Xbox is back. The exclusive war might be won by Xbox in the near future

Given how inept 343 Studios has proven themselves to be, we should all congratulate them for being able to ship multiplayer and single player together on release.

That aside, in the (far) future, you may very well be right. Doom, Wolfenstein, Starfield, and anything Obsidian puts out are all hot properties for Microsoft.

That being said, Microsoft is basically turning into the console equivalent of the Epic Games store and their buying up third party studios left and right is terrible for the games industry as a whole.

quote:

---

And Sony isn’t guilty of the same shite? I’m only hype because I’ve always been an xbox user.

---

Not really no

Sony doesn't have the money to buy up major developers. The studios they have purchased in the past were always closely associated with Sony to begin with (Insomniac).

What they have done is paid for timed exclusive games and DLC which both sides are guilty of to be honest.

Can’t wait to play these on PC in 2022/2023

quote:

---

Sony talks about their exclusives all the time and how that makes them better than any of the competition.

Microsoft finally decided to pour a shite ton of money into the Xbox division and is going to buy up studios to get those exclusives. And I fully support them doing it because Sony is the only little bitch that won't do cross platforming except in a few very rare circumstances

---

They talk about it because it's true. Xbox 360 had a lot of great exclusive titles particularly early in its life. Microsoft just put all their eggs in the Halo/Forza/Gears of War basket which was fine for 2006-2010. In the case of Halo/Gears, the those franchises just aren't the huge tentpoles that they used to be.

I'm not sure how Sony not allowing crossplay equates to Microsoft buying up third party studios.

I don't play a lot of competitive multiplayer games, so lack of crossplay doesn't bother me except for when talking about older or less popular games that would benefit from a larger pool of players.

The Playstation was by far the most popular place to play online multiplayer and looks to continue to be this generation as well. Switch, PC, and Xbox all benefit from sharing player pools. Sony, less so. I promise you that if the Playstation wasn't outselling Xbox 4 to 1 that Sony's tune would change quickly.

Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda makes sense in a lot of ways.

No Bethesda franchise is inherently associated with Playstation. Bethesda has worked with Microsoft before regarding the Xbox port of Morrowind, and Xbox has always been the best place to play console ports of Bethesda developed games.

Games developed by Bethesda themselves have either been flat out broken on Playstation hardware (Skyrim, Fallout 3 on PS3) or lesser versions (Sony not allowing full mod support for Skyrim on PS4).

Other than Bethesda themselves, the studios that Bethesda owns (Machine Games, ID, and Arkhane Studios) will provide a lot of great games for Microsoft.

It's still hard to shake the cold hard fact that Microsoft bought these previously multiplatform friendly studios to gate these products behind their $500 Xbox.

Take into account the rumors of Microsoft acquiring SquareEnix, Avalanche, Sega, NRS, IO Interactive, Crytek, and Rocksteady

Now we really want Xbox to just continue throwing their weight around buying up virtually every third party developer as a means of gate keeping their products from Playstation owners?

quote:

---

Exclusives shouldn't exist, period. Only corporate slaves believe that exclusives are good for the industry.

I despise the market the consoles have created.

---

I don't despise console exclusives by any means. They are the largest part of what gives a console its identity, but market conditions make exclusives on modern consoles undesirable unless the games come from a first party studio or the console manufacturer pays the publisher mounds of cash to keep it exclusive to their platform.

It's way easier for Microsoft to use their massive cash reserves to just buy up these noteworthy third party development studios as opposed to hiring developers, forming their own studios, and coming up with their own franchises. It's obvious why Microsoft is doing what they're doing, but it sucks for the gamer.

quote:

---

Exclusives shouldn't exist, period. Only corporate slaves believe that exclusives are good for the industry.

---

I agree. XBox gave Sony years to end this practice before they started using the resources available to them to do what they could have been doing from the start.

quote:

---

Microsoft also has a track record of buying studios after their best days, see Rare and 343. Developers are what make these places and they are free to leave, often times do when they get bought up or are forced to keep making the same thing.

Not saying that’s the case of Bethesda but we’re coming of Fallout 76 after a somewhat letdown in Fallout 4 and it’s been a decade since they have made a new ES. They have had some rocky development on their biggest open world titles, also doubt Starfield hits next year based off that no gameplay trailer.

---

I don't disagree with any of that, but there are a lot of good studios under the Bethesda umbrella even if Bethesda's RPGs aren't what they once were.

Until the Xbox sells in Europe and Asia they will always lag behind PlayStation. Those two continents are very disapproving of Microsoft hence the reason for the shite sales of their consoles. Making FIFA an exclusive for Xbox would be the only way that they could possibly outsell in those markets.

Outer Worlds was a decent game but it was nothing special. I won’t lose any sleep over not being able to play on ps5.

All Sony has to say is “Bloodborne 2”