplay, lots of games coming in the next year and (for those who care) quite a lot of Consoles exclusives. A really wide variety of games too, and some nice surprises.

I completely agree. We don’t have many games for the current generation and you can’t walk into a shop and buy one.

While the last gen really needed an upgrade because of the increasing proliferation of 4K TVs and because the originals were so underpowered, neither of these factors apply now.

I’d say the OG Xbox. Couldn’t hand a chance against PS2 given the momentum Sony had (and that the PS2 had an incredible library) but it was very powerful for its time. So much so that even now, 15-20 years on, you can often see the difference in power when you out the two side by side. It could do 720p, Dolby Digital, had a HDD, and some superb games that wouldn’t have run on any of it’s competitors.

@JayJ

I think there’s an element of insecurity attached to ‘exclusives’ in Gaming. It seems really important to some that they have something others don’t. I don’t get it personally.

@Titntin

It definitely seems to be for some people. I don’t get very motivated by exclusives personally.

I should have realised the comments would be full of complaining and fanboys listing Playstation games.

But that aside can anyone think of any missed off? I’ve got Recore and Gun Valkyrie. Knights of the Old Republic?

@omegared74

Very well said

Unless he’s got some serious insider information I’m going to go out on a very confident limb here and say he doesn’t know that Phil Spencer is the issue. He doesn’t know who or what is the issue. He doesn’t know if there is an issue beyond modern AAA Video Game development is really difficult, expensive and time consuming. Nobody here does either. But he got some clicks.

I genuinely can’t see the point of a mid gen upgrade this time. These machines aren’t underpowered at launch like XB1 and PS4 were, and they won’t have the hook of 4K Gaming as a ‘selling point.’

Yeah I got £4 this time much to my surprise. Will put it towards Lego Star Wars.

It does feel like MS can’t win with this type of things. When they get heavily involved in their acquisitions management they get stuck for being too controlling. If they don’t get involved enough they get stuck for being too hand off.

Teething troubles with some of these bought in studios was inevitable, they just need to take their time and not rush things.

Loads. Absolutely loads. I don’t have the fascination with only playing new games hat some gamers have.

@Medic_Alert

Same here. £8.50 for 60FPS and faster loading times feels like a great deal.

Yes got one in September for just over £160. Worth every penny, especially now I have both S and X Consoles. The hot swapping is a great feature.

Nope. No interest at all.

@themightyant

😀 (Fozzie Bear voice) wokka wokka wokka 😉

@Bleachedsmiles

But Extraction and Crossfire X are of no relevance to me. They may be disappointing and if they’re relevant to you, cool, but they don’t affect the grade I’m giving GP. Why would I mark the service down because of two games I’m not bothered about when so far it’s given me 5 games I’m enjoying playing? Stalker 2 was scheduled for April 28 so it slipping doesn’t affect the grade I’m giving either. It’s all subjective.

Not a lot for me there after a really good January. I usually give Madden a go but that’s about all I’m likely to play there.

@themightyant

Yeah I’m with you, I’ll wait for a detailed breakdown. It still looks very empty to me.

@Bleachedsmiles

There’s nothing objective about it. To me it’s an A, to you it could be a C or a D or a Z. What you deem objective criteria (re. ‘high profile third party day 1 gets have all missed the mark’) are actually subjective ones. Judging Game Pass by those games is a subjective criteria, as in fact is whether they’ve ‘missed’ the ‘mark’ (whatever the mark is). There may be people entirely happy with those games and happy with Game Pass as a result. You’re confusing your subjective measurements with objective ones.

It’s perfectly OK for you or anybody else to be disappointed, in the same way it is for me or anyone else to give it an A. That isn’t being a ‘fanboy’ or ‘bias’ it’s a valid opinion based on subjective criteria.

@Bleachedsmiles

I gave it an A because of the Indies. The indie scene is where most of the interesting stuff is these days.

Plenty to go at there. Starfield should be great, I hope the Cyberpunk upgrade fixes the problems as there’s a game in there somewhere. Optimistic for Warhammmer and Scorn. Tunic and Lego Star Wars look like must buys. This list misses a lot on my watch list like Legend of Wright, Somerville, Party Animals and Replaced.

Plenty for me on Switch this year. Haven’t got Arceus yet, and there’s Kirby/Advance Wars/Mario Strikers/Zelda/Klonoa to look forward to.

As for PS5? Not a lot there for me. Maybe I’ll get Horizon and Gran Turismo at some point but TBH I haven’t played much of the first Horizon and GT isn’t my favourite racing series. I’m well catered for elsewhere on that front. Not into God of War, don’t fancy Sifu. Hopefully they’ve more to announce or my PS5 will be getting neglected again unless I dig into my back catalogue.

Easy A. It’s reached the stage where I could happily survive just on GP. It’s encouraged the open-minded side of my gaming personality and got me trying stuff I may not have touched otherwise, or certainly wouldn’t have paid full price for.

Very neat platformers. Very nice to see them back.

@GuyinPA75

I’m pretty certain that the majority of games on Game Pass are not 8-but style games.

If it isn’t for you, that’s fine. One of the good things about the way Game Pass is set up is that you can still buy the games separately. GP is just an option, another way to get access to games. Regardless of what happens in the future though, it’s a great price now, which is what matters

It’s really weird to see people predicting a MS dominated future when they’re so very far away from that. Their competition is very strong and entrenched in the market. Yet this concern comes along at a time when we finally have three strong Console manufacturers with very different strategies, which is a really healthy position for Consumers.

Is it possible what we’re seeing is really concern trolling from Sony fans troubled that they have competition? I don’t remember this fretting about the state of the industry when Nintendo completely dominated in the late 80s, or the PS2 sold 3X Xbox and Gamecube combined.

It just doesn’t add up.

I have no idea who this person is or why his opinion (a misguided one judging by this article) is one I should consider.

Better than I initially did. At first I reacted to what seemed like an attempt to monopolise the industry. But then I saw that it puts Xbox absolutely nowhere near a monopoly.

Then when it became apparent that ABK were looking for a buyer and the alternatives were TenCent/Meta/Alphabet/Apple I felt better about it again. Much rather MS than any of them.

Further, given the state of ABK there’s an opportunity for Xbox to really improve things for employees and gamers. So overall it has the potential to be very positive.

@awp69

I was thinking that. Just do a cheaper no frills Online-only subscription and maybe nudge a few more people towards GP

Broken Sword definitely looks worth a try, not sure about the rest

@Dezzy70

Gold is £6.99 a month?! It’s only £38 a year on Cdkeys. This is how these subscription services make their money I suppose, people tick Auto Renew and then forget.

@UltimateOtaku91

It’s just that they’ve been able to make a lot more because of the less high end components. It did very well in the run up to Christmas (in the U.K. certainly) simply because it was in stock and easy to buy.

Very good price for a new system. I picked a used one up for £184 on Ebay and it’s an amazingly capable system for the price. Probably get one for my eldest birthday in July.

Before that, as it’s a much easier win, they could add Xbox characters and tracks to the existing Crash Tram Racing engine

@RadioHedgeFund

I certainly think you’ll see COD on PS, there’s sufficient value in having it on GP and keeping some content exclusive to Xbox. The family friendly stuff, Crash and Spyro? Maybe that’ll make it across with the Xbox versions as timed exclusives. I certainly think they’ll be on Nintendo with a delay anyway.

@UltimateOtaku91

“ those on pushsquare and nintendolife see the bigger picture.”

That gave me a proper chuckle. I regularly go on Pushsquare as a multi format gamer as it’s the best place for PlayStation news. But the comments threads are an absolute cesspit of the worst kind of fanboyism. It’s not everyone but there’s a large number of posters who have a great amount of personal value invested in Sony being Number 1 in the Home Console business and react very badly when that is threatened. No other perspective beyond that is possible.

@xMightyMatt14x

Yeah I don’t think it would be MS and Is rather these companies stay independent than get eaten up by Apple/Google/Ten Cent/even Disney.

My concern is will the big Xbox deals startle the really big boys into thinking they need to gobble up a big share of the market before Microsoft hoovers it all up.

As for MS the only other purchase I can see really benefitting them now would be a big Japanese publisher but that’s often difficult given the structure of a lot of these firms. The ABK deal has solved a lot of their issues with family friendly content, giving them Crash and Spyro (plus Skylanders and Guitar Hero if they wanted to resurrect them) but they still lack Japanese content.

@UltimateOtaku91

By Gaming revenue adding ABK puts Microsoft third behind Tencent and Sony.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/01/18/sony-still-a-bigger-company-than-microsoft/

Others have provided the info on what other major players are still operating to illustrate that MS are nowhere near a monopoly. They’ve also clearly explained why it’s better to have big publishers being bought by Microsoft than Apple, Google or (seriously?) Ten Cent. I guess that for some reason you’re very upset by this but those are far worse options.

@UltimateOtaku91

Microsoft are absolutely nowhere near ‘just buying the games industry.’ They won’t even be it’s biggest player after buying Activision.

If EA gets sold I can’t see it being Xbox that buys them. Probably one of the tech giants who’s looking for a foothold in Gaming.