Microsoft Accuses Sony of Paying to Block Games from Xbox Game Pass

Can’t we all be friends?!?! Instead of block fees, Sony should probably be paying to add them to PS +.

Sony is a business, doing business like things to hold up and safeguard their business. Nothing to see here.

Block fees? Isn’t that the same as timed exclusivity rights both have been doing for ages.

Sony just needs to up its Subscription game. I recently subbed and I like it, but man, the classics tier is utter garbage. Should be one tier and that’s it.

I’m an avid and well educated gamer and I get confused all the time which tier is which. I can’t imagine how confused casuals are.

If Sony pay for marketing rights for a game of course Sony wouldn’t want it on gamepass.

Isn't that the same as buying out a once multiplatform studio so that you can then have them make exclusives just for your platform? Cuz uh, Microsoft, you kinda pioneered that strategy. Can't really "innovate" if you want to be the one that benefits off all cross play endeavors.

I mean, we know this is true since the Capcom leak.

Have money to take away games from gamepass, but none to add classic games to ps+ premium. That's some next level business logic right there.

Ironic how Sony can prevent third parties from going to Game Pass but suddenly become helpless when it comes to MLB the Show.

This is gonna be an exhausting time closing this deal. It’s just gonna be Sony weirdly hyping up Actiblizz games while Microsoft downplays it. With regards to this accusation, idk it seems possible but it feels weird to throw this out there without any examples, either from MSoft themselves or even stuff like the Capcom and Bandai internal leaks (to my knowledge). Again, wouldn’t be surprised if they did it, it just feels weird to point this out when both developers have paid for exclusivity deals and Xbox has done some uniquely weird stuff themselves like preventing Atlus from announcing the Persona ports to PlayStation consoles at the same time.

Competition is good, but block fees to me sound real low. If you weren’t concerned with Xbox’s business, why go to those lengths.

@Jayslow not unusual for big companies to pay to prevent business from ever going to disruptive and consumer friendly initiatives. This is not just Sony, it’s common for (even Microsoft back in the Gates era) to buy out makers of free or very cheap alternatives only to shut them down.

This fight is dumb. I saw a lot of "CONSOLE LAUNCH EXCLUSIVE" on xbox/bethesda e3's.

Anyways they're just trying to do whatever they can do to secure or sabotage (in Sony's case) the deal.

Don’t both of them do it? Obviously it would be better if they all played nice but I don’t think that day will ever come.

Paying blocking fees is really not a good look. I would prefer they spent that money improving their own services

@11001100110zero I’m going to actually give this to Sony: the cases that we already know they did this are usually marketing exclusivity deals like the ones in Call of Duty or some of the recent Resident Evil gamers. It would not be much if a marketing exclusivity deal if the game turns around and gets added to Game Pass on day one.

Mind you, Microsoft might have info about older games getting paid off to stay off game pass.

It seems to me that Microsoft does a good enough job of holding itself back without help from the competition.

@nessisonett exactly..they are both as bad as each other..

Here we go again, the console wars.
While both Microsoft and Sony have rivalry like that, I just keep buying the kids games available on PS4 / PS5.
Peace out.

Yeah. Microsoft is not the victim here.

Seeing a trillion dollar company hijack the biggest publisher in the game industry to lock games off other is scummier than any block fees Sony has to use to compete. Trying to act like Sony's the bad guy in this situation is such a blatant obfuscation of the facts. And the fact that so many people are defending Microsoft on a Playstation centric website really shows what a pitiful state it's come to recently.

Go ahead and delete my comment again. You'll just prove me right.

Of course they would do this! They don't have the reserves Microsoft has to outright buy entire publishers like Bethesda and Activision, which are essentially "block fees" of those company's titles on PlayStation.

It's just fascinating seeing all of this come to official light in court filings.

Timed exclusives, or exclusives as a whole, aren't new in this industry, even Xbox had quite a few like Death's Door last year.

Now, what's new for me is telling people "We shouldn't do business with companies that have abuse allegations" and then proceed to buy that company the very next week, perpetrators will even receive a fat reward for their bad behaviour of turning a blind eye for said allegations. Thanks Phil!

When all is said and done, I still have no idea how on earth GamePass will be sustainable over the coming years. Something is going to have to give and I think both Microsoft and Sony know that. The cost of making games continues to go up. In some way I am with Sony on this one. It doesn't make sense to make a game for (something) over half a billion dollars and then put it on GamePass for $15/month. It's only a matter of time before Microsoft raises their prices and then it'll end up being more cost effective to just buy a game for $60-$70.

I think this could be a good situation for gamers, if they are both competing aggressively against one another, the end result is a better product for consumers because ultimately that's what will generate more income for both.

What’s the difference between paying a block fee and, I don’t know, buying a company? One’s just a cheaper alternative.

@get2sammyb I would imagine a "No gamepass clause" in a contract costs Sony money. Money I would prefer they spent adding better games to their services, rather than attempting to hobble someone else's. Just my opinion and I could be wrong

Why give games away for nearly free. I dont mind paying 60-70$ day 1 for the game like ive been doing for nearly 30 years. Buy the game, the dev gets money to make more. Its how it works. What exclusive games does XS even have anyway? Most if not all are on PC. So when Blinx came out nearly 20 years ago. How did i buy it? Was it on pc? No. I had to buy it to play it on Xbox Whats wrong with this system? Greedy customers, made by Microsoft game pass….
Sony wins as usual. Let the amazing games continue. Cant wait for Ragnarock and neither can the head of Xbox. Via his twitter

Yeah PlayStation is probably terrified of Game Pass because its not profitable and never will be.

Its a subscription service that could destroy the industry and you’re deluded if you can’t see that.

Granted I love Game Pass, but even now I want Two Point Campus on PS5, but its “free on Game Pass. Thats ultimately a bad thing for the industry.

@Stragen8 The classics is a big thing for me and right now it's not that great.

MS should just buy out Sony and then we can be done with all this console war BS.

Was there ever a doubt?

@get2sammyb i just think Sony should spend their money making PS better, rather than spending it on trying to make gamepass worse. I'm not sure why they mind marketing a game if it goes on gamepass so much, when they are happy to develop the show and it release day 1 on gamepass.

@truerbluer Sony didn't have a choice with MLB The Show, as it is a game with the MLB license. So, the MLB wanted the game on multiple systems, with a third party publishing it on non-Sony platforms. That means if they wanted to keep the MLB license, they didn't have a choice on which platforms it released on.

@get2sammyb But aren't marketing deals done to tie that product to your product?

Marketing deals get done and they still allow release on competing platforms. Why have a marketing deal that blocks subscription services, but still allows a game to be sold on a competing platform?

If the concern is that the competing platform will take some of the sales away from you, then you block it all and do a timed exclusive. Only including a subscription clause shows that they don't fear other platforms, but they do fear other sub services.

This is purely money spent to cripple Game Pass while Sony gets their service in order, or even to cripple Game Pass so that Sony themselves don't have to try so hard with PSPlus, because the big titles are safe from other services too. I generally think timed exclusives are scummy but this is so much worse.

@get2sammyb fair enough, so long as they both acknowledge that they're doing it. Which doesn't seem like it'll happen anytime soon.

Looking forward to Starfield on the PS5...

After reading this, I preordered The Last of Us Remake to ensure the dominance of the PlayStation brand in game distribution going forward.

Slander by Microsoft lol

@get2sammyb "Then again, this is very much the same strategy Sony has used on others like SEGA in the past, so I guess what goes around comes around."
There's ALWAYS a bigger fish.

@Enuo I agree. Microsoft is not the lesser of two evils here. They are I believe on many fronts of despicable behaviour involving humanity in general.

MS tries to force Sony into the subscription game more and more as time goes on and eventually, they will bend I'm afraid as MS has the monetary power to draw this out as long as they need to. And I don't like where this is going. I was actually pumped when they announced their studio acquisitions back in 2017 or 18 because I saw them coming back with great new exclusive content finally. But with the addition of GP they are setting new rules for the entire industry in the long run. And I don't like the consequences that this move might bring upon us all.

Bit off subject but I bet third party developers quite like 2 different strategies from MS and PS, they get some sort of guarantee of income on gamepass yet they still get there sales from other platforms which are probably going to higher in sales anyway even if gamepass didn't exist. But like what stray has done recently being on ps plus has helped market the game getting alot of people playing yet still sold well on PC

@AdamNovice I always find it hysterical when Sony gets blamed for gatekeeping games. MS has had a fair amount of third party content as well last gen and in the 7th. They just didn't have a noteable success. Not Sony's fault when they finalized the better deals.

Well xbox is using their parent company to greatly win the market by being a huge loss leader. Putting games on a service where most people arent paying and getting no revenue from game sales as well while also paying large fees to put it on the service. This will inevitably lead to lessor quality games if they are designed for this structure

People are confusing timed exclusivity, a public contract with blocking rights, a behind closed doors kind of thing. I'm sure they all do it, but remember everyone benefits from platforms spending money to bring you more content. Nobody but investors benefit from platforms spending money to deny content it customers of competitors. Nobody should be happy about any company doing these things.

@Rmg0731 Your last sentence is my biggest fear honestly. But I think it's inevitable in the long run. GP not succeeding would be the only thing to prevent this but they'll pump as much money in as is needed

This is all very "who deserves to get the TV rights for football"

It's just both sides arguing that the other is too dominant and therefore bad for being able to do fair competitive business. If one company (Sky) could simply own all the football, then no other company could even attempt to compete with football fans.

Sony has to go on the attack and argue that Xbox could become too dominant. And the acquisitions and Game Pass is scary for the industry and competition. If one company can pay X amount to absolutely dominate digital gaming (the way the whole industry is headed) and purchase established companies for their huge IP's, regardless of whether it makes them a profit or not short term, then it's not good for fair competitive business and is clearly a long term plan to be the one true console/gaming provider.

Whereas Sony had previously dominated for years by backing studios and making more interesting exclusive games and also by being the more established name, with extensive european advertising campaigns, and huge global brand awareness, which also meant third party releases sold better on their platform because more casual gamers owned them. And casual gamers drive the BIG sales

Says Phil "the gamer" Spencer, head of the company whose just about to buy up a 1/3 of the gaming market because they cant compete game wise, the same company who introduced pay to play online with your friends, the same company who insitigated the whole games as a subscription service is getting mad and stomping his feet, because other companies are being forced to compete in ways they wouldnt?

Shut up x box you hypocrites.you always be do that.but if sony.big if sony doing it its wrong.gtfoh.wtf.🤔.word up son

Sony is “stalling” the growth of Microsoft’s subscription service through block fees and Microsoft is “stalling” the growth of Sony’s digital and physical distribution model by buying up publishers. Seems like fair play to me.

Microsoft spent billions to gate keep so I don't see any problem with Sony doing the same just on a smaller scale. They both have their own strategies to get exclusives.

Why should Sony help game pass grow? The developers/publishers don't have to accept the fee, and it's not like they're restricting the games from Xbox itself, just game pass

@AdamNovice Kinda like Stalker 2, I'm not sure Titanfall or Rise of the Tomb Raider would have been made without MS.

Titanfall ran out of funds, and EA looked for a partner, and after Sony ignored them, MS picked it up.

https://www.pcinvasion.com/sony-is-the-reason-titanfall-is-a-microsoft-exclusive/

And not everyone at SE was happy with the new direction and if it wasn't for MS' support of the first and second game, the trilogy may not have been made at all.

https://www.polygon.com/2015/8/5/9104411/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-xbox-exclusive-microsoft-support-square-enix

These are a far cry from Sony paying a well funded and absolute guarantee like COD from appearing on a streaming service to protect their wallets.

@PaperAlien Xbox also started the console exclusivity deals back in 2015 with Rise of the Tomb Raider - a game whose predecessor was multiplatform

@get2sammyb to me, honestly, marketing deals have never made much sense. I’ll buy the game on the platform I want to play the game. But we have found recently that these marketing deals do more than just market the game, they also can include exclusive dlc (even if it’s just cosmetics) and prevent the game from going into any competitors subscription services. I would not be shocked if they also forbid games going on sale on other platforms, based on that indie game that had to increase its price internationally due to currency fluctuations making it cheaper on pc in other markets.

So, yea, I would be perfectly happy if Sony used its money to make and market its own games instead of trying to convince the casual consumer that the game is only available on their console.

@get2sammyb I don't think Sony are scared of Game Pass at all... If Sony was worried about Game Pass then they wouldn't be making comments about it like,"it's not sustainable", it's not "profitable", why would the worry about a service with an opinion like that? There not worried because they know in the long run it's going to not work and fail, like Sony said in the long run Game Pass will hurt the gaming industry.

If Game Pass was such a big deal then Sony would do the exact same thing including day in dates

@dschons it all depends how long microsoft will continue to tank money for but given how much they have spent probably in for the long haul. Netflix is scared at 240 million subscribers who pay xbox is only at 25 and its known most dont pay and there game quality has been C grade at best

@SinfulDestroyer yes because spending 8 billion on one of the top 5 independent publishers and making all their games exclusive isnt gatekeeping.....

@pyrrhic_victory you know console exclusivity predates Tomb Rider by a long shot, right? And that the predecesor game was exclusive to XBOne for a year?

Let everyone blame sony and not bat an eyelid towards the greedy devs who took their money? If sony are scum then so are Activision, Bethesda, capcom and square for taking their cash and their terms.

Pretty obvious from that, none of them respect or care for xbox

@Rmg0731 Yeah, also I think it took Netflix like 10 years to make a profit. And look at them now. But MS is a different beast I'm afraid. I don't think they'll stop until the sub model will take over the gaming industry entirely. Maybe I'm painting this picture a little too dark but that's definitely what I don't want to happen.

@Snake_V5 it is extremely common for anyone afraid of a emerging competitor to try to downplay it and call them things like “unsustainable”. Remember when BlackBerry laughed at the iPhone?

I mean, its not like you ever going to hear Sony say “GamePass is too good, we are worried, please don’t subscribe to that amazing deal!”

That’s rich coming from a company that had, and lost, multiple antitrust lawsuits against them (stacking the cards against the competition, in the 90’s).

@MasterVGuides I believe the stipulation was the game must release on multiple platforms simultaneously, there was nothing stating it had to release on a subscription service from day one.

I find it unbelievable that Sony, who developed the game internally have no leverage to block their own game going to a rival service from day one when they seemingly have the power to block other third parties. This was a moment Microsoft completely clowned Sony and PlayStation owners and have yet to recover from this blunder.

I'm certainly no legal expert, but surely they have to provide actual examples to make a claim like that in a case like this?

Edit : yeah and Microsoft constantly claiming they are the plucky underdog in the gaming industry is hilarious. They are a titan.

@amersga people seem to forget that, just makes this whole thing more hypocritical from Microsoft, on top of spending billions to gatekeep on a huge level.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/microsoft-antitrust.asp

@UltimateOtaku91 I think there's a big difference between buying a company with the intent to fund and run its business, and just paying companies, who don't even need your money, to block them from releasing on a competing service.

Activision are scum, through and through. Capcom and SE are greedy too. I'd let Bethesda off a little since they were smaller, and they did deals for brand new and risky IPs. Sony could take that hit better than Bethy.

There's a difference between a dev who needs that money to be able to make that game, and Acti taking money for COD of all things.

Sony paying developers to keep their games off Game Pass is hardly the same as paying them to keep their games off XBox. When they do the latter, they bolster Microsoft's argument - but the former isn't that big a deal.

If it's "we'll pay you to only put your game in the store on both platforms," then who really cares? Unless Microsoft isn't paying developers anything when their games are on Game Pass (yeah, right), I don't see much hypocrisy there. That's not to say hypocrisy doesn't exist, just not in that specific case.

The stronger arguments of hypocrisy are paying for actual or timed exclusives, and then complaining about the chance Microsoft would do the same. Even that argument is weaker as more and more Playstation Studio games to go PC.

@Tharsman The predecessor game, Tomb Raider 2013 (which launched on Xbox 360, PS3, PC) was multiplatform, and Microsoft paid for the sequel to be an Xbox exclusive. At the time there was no word on how long that exclusivity would last. My point was that the sequel to a multiplatform game was turned into an exclusive, not that game was exclusive in general.

They blocked bethesda games from coming to playstation. Screw them

@Tharsman I mean, its not like you ever going to hear Sony say “GamePass is too good, we are worried, please don’t subscribe to that amazing deal!”

That's because Sony knows it isn't...

AHAHAH WHAT? Why not spend that effing money giving us an actual good Ps Premium service? I swear Sony is lunatic nowadays

Did Microsoft say what games were blocked? Because everytime I bought a game in 2022 for ps5, it was free on game pass...

Sony has been stalling Xbox for the past two years when it comes to their timed exclusives games. And in reality it is leeway or leverage Sony had on Xbox, this gamepass thing changed the industry, where ppl now dont want to own their games. To me it is baffling, I use gamepass to test out the game, if I like it I buy it. Obviously not all games are worth buying.
To Xbox credit, they're forcing change whether Sony likes it or not. Kinda how Sony made Microsoft change 10yrs ago with its own business model.

@ROBLIVION exactly. That's far more egregious imo

Microsoft does the same thing even worse in most cases because of their publisher buyouts. They also pay publishers money to keep Gamepass versions the only cloud streaming version of said game. Also notice all those "console launch exclusive" games from their e3 conference? Those all have the same legal jargon that keep them off other platforms/services. And to those bringing up Sega and Playstation, what are you even talking about? The Saturn and Dreamcast failed not because Sony was paying publishers to keep games off their platforms, but because no one bought their consoles so they saw no reason to put games on their platforms.

@B_Lindz people still forget that in the entertainment it's engagement time, not dollars that is the competitive stake. One can't play all the games they might want in a year, the time doesn't exist. Neither does the money usually, so people will simply not buy much of that interestes them smart people run these numbers. They know how much people spend vs engagement time. I could spend $2100 on 30 games I like this year.... But I won't have time for 10 of them. So maybe I buy a few. Services give more options but don't increase our time, so we pay a flat fee and mess with a variety of games or a flat fee on a few games. The platform doesn't really get more nice from me either way, their goal is to simply capture my entertainment spend instead of apple or Spotify or Netflix or ms or Sony etc.

Most people don't spend thousands a year on $70 games with unlimited budgets. Some of us spend more in several games. But most people spend maybe $150 or 200 a year. Or less. While dozens of games come out no one will buy. The industry either has to contact and produce less or games have to be monetized differently to get more content variety into more hands while not disputing the existing pet user cash flow.

Sony is already in that space now with a bigger offering than ms. The only real debate is whether to milk the whales that over spend at launch or use launch as an attractor. The model will thrive because it must. There's too many content producers and to few customers with too high a per game barrier to entry and only the biggest titles benefit from that format

XBox can go ess a dee.

@UltimateOtaku91 Yeah, definitely. I just think most people aren’t aware, and/or are ignorant of Microsoft’s history.

...I mean Microsoft did buy all of Bethesda and others to beef up their exclusive offerings. Even if it's true Sony is paying to keep stuff off gamepass at least they are still available on the platform. To be fair though, Sony does pay for exclusive stuff as well. Microsoft complaining about a company throwing money around to hurt the competition though certainly feels like the pot calling the kettle black.

This is corporate practice norm.

It's a little ridiculous for a company like Microsoft to point the finger at any other iteration of the disgusting corporate model.

They all prey on humanity and destroy the planet day after day.

Therefore if you pick a side and sling words toward the other in regards to what is right or wrong in this matter, you are delusional and in all reality support your own demise. These sociopathic entities do not care what's right or wrong, they care only about extracting profits out of You.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved, than those that falsely believe they are free" - Goethe

Sony dudes should better divert their mula to getting those PS5 consoles in shops.

@SinfulDestroyer. Make me with your corny name.🤔😀.sinfuldestroyer.wtf.word up son

@pyrrhic_victory TR 2013 launched on ps3,x360 pc AND “next gen exclusive” for Xbox One.

@Snake_V5 yea that’s why they taking baby steps to copy it.

This sounds like uncreditable conspiratorial crazy talk, but it's rebuttal from a major company about another major adjacent company stating the magnitude of this meteoric acquisition splash. The drama sure is plentiful!

@Tharsman And we have to be honest, even if Sony thought Game Pass was the best value service on the planet, they wouldn't say it publicly. Their market share and stock price would plummet.

Why not invest in improving your own service instead, Sony. Game Pass is absolutely fantastic value and while I don't subscribe to it myself (Don't play enough games for that), it'd be my first choice by far. PS Plus is just a confusing, overpriced mess with the most pathetic retro library (and just the worst respect for retro games overall) I've ever seen in my very personal opinion. Adapt and innovate, don't bribe and procrastinate.

Don't get me wrong, I love Sony, I play the PS5 and use it for all the truly next gen stuff, but they're just getting too comfortable on top, which will make anyone do dumb things (Nintendo). I also know Microsoft has unlimited money, but that's not an excuse. So did Sony in the 90's and early 2000's, but that didn't stop some absolute banger innovations to be made by others.

@Tharsman The Definitive Edition? Both versions launched in January 2014 at the same time. The initial game launch was in March 2013, before the new consoles released

@B_Lindz " I still have no idea how on earth GamePass will be sustainable over the coming years"

How much money Microsoft is burning to keep GP alive is irrelevant information for the consumer.

That's like Netflix starting to charge $1 a month and you questioning how will they make money, who cares just take advantage of it while it's here and if they raise the prices then we respond accordingly.

I think it's safe to say, we can all blame MS for starting all this.

Ok Y'all, I stayed up too late because of this comment section. I'm leaving you with this.

'Microsoft explains: "Considering that exclusivity strategies have been at the core of Sony's strategy to strengthen its presence in the games industry, and that Sony is a leader in the distribution of digital games, Sony's concern with possible exclusivity of Activision's content is incoherent, to say the least."'

To everyone angry at MS for being "hypocrites" and all that, you need to read and understand what you read before getting angry. MS is ok with paying for exclusives. Of course they do it. They do and are happy to do it. They were, at not point, saying that it was bad of Sony to do. They were saying that it's hypocritical of Sony (the market leader) to complain about someone paying to make content exclusive, when that's exactly what Sony does.

They were just responding to Sony's comments.

The real question is: Are you ok with Sony throwing money about to hurt a rival service, instead of just using that money to add to the service Sony provides to you?

Remember that one time when Microsoft paid for exclusivity of Rise of Tomb Raider? Then tried to hide the fact that it was only timed exclusivity and wouldn’t reveal how long for? Why do Microsoft always play the victim when they’re the dirtiest players in the industry?

They should stop subsidising Game Pass and invest some of that money in first party games. It’s alright claiming all first party games arrive on Game Pass on day one but when they’re so few and far between, it’s an empty boast.

I’d much rather have a steady stream of quality, first party games on PlayStation - even if you do have to buy them. Quality speaks for itself. You get what you pay for.

Coming from scums that try to buy all publishers to get games away from other consoles and get a monopoly in the industry, this is just hilarious.

I don't feel sorry at all for these scumbags, trying to play the victims when it suits them, but doing worst all the time.

@CWill97 EXACTLY! This doesn’t benefit either PS users and certainly not Xbox users, instead of paying for keeping them off Game Pass just pay for adding them to PS Plus Extra/Premium.

@Tharsman Lol you don't even know what you're talking about. The original reboot of Tomb Raider came out in 2013 for PC, PS3, and 360. The next gen consoles weren't even out yet and even so the definitive version came out for both Ps4 and Xbox One the same time. Rise of the Tomb Raider was the only temporary exclusive because MS paid $100 million for one year of exclusivity. And MS started this temporary exclusive nonsense during the 360 generation with the GTA4 timed exclusive DLC, CoD DLC, and plenty others.

@Richnj The big difference is Sony mostly does timed exclusivity where MS is now full throttle into complete exclusivity with their publisher buyouts. One is obviously far worse than the other. Also full exclusive games like Final Fantasy 7 are series that are overwhelmingly bought on Playstation consoles. Even when MS was dominating with the 360 FF13 sold 80%+ of its copies on Ps3 and that has stayed consistent throughout the years. Games like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, etc. will now be fully exclusive to a platform where they were the least selling platform previously. Sony is arguing they can't make good first party content to compete so they just buy up great 3rd party content to combat this which is completely true.

@pyrrhic_victory You must still be hurting about Bayonetta.

Can't wait for Bayonetta 3 on Nintendo Switch!

Personally, I am on Micrsoft's side. Well, more like, I am on MY side: I can't wait to have a ton of new games that I can play for free on Game Pass (which I have; but don't pay for).

I don't really care what company does what with which game - I am platform agnostic and am fortunate enough to own all three consoles. But the comment sections of these sites never disappoint!

@Juanalf The damage may be done then. It may not go away, and it may hurt us in a number of ways.
Seeing the big picture should be relevant and I will text accordingly.

Half the people complaining about subscriptions are the same people that were celebrating the new Plus last month 😂.

Competition is good folks. Whether you like MS or not, if you like PS Now/Plus as it's exists post 2017, if you like non-streamed Now/Plus games, if you like PS4 BC, if you like PS5 being no more than $500, and if you like PSVR2, you have benefited from Xbox forcing Sony to be competitive. Xbox have forced Sony to give you a better PlayStation just as PlayStation forced MS to give Better Xbox last gen.

I can understand bitterness about maybe missing franchises you like due to acti buyout, and I hope you're equally against a square buyout by anyone. But the whole anti Ms/gp schtick is self defeating. You want these companies to be wrestling in the mosh pit as low and dirty as it goes. The more they get in the mud, the better your gaming best life.

I cant wait till the next time Microsoft grab a game u all want to play the them all these comments will change to oh keeping games away from other systems is such a scum move ....except when Sony do it right ?

This is from a company that spent $7.5 billion to gatekeep Bethesda games off Playstation and possibly $69 billion more to gatekeep Activision games off Playstation. Both of these companies are terrible and have never looked themselves in the mirror.

@GagaOooLaLa hehe yeah…I also remember the huge back lash that got from various known outlets.
Hey remember that time Microsoft’s paid for timed exclusivity last gen of that other well established AAA franchise? …no?

Ok, do you remember the huge backlash from media outlets street fighter 5 and final fantasy 7 being exclusive to PlayStation got?

Remember the huge backlash all the sites like IGN gave Sony for all their years long timed exclusivity on AAA 3rd party games? Or year long exclusivity of game modes, like Spec ops in cod?
Or remember the huge backlash their exclusive deals with the likes of EA back in the ps3 days where games like dead space would come with additional content…even full extra games… for the same price as the 360 version?

Bet you remember the backlash From MS spending millions on gta 4 dlc though eh?

Funny how memory works

Considering how hard MS goes on timed exclusives that's pretty rich, i'm willing to bet MS make sure new releases that go on Gamepass won't go on Plus as well at the same time.

@Dudeman1 Xbox didn’t invent the notion of timed exclusivity. It’s been part of every generation since the beginning of gaming…including the ps1 - look into the timed exclusives they had over the Saturn.

Also even when Xbox had the cod marketing rights and made sure map packs hit the 360 first…they never once paid activision to lock out game modes day 1 on the ps3 version. You had the same game on ps3 as they did on 360.

Also skyrim, fallout, sold more on 360 btw. And in fact, particularly skyrim, had pretty shoddy ps3 ports in comparison.

@BartoxTharglod exactly! It’s lovely to get a peek behind the curtain and see how they really view one another…and the good news is, it’s as competition - which means we gamers ultimately benefit

Maybe Microsoft should actually release some games from all those studios they've bought lol

@Bleachedsmiles Ps1 had barely any timed exclusives and none were already proven massive franchises. The major one being RE1 and that got ported to Saturn a year later. It's funny how the Xbox fanboys always bring up Sega when there's very little to no info of Sony paying developers to keep games off other platforms. The reality is Playstation was far more popular than the Saturn so they chose to not make those games on that platform. Games like Resident Evil 2 never got a Saturn release because the console was weak and they saw no money in porting it.

Also yes MS did start the timed exclusivity war. The GTA4 DLC fiasco opened the floodgates for what we have now. Then came CoD DLC, Mass Effect, Titanfall, ROTR, etc. and the plethora of "console launch exclusives" they showed at their e3 event. Because an exclusive mode is so much worse than tons of maps, either way that option wasn't on the table when MS was paying them otherwise they would have done it. Yes those games sold better when Ps3 was vastly outsold by 360, but it wasn't 80% like FF15. The last gen was completely lopsided in Ps4 sales. Either way they both indulge in it, but one thing Sony hasn't done yet is buy up a major 3rd party publisher and keep major multiplatform games off other platforms. Until they do that one is far worse than the other.

Microsoft says while paying astronomical amounts to gobble up a major competitor. Such victims.
We have all seen what Microsoft does and they are trying to do it again.
This is not about game pass. It's because they failed at building their own first party studios and content and resorted to buying publishers outright.
If you have an issue Microsoft, you can always exit the market.

@Dudeman1 MS published Mass effect

And you keep bringing up gta4 dlc timed exclusivity…yet apparently forget that Sony did an exclusivity deal for GTA 3 and Vice City, keeping it off Xbox for years.
Which is why Peter Moore got the ‘gta tattoo’ and it was such a big deal gta 4 was released on 360 same day as ps3 version. And why it was so shocking they bagged exclusive dlc for it…because PlayStation had had such a hold on gta exclusivity. See…you have to put things into context and look at a whole story.

@Daveuppercut if only. Competition has proven to lead to horrible tactics from both companies that are bad for the average gamer.

Block fees is disgusting

Paid for exclusivity is disgusting

I’m still not convinced it’s all legit from some random guys translation of Brazilian sources regarding the Brazilian market which isn’t the same as world wide market anyway.

Ms complaining Sony pays deVelopers to counter them for paying them is RICH.

Of course Sony is spinned as the bad guys in the story.
Anyway would that be a lesson for people claiming console war is only an invention from some nut ‘fanboys’ and the companies top bosses pretending they are so cool towards competition and all?
Of course not. People will always swallow whatever they are told because if it’s everywhere on the internet ‘news’ so it must be true 😅

Xbox: "Sony paying blocking fees to prevent games going to gamepass!"😱
Also Xbox: Has various indies ala Death's Door, Carrion & others that pop up as timed exclusives. Still yet to see a PS Octopath Traveller,(despite Switch,then PC/XB releases),we recent saw Persona 4 remaster have a XBSX version but silence on a ps5 specific version.
Not to mention the minor matter of buying up Zenimax & games like Starfield & Elder Scrolls going exclusive the moment the ink dried & deals finalised? (Remember when Bethesda were singing the praises of Dualsense & what they might do with it?).
Yes,Sony do engage in 3rd party timed exclusives, but hypocrites much? Or are we getting a ps5 Psychonauts 2,or Hellblade 2?😅
I don't buy their "Activision Blizzard will remain multiplatform",for a second. You don't spend $70 billion & remain as is,no strings attached.

the only reason microsoft is still in the game is because of its deep pockets. nothing more. xbox would be dead by now if not for its riches which has nothing to do with video games. microsoft's attempt to purchase its way to a monopoly is bad for the industry. they are asking for sony to retaliate and indeed they are. it is good to see these two rivals go head to head and create some hostility once again. i wouldn't flinch if microsoft left the industry tomorrow — they have little to nothing to offer as far as memorable games are concerned. they have no business shooting down sony considering sony's cultural influence on the industry. this screams desperation to me...

Well, yeah, that sounds like a likely, and indeed necessary, thing for Sony to do. I’m certain that MS will have subscription exclusivity on a number of its GP titles too; if not now then certainly if Sony or others create subscription services with a lot of traction; just like they have done with exclusivity deals on games via standard distribution.

I’m still laughing the hardest at people claiming these companies are cool with each other and act like they are Bros and respect each other. Haha
You’ll see them again after game award. Look how they are all cool and fanboi are the evil.

Console warriors are just muppets of PR guys pulling the strings and mass public lapping up fake news and outraged at FUD rumours are just pawns. You’d think they d be aware of the PR guys supporting all these console war channels? Nope. People are so gullible.
Even this site is perfect. It’s completely immune to the internet crap and people spending every minute of their lives promoting a platform. Yeah right haha

Day 1 PS+ releases for Sony’s big single player titles only serves to lower the profits they will bring in and they don’t actually add anything to the service. For Sony’s bottom line and the perceived value of prestige gaming they should stay off the service for at least a year.

What Microsoft has done is design its first party games around the service paradigm. Titles like Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 5 are built around the idea of long-term player engagement rather than a short-term with the idea of seasons and constant updates, something a lot of Sony players would balk at.

Of course the outlier here is Nintendo who not only releases a steady stream of single player titles but also manages to make them evergreen with constant promotion years after initial release 😂

The more I think about it, the more surprised I am that MS went with this argument. Now it leaves the door open for Sony to say:

“Yes, we do feel this is hugely disruptive to the industry. Microsoft’s massively subsidised service is an attempt to buy monopoly due to the exact reasons MS state regarding its value (unsustainable for any competitor). What’s more, while Microsoft are saying these games will remain multiplatform, they have given no such assurance that it will not remain subscription exclusive.”

Bringing Gamepass into it doesn’t seem like the smartest move when trying to avoid talk of monopoly/market dominance.

It’s also true that MS have said many times that they don’t view Sony as a main competitor, but rather the likes of Google and Amazon, who have far more money and cloud services. So not sure how they can now ham up Sony’s supposed “dominance” in their market.

@Enuo
I totally agree. It’s a cycle though. People have short memory but it was the same thing last gen at about this time after the launch of PS4. It’s a time where there was still somewhat competition (like now) and negativity about Sony is very popular for whatever reason. It’s was PS4 has no games, PSN is down for 20 minutes in Kansas, PSVITA is dead etc Competition was still strong at the time even if people now think PS4 was cruising. When you step back you realise it’s all spinning of nothingness. Now of course things evolved and more channels are involved.

Microsoft does exactly the same though, look at Persona 5 for example. PS+ Collection is meant to be a static collection but Persona 5 just happened to be removed a month before Persona 5 Royal was announced for Game Pass. Also Bethesda games got removed from PS Now after Microsoft acquired Bethesda.

Microsoft is in panic mode..ps5 stock is improving and sales took a turn in sony's favor..

@NEStalgia it's not about games x being available to platform y. This has always been like that. It's what it does to an entire industry. This is isn't just competition any more. It's about changing the game entirely.

@Stragen8 Yeah its solid to drop everything on your service at once. 🤪

@Porco The asked Sony to create their console and tried to buy Nintendo yeah MS wants competition what a joke isnt it. Didnt they start the 6 month exclusive stuff with the 360. 🤣🤣🤣

@NEStalgia
This would be true if they were competing on a level playing field, competition would then be fantastic, but they are not. What we have here is not true competition, it is clear that MS are in the process of buying complete console dominance through Gamepass (seriously, who thinks maybe putting COD on PS means anything when it will be free day one on Gamepass and no other services?). This has always been their MO.

MS are changing the paradigm. It is going to be about who can take losses the longest to build up a subscription platform and, I’m sure you’ll agree, when it comes to being able to eat loses there is absolutely no competition between the two whatsoever.

What you see now is a semblance of balance due to PS having historic dominance and mind share, especially in Europe, but MS are slowly buying that away and soon nobody but maybe Google or Amazon will be able to compete. Then we’ll just have a load of live service microtransaction or battle pass ridden rubbish, as suits subscription services at the price point MS have set.

@Bleachedsmiles To be fair that Tomb Raider deal was WAY worse than anything Sony has done. It was the sequel to a successful, multi-platform series with a huge fanbase on PlayStation. The previous entry in the series (reboot) was more popular and sold millions more copies on PlayStation. Then MS did what MS do best (got their chequebook out) and acted like it was a joke that they were denying the majority of the Tomb Raider fanbase from playing the next Tomb Raider game. MS/Square were forced to clarify the agreement in a statement due to backlash, I believe (because they initially implied that it was fully Xbox exclusive and would not be coming to Playstation).

To my knowledge, Sony have never paid for timed exclusivity of a game that was more popular on Xbox. Not saying Final Fantasy and Street Fighter don’t have fans on Xbox but my guess is they are minuscule compared to how many Tomb Raider fans were done over when MS made that ridiculously spiteful deal.

I personally don’t like timed exclusivity on any platform but it was MS who started us down this path in the 360 days. They were so arrogant back then (when they were leading the ‘console war’) and had this toxic, dude-bro attitude about them. Sony had to adapt, which is why we are where we are now.

But MS crying foul now is like a bully playing victim when their daily punchbag finally stands up to them and hits them hard in the face.

Pour microsoft, somebody is paying more so they cannot get cheap deals. Let's hope that microsoft soon has the monopoly over video games and can dictate prices. Then we will get the greatest games for cheap.

@Tharsman We will see how consumer friendly MS is in the end. I dont trust Americans and especially Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple they are great in starving the competition and buying up everything.

You act like MS is the good guy they will say its available on Playstation if you install gamepass in the end. I dont hear them about the other games so maybe they will keep exclusive they already taken away the Bethesda games.

Whats the use of everything on all consoles you cant compete on the money departement with MS they have near unending funds.

Cant wait for MS to create a liveservice wasteland with no complete games for sale anymore and ofcourse the steady stream of MT.

The funny thing is MS is crying but they al invented these things. The Tombraider one year exclusive is one and Final Fantasy 11 online you can only use it if you use our launcher. Its like Spotify gating of music and saying yeah you can have it if we get a dedicated place in your store.

Stop acting like MS is the good guy wanting to see a honest competition. They know in the end they can kill of Sony and Nintendo if they want they got the cash to it.

@get2sammyb Infinitely deep pockets you mean. Sony has to use every trick to stay alive and competitive. We all know what happened to Sega and even Nintendo had to say no to the graphics wars and become an Island nation.

Paying for exclusivity or timed exclusivity I understand. You're actually gaining something in those cases.

But paying just to block something appearing on Game Pass seems far weirder to me somehow. Especially as those games will still be on Xbox. It's a very specific kind petty to me.

@__jamiie
Xbox and Gamepass are two completely different platforms with very different value propositions. One is competition, the other not.

@thefourfoldroot1 They're not two completely different platforms though. And of course Xbox is competition to PlayStation.

@__jamiie
Microsoft don’t think so, obviously. Hence their multiplatform Gamepass strategy.

I don’t believe Sony aims to stop the deal by complaining but may, just maybe it can get a concession (legally speaking) that COD cannot become MS exclusive and be offered to Sony as today.

It's just business. Doesn't matter what we think about it. They are looking out for themselves. Sony may be hitting the headlines but it doesn't mean the other companies aren't doing the same no matter how big or small it is. Like lets not forget about the Persona ports news embargo.

@Stragen8

You want me to pay $120 instead of $60? You said you wabted one tier and I strongly disagree paying $60 extra for stuff I won't use. I basically own every game I want in playstation and there are no day 1 games on ps plus.

@Mikey856 While I agree that GP was their last chance to get back in a big way in the foreseeable future, I think it is very sustainable for them with almost infinite amounts of money behind the corporation. Profitable though, yeah, this will take a long, long time. My feeling is they're drawing this out as long as is needed until Sony is bending and fully committing to sub services as well. They're after setting new rules for this industry more than anything because they can't compete otherwise. The only downside to their strategy is that they can't go back any more, they've put all their money into it. Sony still has somewhat of a chance to balance things out. But I'm afraid the demand for sub services will grow as much as I hate to say it. It's all fair though. Sony should have seen the writing on the wall and they underestimated what MS is willing to do.

@BritneyfR_ee Heh the amount of backlash Xbox got for making tomb raider exclusive was insane…and enough to make them cautious about being aggressive with third party exclusivity since…where as Sony has gone the other way, and been more aggressive.
The funny thing is is that Sony themselves made tomb raider exclusive. Paying to keep it off the Saturn and N64…after the first one became one of the best selling Saturn games on the market. But that was ok, right?

As far as I’m aware, no, no game that Sony did exclusivity deals with sold better on the Xbox… but then PlayStation has been the platform leader…and it could be argued then that all these 3rd party exclusivity deals have effected the growth of the competition…right?

Again, what is it with you guys thinking Xbox invented timed exclusivity? Even the smallest amount of research will teach you timed exclusives have been a thing for EVERY GENERATION EVER.
Yes, the 360 was aggressive with it…Xbox had like a handful of their own studios. But PlayStation started out aggressive with it too. If you want balanced knowledge just do a little research. It won’t fit the narrative of ‘Sony good Microsoft bad though’ you guys here seem to take so much comfort in. But it will stop you all sounding so stupid crying ‘Microsoft started this’! Like spoilt babies. It’s business.

You’re last statement about ‘MS crying foul is like a bully crying victim’ is insanely hilarious because I know there’s not even a hint of irony there - you actually see things so one sided. Literally Sony just did this too…who are, as you all love to vast in, out selling Xbox each generation. Who are actively keeping 3rd party AAA games off Xbox and gamepass…whilst outselling them, what 7-1?

Ms are hamming it up for sure, they want the deal to go through. But they’re not wrong in what they’ve said. Sony are hamming it up too, they don’t want the deal to go through, there’s some truth in what they’ve said. But ‘bully’ tactics from MS? It’s about time they bit back! And hopefully Sony have now properly awoken a sleeping giant who isn’t going to play nice anymore and will once again be aggressive like in those 360 days. Get us some real competition going.

Honestly it's pathetic that instead of trying to provide own players with "value" Sony is using those money to pay companies so they don't provide "value" for customers on other platforms.

Like. What is a point of Deathloop exclusivity? I still have to pay 80$ for that game on PS5. There is no benefit from millions that Sony spended on that deal for me personally. Meanwhile, one year later Arkane can add this game to Game Pass and I can play it with my subscription.

All while Jim Ryan is "crying" that subscription services are unsustainable. Maybe if he spent money from that "block deals" on something else, he could created true Game Pass competitor.

Can we blame Microsoft for trying to destroy the gaming industry with limitless money?

They also claim that Activision and the Call of Duty franchise is completely unimportant inside the gaming industry. This is their way to show themselves as victims and to make PlayStation appear as the villain who controles the whole gaming industry.

Business is business now a days and is what it is.
For fun and probably the wrong thing to do but Microsoft if they wanted could stop releasing COD on future Sony consoles and of course have enough money to cover the loss.

@Mikey856 I think they'll be very happy to be in the red for a longer period of time if there's a prospect for them to dominate the market with their sub service in the long run. Netflix hasn't made profit until like 10 years after they launched the service. MS's issue is that they've put all of their eggs in one basket which makes them all the more aggressive in that department.

@Mikey856
You have very interesting points and I do wonder the same with Microsoft.
I think Xbox series console got off to a very good start in UK but now Sony are releasing AAA exclusives and Xbox are not 2022 and the PS5 stock is getting better we are seeing the true results.

Not sure where Microsoft go with this maybe they are just happy with game pass and don’t forget so far the Xbox series consoles have sold more than the Xbox360 their best selling console in the same time frame, so they may be happy with that.

But don’t ever underestimate them they now have an lot of studios and we know Trillions of Dollars 💵.

@Flaming_Kaiser have you looked at the list?? There’s like barely any PS2/1 games available. The consoles that had games pumped out like crazy, and there’s so few and the ones that are there are kinda crap.

Activision-Blizzard wanted to sell and they approached MS in the first place, Bethesda too after the fallout76 flopped financial was very bad so they wanted to sell too. So all cut the crap MS buy's all the devs because they have unlimited money and they can't compite otherwise, if the devs themselves didn't want to sell MS will never have them.
I don't know why all of you are surprised that Sony make those kind of mafia tactics to struggle competition. All of them where known months before from the Apple-epic files among other things Sony did to struggle competition like parity to 3rd party devs for their games to not run better on other platforms and the obstacles they put for the cross platform multiplayer gaming, all where well known from back then so why some of you are pretending to be shocked? Sony will do anything to stop MS from gaining market share and i mean ANYTHING...

@Bleachedsmiles And do you know why it was a PS2 exclusive? Because MS chose not to help fund it and Sony did. They actually went to MS first but they didn't believe Rockstar could go from 2d to 3d. So no its not as simple as Sony just paid for exclusivity.

@Mikey856 Sorry to ruin your theory, but where did you get this 3:1 outsell from?

Because from what I read and know, Xbox Series X/S sold around 16,5 mil. consoles while PS5 sold around 21 million consoles. Which is not exactly 3:1...

Gap is way narrower then last gen and even in PS4/XONe era it wasn't 3:1 (more like 2,4:1). And that's while Microsoft did not have any big first-party game in 2022 and won't have until next year. I think that it's not bad for Microsoft. Especially since you don't need Xbox to access ecosystem.

Bad Sony, how can you be so mean to the guy who bought two major publishers that used to make 3rd party games but now will do it exclusively for the green team? Bad, bad Sony! 😂😂🤣🤣

@Dudeman1 yet you’ve no problem calling out 3rd party games that MS helped to fund?

@Mikey856
Totally cannot disagree with Xbox and their studio management seems poor at the minute and does frustrate me. But I have all 3 consoles so I sort of get over it.
It’s always the same for me all 3 have some dam exclusive I want to play.
One day it will be one console all games I hope.

@Mikey856 Which figures? You got them from extremely reliable site? Like wearepsfanboys.com?

@dschons it will just mean fewer games being made and the quality of the games that are made dropping significantly (as we have seen with MS’s first party games on Game Pass).

Game Pass may be relatively cheap now but Netflix used to be cheap years ago and look at it now - nearly doubled in price and trialing ad-based subscriptions. That’s the future of gaming that MS are pushing and its bleak.

@BritneyfR_ee Ehh. which drop of quality?

You mean Forza Horizon 5? Best rated game of 2021? Or Halo Infinite that has 87 OC average? Or Psychonauts 2 with 89 OC average? Or Age of Empires IV with 83 OC average?

Like...Xbox first party was objectively more ***** before Game Pass. Games like State of Decay 2, Crackdown 3 etc. were developed before Microsoft pivoted towards Game Pass and they were worse games then games from XGS now.

So that whole "drop in quality" is just pure nonsense without any proof in reality.

I'm not sure whether it has been actually confirmed, @Deoxyr1bose, but leaks show that Sony paid Capcom to prevent them from allowing Resident Evil Village on to the Games Pass. Also, some of the report has been redacted prior to being made public. The names of games that have been blocked could be amongst that which has been redacted. It could also be that MicroSoft don't wish to sour relationships with certain companies by naming them.

Truthfully, bearing in mind that Sony often pays for periods of exclusivity for AAA games (Deathloop, Forspoken etc) or even outright blocks games coming to Xbox (Final Fantasy 7) is them paying developers to not allow their games on to Games Pass that difficult to believe?

Microsoft has destroyed traditional gaming with game pass ,mark my words ,in less than ten years both the ps store and game pass will resemble the Google play store with regards to quality epic titles.

@mikey856 Sony will continue to deliver AAA that don't sell at the 70$ price tag and every year the statistics show ps5 players don't play those AAA games rather than Fifa, Cod, Fortnite eg, but then this has nothing to do with the anti competitive moves sony does to struggle competition.

MicroSoft are responding to the claims made by Sony, @Enuo, they in no way suggest they are a 'victim'.

Sony are trying to stop the deal. Why? Because currently they are the dominate force in the games industry, and they want that to continue. That's business, after all. Being the biggest and the best means huge profits. Sony already outsell Xbox when it comes to digital games, and we see the sales charts each week here on this site showing Sony outselling Xbox in terms of physical releases too.

Sony did not want to create a subscription service to compete with Games Pass. It wants it users to pay £70/$70 for every game (indeed, even after the launch of their version of Games Pass, people are still expected to pay that much for new releases). It had to create PS Plus because they needed to be seen to have a competitor.

Sony's primary complaint is that games such as CoD attract gamers to particular consoles. Up until now, that console has been PlayStation. Sony have paid for the marketing rights for CoD for years and as such, the player-base on the PlayStation is huge when compared to Xbox. And this highlights precisely the contradiction in what Sony is saying; it is effectively saying that if CoD is owned by MicroSoft, that players will instead turn to the Xbox as their console of choice, and this is despite the game remaining available on the PlayStation. It does show Sony in a bad light because they are arguing for the status quo wherein more players are attracted to the PlayStation than Xbox, because that suits them. It's good business, admittedly, but it's not a good look, and MicroSoft are perfectly entitled to point out the hypocrisy, without claiming to be a victim. And people, such as myself, are perfectly entitled to be objective with regards to the situation, and point out the duplicity of Sony's argument, even on a site such as this...

@Mikey856
Being honest all the big have some bad practices in some way or another, some better or worse than others.
Businesses always do over the years.

The difference is Sony creates most of its exclusive content with first parties or through partnerships, Microsoft just buys titles and studios because they haven't been able to set up a decent "Microsoft Games Studio" in 20 years.

Microsoft buys out a huge chunk of the market and Sony is entitled to use whatever strategy they deem appropriate to make up for that. I don't see a problem here, especially when Sony is mostly a creator and Microsoft entered the business and continues to exist in the business through the buying out of the competition and the throwing of large quantities of money at whatever obstacles are in their way. Microsoft is just using the opportunity to bad mouth Sony for keeping away from Game Pass some games they would like to add onto the service. I certainly hope the Square Enix purchase by Sony comes through.

@Godot25 none of that fits the narrative though. The narrative has to be that games that get released on gamepass day1 suffer in quality …because that’s why Sony aren’t offering it. I mean they’ll all go crazy for indie games that release on PlayStation subscriptions day 1 (like stray, rocket league) never any mention about those deals effecting quality.
But gamepass simply HAS TO effect quality…even though the reality (so far) is higher more critically rated games. And zero proof budget has been pushed back in developing games…infact the opposite, we saw halo get a year long delay, and recently Xbox’s two most important games of this year get delayed to next…which should be proof enough that Xbox cares about quality regardless of games hitting gamepass day 1.

But again, doesn’t fit the narrative.

Whilst you are correct regarding the availability of the Series X, @Mikey856, you are mistaken regarding the price. It is exactly the same price now as it was when it was released in November 2020. You can buy refurbished models more cheaply, but a brand new one will cost you £450, just as it did when it first released.

The PS5 is also available and in stock at several stores in the UK, though most have it with a Horizon Forbidden West as a bundle. You can also get just the console at ShopTo, where not only is it in stock, but they are offering it with a discount of 15p. Get in...!

@Bleachedsmiles It's funny. Because I have a feeling that people believe that "Game Pass day 1 games" will negatively affect quality of those games just because Jim Ryan said it.

@Godot25 It would make sense though. The difference is we're talking about one of the wealthiest corporations in the history of mankind here where money is not the issue at all. People simply underestimate how long MS is willing to pump money into the service before seeing return.

Fair enough, @Mikey856. I'm quite interested in getting a Series X, but £5 off doesn't quite warrant the outlay right now...

Sony is the person in a relationship who will accuse you of cheating because they are cheating, scared because they don't want what they did with SFV and FF7 remake to happen to them.

Call of duty will never be exclusive to a single console if Microsoft buys Activision, seems to me sony doesn't want to lose that deal they have where they keep content like survival mode off of other systems the entire lifecycle of a cod game.

@Benjiro Microsoft buying Bethesda and Activision is in response to Sony aggressively keeping titles like SFV and FF7 remake off of Xbox. Xbox is entitled to use their funds to do a Sony.

I don't think Sony will increase the price unless they bundle it with something, @Mikey856. The optics of Xbox remaining the same (or being marginally discounted) at the same time as Sony increasing the price of their console would see countless lost sales for Sony, particularly from cash-strapped parents buying their kids their first console. Most people tend to stick with the console they first started gaming on. Sony won't want to lose current and future sales.

However, if Sony were to increase the price it is only because they will be selling them at cost, not because they think people are necessarily willing to pay more. Let's be honest, if we look back to around July (I think) 2020; MicroSoft were the first to announce the price of their new consoles. Sony had little choice but to reciprocate a week or so later. £500/$500 was not their intended launch price. They were probably looking to see the console for as much as £700/$700, but a £200/$200 price differential would have been exceptionally hard for the PlayStation community to swallow, and so were bounced into the price they launched with...

I guess MS forgot about their Parity clause back in 360 days.

@Deityjester And Sony is entitled to fight back with whatever strategies they come up that don't involve deep pockets of money. We'll be going round and round needlessly. The point here is that they're both companies defending their interests and they will do whatever is necessary to protect their business operations. Whether people like the gatekeeping or not, it's how competition works in a consolidating market.

@thefourfoldroot1 Talking "level playing field" in the video game console business rings pretty hollow when we're comparing against Sony, the company that introduced subsidizing console hardware and selling at extreme loss with their deep pockets until they eliminated Sega and put Nintendo on thin ice.....

They're both playing the same game, and this is just the big shark getting mauled by the bigger shark. These two companies deserve each other. Sony has always been a nasty company and so has MS. So this time MS wounds Sony. Then MS will get wounded by Tencent outspending them with the GDP of an authoritarianism at their fingertips. Not unlike Sega though, most of Sony's wounds will have been self-inflicted in their arrogant posturing.

Yes, MS is partially rewriting the paradigm. I say partially because it's not like they're eliminating retail sales, traditional sales, that doesn't go obsolete here. Heck one of the features they're going to start adding is GPU subscribers being able to stream games in your library that aren't on GP (Stadia/GFNow style.) Purchasing games isn't going anywhere in their ecosystem either.

What they're rewriting is how they use exclusives. MS's plan is to use them as attractors, loss leaders into the ecosystem. Subsidising exclusives the way Sony pioneered subsidizing the hardware itself, which was a successful strategy, obviously. They're also rewriting the idea that the physical console is the platform rather than the service. Essentially a fusion of the ideas of steam with the console world, the store and streaming platform becomes the platform for a multitude of hardware to grow the footprint of the platform (store/subs) beyond the fairly static number of console buyers. That may take deep pockets, but there's nothing truly "unfair" about re-thinking how to monetize exclusive content, or how to grow the platform beyond the traditional market.

Sony's not a tiny company. Nintendo would really struggle to try to do something like that. They never even bought into the Sony method of subsidizing hardware, they make a profit on hardware except WiiU which was a tiny subsidy made up with one game. They NEED to sell their games and profit on them to survive. Sony? Nah, they could do this if they wanted, most of the revenue on PS does not come from their exclusive games anymore, they're also using them as an attractor, they just monetize it. If sony adopted MS' model, they'd just lose some shareholder value from lower earnings through higher opex. I don't mean that they will or they should, just that it's not "unfair" it's an adaptation of their own strategy on a bigger scale by a bigger player, and they could follow suit if they wanted and could accept reporting lower earnings. It wouldn't be impossible for them to compete there, just uncomfortable. For Nintendo it really would be impossible.

Regardless of whether it's a big dog being taken on by a bigger dog, one thing we know is all of these companies become really really nasty without competition. Sony's a pretty big dog. Who else could even offer real competition besides a behemoth? And left to their own devices, Sony would not maintain status quo. It would get nastier and nastier to the point that a $3000 PC would be a bargain compared to PS.

Now, I can't disagree on your fear of "battle pass"/mtx junk. But I believe that worry is misplaced. That's where the industry is going without services like Game Pass. That's already the biggest revenue generator for PlayStation, and PS is already diverting massive resources away from traditional content and into that for their first party catalogue. It's not because of subscriptions. It's because that's where all the money is, full-stop. $0 F2P, $15/mo sub, $70 launch price, doesn't matter, the money's in mtx-ridden services and the most profitable content will be that. Everyone's heading there, and Sony's heading there full speed to the point they bought Bungie, a one hit wonder at this point, for far too much money simply to help them head to mtx/battlepass land as fast as they can. Your dread isn't wrong, but putting the cause at subs is upside down. Subs have nothing to do with it.

There's a lot that goes into the economics of it that I think people, especially here just tend to not get into and get too stuck up the idea of "this is how I'm used to it working" and tries to think of complex economics of the subscription and the existing retail model through a very narrow lens of "how I think of it it always working" - it misses the difference in wholesaler pricing, used pricing, production cost, engagement rate (Is a player that buys only the biggest PS exclusives putting any more money into the PS Store than a GPU subscriber is putting into Windows Store? Total input into the store is what counts, not per-unit margin.) Does the consumer spend less, or simply receive more value that costs nothing to offer? Does the market grow under one model and stay stagnant in another (note that total console install base across all consoles is not only stagnant globally but shrinking per-market, so revenue growth is based purely on extracting ever more money from the same customers, not reaching new customers which isn't infinitely scalable.)

There's just so much that goes into the monetization here. And I don't think subs are what lead to the mtx hole, that's here for full price games, and f2p too. And sharing money from a general pool of players, like with "unlmited internet" and "unlmited minutes" lets the money from the big draws like cod be spread to smaller titles like indies and first party smaller titles like Gears Tactics. (If applied to Sony, GoW:R could help secure Concrete Genie 2 or some such.)

Largely the "new paradigm" is less about the spend and more about reimagining the sales goals. It becomes about securing engagement and total platform spend, rather than per-SKU unit sales. It rewrites how the whole platform is built out in general, and it's not necessarily a model incompatible with Sony, it's just that they're very profitable without changing from what they know (for now.) Heck, Jim was just talking about not being happy with the engagement numbers just last week. He's not playing a totally separate game, here.

@NEStalgia
I agree with almost everything you said. But don’t really care about this notion of “fair and unfair”.

Whether Sony are just being pounded by the bigger kid the way they pounded Sega is irrelevant to me. I was just commenting on your very important point about competition being great. Because it is. It’s essential.

This is not competition because Sony, no matter how big they are relative to others, can’t come close to competing with the amount of loss leading MS are doing with Gamepass. And, yes, it is exactly the same principle of loss leading on console hardware. True. But, again, although relevant to “fairness” in a tit-for-tat kind of way, it’s not a point relevant to what is in the best interest of consumers - competition.

Your comment that Sony can compete if they just made less profit is very wrong. MS are building a collection of games Sony just can’t afford to do. And if Sony put the money up to do so, MS would just offer more. Eventually MS always wins a battle of “who has the deeper pockets”. That’s why Sony push the “who has better games” stuff.

Maybe they’ll eventually just settle in different niches but, to me, in order for the consumer to get the best competition, it needs to be Sony dominating the gaming market and MS subsidising theirs through their monopolistic position in operating systems, the way they always have. That’s the only way. If MS knock too much market share from PlayStation then Sony would just have to sell off their studios and leave the industry. Simple as that.

They are both black kettles, calling each other such. They both do the same thing. MS wants every single game on Game Pass. I don't think anyone should be crying about unfair business practices.

@hugoadan
Haha
I never thought I’d see the day Ms would cry about Sony having to much money and people would feel sorry for little guy Ms vs big money evil Sony 🤣

@get2sammyb Yea I still refuse to admit they're making much profit, if any at all if all these players and devs claim Gamepass is that good (both in terms of payments and enjoyment) as they say. MS just has too much money to blow.

@thefourfoldroot1 If it gets to the point that MS really "owns" the market without competition (be it from Sony, Tencent, or whomever) I'll totally agree with the dislike of MS. But, personally, I don't see that as the result here. And I'm not sure the loss-leading is working the way a lot of people (mostly just from the PS fanbase) perceive it. There's a lot offsetting those costs and expenses (some of the stuff I mentioned - mostly eliminating resale, eliminating wholesale pricing, being able to grow the recurring subs via high-yield vehicles that, yes, only works on a mega-scale, but also isn't necessarily "spending" money at a loss, and fans overestimating average per-user dollar spend and engagement vs reality.) Sony's biggest industry is banking/finance/insurance. They're good at understanding how those numbers work, even if Jim pretends they don't. That's his job. They know MS isn't totally just dumping money into subsidize things and how they're factoring the money. Some subsidy? Probably, but not as severe as it looks. There's a lot of offsets at that scale.

By that same token I do think Sony can do the same, they have the necessary scale, and the level of subsidy I don't believe is nearly as large as a lot of PS fans assume. In Sony's case it's not about "can't" compete. It's about not wanting to move on from a model that they dominate and is working for them to strong results, and resisting any attempt to change it before they absolutely have to. Which is understandable. BUT, if they drag their feet too long they do run the risk of getting left behind where momentum swings away from them and it will be much harder to leverage their scale in the same way MS is doing.

But I think you're too pessimistic on Sony's capability. (Me calling someone a pessimist! IKR.... ), Your description may match Nintendo a bit, they really are operating on a razors edge where success is necessary because they have nothing to fall back on other than their massive cash stockpile as a cushion. Sony is a lumbering menace to themselves, true enough, but they're not so ill equipped that they go out of business if they're not an overwhelming dominating force in the market. "Not leading" doesn't mean "not profitable", and they have a strong enough brand to remain profitable. But they do need to think harder about their budgeting, and even as leader I think they overbudget, right now. Even "deep pockets MS" has a lot of their games made on smaller budgets than Sony's "blockbusters only" mentality, and I think they consistently make the wrong turn and try to mirror their film studios thinking (which has also landed their film studios in trouble at times.) But either way, I think their old business model is a ticking time bomb with or without MS. The whole "Atari" console model is a 1970's market concept that somehow has persisted so far, but With or without MS pushing it, the landscape of how entertainment is consumed and perceived is just very different today. Console is inherently a tiny niche of the gaming world. Apple makes more gaming revenue than Sony+Nintendo+MS combined....and they don't even make any games! Real casinos are now jumping into the competition. If subs it can expand the player pool and still maintain the average platform spend of the average player (which is not nearly as high as pretty much anyone you'll meet here which represents a single digit percent of the market) it l will net more than the traditional model.

The traditional model seems set to make console gaming more of a status symbol than a mainstream product as alternatives emerge. MS is just aggressive on making that shift sooner than later. Tencent and Netease more aggressive. Sony is.....being aggressive for Sony, which may not say much ,but it shows they see the writing on the wall at least. What they have to avoid though is trend-chasing so hard that they lose their identity. Right now they're obsessed with maintaining PS as a "prestige" product. Which is the same mistake they made with their TVs in the face of Korean competition.

@Deityjester Don't want to participate in this console war thing going on here. However, you do know that FF7R was a timed exclusive, right?! Square is the one with the answers. Sony was pretty transparent about how long the exclusivity period ran.

Another thing....why do people like you keep bringing up SFV when it was Sony co funded the game. Why? Why would Sony have the game released elsewhere when they helped pay for it's development?! So you're okay with Dead Rising 3 being exclusive to Xbox because they paid for its development? What about Bayonetta 2? Nintendo should totally let Xbox and Playstation have the game on those consoles, right? Same premise here.

@NEStalgia
Let’s assume they can compete against the level of subsidy MS use (and that includes all the billions spent on publishers to make the service appealing, given they’ll likely lose money having paid for the shares but losing many customers through jettisoning the most profitable platform), let’s assume Sony can. Will they then be able to compete financially when MS raise their offer on Gamepass exclusivity? When they slash their prices again? When they raise their offer again. Getting into a financial pissing match with MS is a guaranteed way to destroy your business.

You do keep falling into talking about “like” and dislike as well. Not sure where you are going with that to be honest. I don’t dislike MS any more than other vicious companies that buy up competitors and try to force a monopoly - if it’s within the law they have an obligation to their shareholders to do so is my view. I’m not going to cry about people being wary of what it means for console gaming though.

don't be like apple sony your better than that. gaming is subscription based be better if you let Nintendo and Microsoft work with you now. gabe newell said something about steam on xbox or vice versa. id love to log in to steam, gog on my PlayStation or xbox. i guess we will see everything is gona be app based on tv or devices, but that is when our internet infrastructure is improved. lot of companies want you to stream but with isp's and internet as it is today in rural places and some cities isnt capable of streaming. cant we all just get along for a brighter future.

"Considering that exclusivity strategies have been at the core of Sony's strategy to strengthen its presence in the games industry, and that Sony is a leader in the distribution of digital games, Sony's concern with possible exclusivity of Activision's content is incoherent, to say the least."

MS are not wrong, what they are saying is a fact and I can even understand Sony opposing the deal from a business standpoint but it’s also kind of laughable after Sony has been aggressively buying exclusivity and studios since before Xbox was even a thing. Now they’re facing stiffer competition they’re flapping it.

@Fenbops You're right.

Anyone remember MGS? And MGS4?

Those titles are still exclusive to PS1 (if you don't count the Twin Snakes remaster) and PS3.

In fact, MGS gave a boost to PS1, and MGS2 and 3 were a exclusive for some time on PS2.

@Stragen8 Dont worry they will come licencess probably are a nightmare.

@MidnightDragonDX
And don’t forget Sony was catching butterflies before so that justifies Ms catching elephants now (according to Ms little helpers) Haha
I had a good laugh with this comment section. I swear I can’t take any of these comments seriously. 🤣

@thefourfoldroot1 I think there's two errant assumptions there. First that MS would decrease prices, which I do not believe they would do. They could add value by purchasing additional companies, etc. but if the PS fanbase is right in saying it's all the best in the world exclusives that makes PS so popular, that shouldn't matter, right?

Second I think it assumes that the purpose of MS buying so many companies to begin with is to simply dominate every aspect of the market. Which I also don't think is the case. I think they were at rock bottom by mid X1 gen, and realized that in order to dig themselves out of the hole they built where PS is just the default platform and Xb was barely alive, they needed to hit VERY hard, and they needed to build a worthwhile platform out of thin air in ad short a time as possible. (And as even XB fans are apt to complain about...they're still not there yet.) Yes, it took some big money to do that, but I don't quite believe that the big money is due to wanting to just consume the whole market, I think it was due to needing to buy an "out of jail" card to get out of that deep hole. Sure, that's a cheat no other company has available, if Sony or Nintendo were in as deep a hole as Xbox was in, they'd be finished, for sure. But at the same time, cheating their way out of that hole isn't quite the same as trying to consume the market.

I'm not a fan of all these buyouts, but I do understand what it's about. There's also that other threat. Tencent. Which makes Microsoft look like small potatoes.

To an extent I think even unintentional "fanboy" bias enters the mix when people who aren't customers of both platforms can easily get an impression of this weird all consuming MS, especially with their history. When you're buying from both though, this bogeyman all consuming MS image just doesn't really exist in the gaming space though. They're collecting scrap publishers that were worth a lot but were otherwise on the rocks after years of bad decisions and unfortunate mistakes made them unstable. To a large degree the games industry has been capsizing under its own weight for a while starting in the PS360 era, and MS, Tencent, Comcast etc, even Sony that's buying up the scraps is buying up unaffordable husks that spend far too much money making products with far too low sales potential. They all destroyed themselves. The industry itself is imploding of its own weight of soaring budgets. The sugar daddies are just stabilizing it. For now. But Sony's one of them.

I DO think MS has a strategy to accelerate an existing transition in the industry no matter how much money it takes, and to position themselves to be at the front of that, absolutely. Similarly, Sony has a strategy to try to delay the transition in the industry. But I don't believe MS has a strategy to totally monopolize the industry, and I don't think Sony is in such a weak position as to make that even possible. But I do think they're going to have to reshape their value proposition. A return to "for the players" rather than "for the investors" thinking would be a good start. They've become very self-congratulatory and full of themselves after the success of PS4 without fully recognizing that while the PS4 was fantastic, their competition also handed them a win on a silver platter by simply being uncompetitive and that that dynamic doesn't exist anymore.

MUHAHAHA ALL SHALL BE ON GAMEPASS YOU CANNOT STOP US SONY! :Microsoft probably

@NEStalgia
Sorry, but that’s a whole lot of text that didn’t make sense to me. Probably because 1) I have seen MS reduce prices to get market share (XBX/GP for $1) and 2) because of course they want to dominate the market as much as possible. They all do.

@thefourfoldroot1 There's a big difference between an intro promo and "reducing prices for market share." The $1 thing is supposed to be a one time promo. Yes, it's exploited by some percentage of enthusiasts, yes they've more or less acknowledged not caring (for now.) Is that a sly ploy for market share while they need the numbers to go up? Probably. Are they "gaining market share" by doing that, no, they're getting better numbers to strike better deals with content publishers. They'll tighten that loophole sooner or later, but MOST customers (myself included) are paying $15. They can offer promos and discounts but they're not going to drop the $15 price. That's as much a guarantee as any random gabbers on the internet can guarantee anything.

And remember, Sony's Plus is already undercutting GP. GP offers more VALUE, Plus offers better budget pricing and more library bredth. So it's a little sideways to talk about MS undercutting Sony when Sony's already undercutting MS at the cost of a reduced value service. (again, competition!)

As for market dominance, maybe MS will end up bigger than PS if they can achieve their goal of accelerating cloud streaming adoption by simply bypassing the console and delivering consoles to every screen with little to no upfront cost. But the thing is, if they greatly expand the market from the 200-250mil generation console players and reduce the cost of play, is anyone going to be unhappy about that other than Sony shareholders? And is Sony truly not prepared to become a publisher on any platform with their high valued IPs and studios? I think they are and I think Jim, for all his faults, is well ahead of that.

Even if consoles die off, and that's a very real possibility in the future, I can't see perpetual use of high powered hardware at ever rising costs continuing forever as the world is mainframe happy for everything today, I can't see Sony just dying off. We think of them as an electronics mfr first and foremost due to their 80's legacy, but in reality their most profitable businesses other than batteries is services and media. Music publishing, film production, finance, insurance, etc. Even if there's no need for a "PlayStation 7" $1500 appliance box to sit under a TV, does anyone think PlayStation Studios and some set of digital services won't exist as a multibillion dollar publisher? They lose money selling the hardware, anyway. They don't have to own the movie theater to sell movies. Though they usually do make the speakers in the theater....

There's too much confusion between MS "taking over gaming" vs just seeing the writing on the wall for the way games will be consumed, and some resentment for MS pushing that forward.

If MS is really after a Walmart model of destroying all competition I'm right there with you complaining. But at the moment, I don't see that is the actual direction being played out at all.

@pyrrhic_victory What the same Tomb Raider franchise that Sony paid for exclusivity to keep it off the Saturn??

@Rafie Microsoft co-funded Rise of the Tomb Raider...like that game would probably not existed if Microsoft didn't bring huge sum of money.
But that didn't stop people going apeshit about exclusivity, right?

@JosephTheSheik I mean. That's the point I guess. You always loose money when you are building something with promise that one day you will be swimming in pool of money. Didn't Sony loose money when entering console market? Didn't Microsoft?

Pretending that loosing money to build a new service is a new concept is dishonest at best. Sony is not willing to loose money to build a subscription service. And that's okay and it is their choice. But that does not mean, that subscription services in gaming space can't be profitable. And that's what Jim Ryan is implying.

@NEStalgia
Sorry, but I don’t have time for full paragraphs at the minute:

“ Are they "gaining market share" by doing that, no, they're getting better numbers to strike better deals with content publishers. ”

Same thing, surely?

“ They'll tighten that loophole sooner or later”

Yep, they surely will, once they’ve developed their user base.

“ They can offer promos and discounts but they're not going to drop the $15 price”

They can and will if they need to. Which is why there is no point in Sony matching their “value” proposition (if we subscribe to the “newer games = more value even at a higher price” thing)

“ GP offers more VALUE”

Not everyone cares about games day one. Most of us have huge backlogs. I’m happier with a cheaper service which still has more games than I’ll ever have time to play.

“If they greatly expand the market from the 200-250mil generation console players and reduce the cost of play, is anyone going to be unhappy about that other than Sony shareholders?”

If they do it by pushing us towards GaaS Microtransaction riddled rubbish, then yes, I will be unhappy. I care more about quality innovation rather than my gaming being a little cheaper. That goes for Sony too of course. I’m time poor more than anything.

“ does anyone think PlayStation Studios and some set of digital services won't exist as a multibillion dollar publisher? They lose money selling the hardware, anyway.”

Fewer platforms means less competition = bad for the consumer.

“ If MS is really after a Walmart model of destroying all competition I'm right there with you complaining.”

All companies have that ambition.
Being happy MS are getting closer to changing the paradigm towards one where we have to rely on Tencent, Amazon, Google, etc, to compete…that’s not my thing.

When did Microsoft start speaking like Trump lawyers?

@Godot25 Correction...they co-funded the Xbox version and paid for timed exclusivity. It would have gotten released simultaneously on all platforms otherwise.

@UltimateOtaku91 i think that is the point they are making, Sony is crying to the Brazilian goverment and saying "Buying Act-Blizz is unfair" Microsoft is just saying " U do similar things all the time"

@Rafie So it's same as Street Fighter V situation
But when Sony did it, it was okay because "without Sony's money SFV would not exist."
But when Microsoft did same thing people went apeshit. And that was only timed exclusivity, not full like SFV.

See the difference?

@Godot25 No it is not the same. Are you not comprehending what I'm saying?! Xbox paid for THEIR version of Tomb Raider to drop earlier. This not the same as the SFV situation at all. The SFV scenario is more akin to the Bayonetta 2 situation with Nintendo.

@Rafie Kinda it is?...
Game was published by Microsoft Studios not Square Enix on Xbox because Microsoft sunk 100 million dollars on development of a game. And without those money sequel would probably never happened since Square was disappointed in sales of first game.

But I get it. PS4 was a top dog. How dare AAA game skip release on that console, right?

@Godot25 No point going back and forth with you if you're simply not understanding the difference between the Tomb Raider situation and SFV. Last time I'm going to say this. The game was coming out on ALL platforms. The reason why Xbox paid for THEIR version to release first is because Phil wanted a game to compete with Uncharted 4. There's plenty of articles to research it on.

Seriously dude, I'm not sure why keep continuing to say the same thing when I explained why it was different. There are better examples of Sony money hatting that would be a much better comparison. I'm done with this though.

Lmfao @ PlayStation getting early MW2 beta access when Activision is owned by MS. LOLOLOLOL!!!!! So many Xbox tears.

@thefourfoldroot1 "Same thing, surely?"

Not really. One is a long term goal of consuming more of the market. The other is getting a bump on short term numbers as data points for contract negotiations with content providers and investors.

"They can and will if they need to."

We just disagree on that point. I don't think they're going to drop the price for any reason aside from promos, and I do believe Sony will also offer promos.

"Not everyone cares about games day one. Most of us have huge backlogs. I’m happier with a cheaper service which still has more games than I’ll ever have time to play."

You were proposing Sony couldn't compete with GP. I was pointing out that GP offers value while Sony undercuts on price. Now you're saying that Sony also has the better value because what GP offers isn't adding value, while Sony proposes games can't launch on a service because new games have too much value.... I can understand the larger cheaper library having more value for you, but I'm pretty sure Sony's on team green as far as the value of new games and them not wanting to offer the value of that to customers since it has too much value for themselves.

"If they do it by pushing us towards GaaS Microtransaction riddled rubbish, then yes, I will be unhappy. I care more about quality innovation rather than my gaming being a little cheaper. That goes for Sony too of course."

Well, like I said that doesn't have much to do with services at all, that's a separate discussion. GaaS and mtx is the future, paid, service, or otherwise. There's unlimited money there. Remember, 12 of Sony's exclusives in 4 years will be GaaS mtx riddled rubbish. So will the rest of the industry's output. Has nothing to do with services. That's not on GP or Plus, that's on the future of gaming sucking as it becomes a casino regardless. Ironically, the more people pay, the more the quality goes down if you look at revenues.

"Fewer platforms means less competition = bad for the consumer."
Agreed, but I don't know that we're talking about fewer platforms. IDK that I see Sony thriving as a launcher/service, and I agree, that Amazon, Google, Tencent are the main competitors there, and MS has said as much. I don't like those platfforms either, however for the last generation we basically had ONE platform, PS, and we see where pricing and policy have been driven by that near monopoly. Amazon/Google were going deep into this before MS started showing any signs of life. Google failed for now but they'll be back, they didn't let that tech go to waste. This was the future regardless of MS. They're accellerating it, but they also paved a path that makes that format something familiar to console/PC players rather than something familiar to mobile gamers (or plurely extortionate like Stadia.) Like it or not, out of all the companies with their fingers in the pie, other than Nintendo obviously, MS is the one that is the most like PlayStation. And right now they're adding a lot of value that goes with PC gaming into console gaming and adding a lot of value that goes with console gaming into cloud gaming. Generally I think that's a good thing, while Sony seems bent on becoming Nintendo-like. I don't think Nitnendo-like will work for them in the market they're trying to play in. They should have stuck with classic PS, kept Japan Studio etc if they wanted to go the Nintendo-like route. But they'd have to go back to PS2/PS3-like approaches.

@NEStalgia
“ One is a long term goal of consuming more of the market. The other is getting a bump on short term numbers”

Which is meant to lead to the long term goal. Be a step along the way. All to the same goal.

“ We just disagree on that point. I don't think they're going to drop the price for any reason”

They would be foolish not to use their financial advantages after the investment they’ve already shown, should they need to.

“ I was pointing out that GP offers value while Sony undercuts on price. Now you're saying that Sony also has the better value because what GP offers isn't adding value”

There was a reason I put “value” in quotation marks. It’s is considered high value, the populace believes it, my view is somewhat different. Regardless, I said they couldn’t compete financially. Meaning if they wanted to buy games into their service and MS also wanted them, they’d have a hard time. Essentially, “don’t get into a financial pissing match with someone much richer than you”.

“ that doesn't have much to do with services at all, that's a separate discussion”

We’ll just have to disagree on this. Although MS are leeching money, it is on a loss leader. Eventually their shareholders will want to see profitability. This will naturally happen when they can increase prices should they remove the competition, but will also necessitate more than the current price point unless Microtransactions abound. We already se this with many first party MS games.

“ for the last generation we basically had ONE platform, ”

No, we had two (three if you count Ninty). Only one was massively successful, but the loser always is forced to innovate as long as they have the money to do so. MS do, which is why they are great for the industry, but only if they aren’t using their money to strongarm the industry.

“ They should have stuck with classic PS, kept Japan Studio […] ”

I wish they did.

@thefourfoldroot1 "We’ll just have to disagree on this. "

Maybe, but prices obviously will go up (not down) on subs, though value also has been increasing. But I still don't think the mtx is a problem tied to the sub. Ubi, Acti, EA, 2k, Squeenix, now Sony. It's the industry standard. If MS is doing it to make up for subs doesn't make it different than Squeenix and Sony doing it for enhanced quarterly performance. It's still the standard now because it's the money maker, now. I'll never understand why kids pay $20 for a character skin, I'm still fine with every character in a multiplayer game being the same character in a different color shirt... I mostly stick with the default in any character customization screen...it's the character on the box art. shrug.

"I wish they did."
That we can infinitely agree on!

@NEStalgia
“ I'll never understand why kids pay $20 for a character skin,”

Because it’s become normalised unfortunately. Like mtx, like f2p, and like cheap subs which give the illusion of f2p while making people more likely to spend on mtx. All the time necessarily reducing the quality of the one and done content.

Oh for those ps1/2 days to be back!

@thefourfoldroot1 Those sure were the days..... 😔

@Toypop
I’m not a fan of sub services as you might have read, but even I find it hard to call charging you 27 pence per day for several hundred games “spitting in the face of their fans”. You sound extremely entitled, and that’s me trying to be forgiving, lol.

@Toypop
“ I've no interest in yesterdays games. I've played them. If I didn't play them already, then I didn't give enough of a stuff” (etc)

Yeah, I’m an adult with a full time job and a family. When I was a kid I might have had that opinion though.

Oh, and my bad, it’s actually 23p. But stay entitled my man.

@Toypop not everyone is obsessed with getting games 'day one', many people wait for the prices to come down first.
Especially nowadays as day one is increasingly another way of saying beta tester.

@Kratoes okay 🤷‍♂️ hopefully they aren't the same quality as halo infinite

@Kratoes it won that award before the game was even officially out for the beta of its bare bones free to play multiplayer , the reviews for the game were very overrated

@Kratoes no what I'm saying is it didn't win because it deserved it but because of xbox fanboys how it was even nominated when it was a beta that had only been out for about 2 weeks was laughable

It was between Halo Infinite ,Resident Evil Village ,It Takes Two ,Metroid Dread & Forza Horizon 5 the clear winner was resident evil village

@Toypop "I just get the feeling that Sony hate and despise me."

What a victim.

@Benjiro They aren't fighting back, they poked the bear and got mauled

@Rafie Timed exclusive that isn't on Xbox and didn't come to steam until recently, there is no evidence it will ever come to Xbox until it does you can't say anything.

As for the SFV thing just because sony gave capcom some money doesn't mean they developed the game if that was the case it wouldn't have came to steam at release it would be solely on PS the fact that it is also on steam shows Sony had litte control over the development besides keeping it off xbox, if SFV was actually developed by Sony and not just funded it wouldn't be on steam at release if at all since everyone knows Sony isn't big on working with other platforms

Big difference between street fighter and dead rising too, Street fighter was never exclusive to Sony or Microsoft systems, dead rising started out exclusive to the 360 so you're comparing an ip that was third party pretty much since coming to consoles with an ip that started out on a single system.

@Deityjester I don't know why you're commenting now on an almost month old article, but I'll bite.

For your first paragraph, I'm not sure what you're trying to relay there.

As for the SFV bit. I'm well aware of how that whole ordeal came to be. Like I said before, there are plenty of articles detailing of how it became console exclusive. Sony co-funded the game, not fully funded it. Otherwise it wouldn't have went to PC. I already knew that. Don't know why you're mentioning it to me. It was the fact that Sony co-funded the game that they were able to keep it off of Xbox. I mean....why would they help pay for the game to go on other consoles?!

About your last paragraph, please tell me the BIG difference about DR and SF. Once more, there are articles about the DR deal. DR was coming to PlayStation 3 initially, but Don Mattrick had a different plan. He paid for timed exclusivity for years on the first title. It's why the first game came to PlayStation eventually. DR2 was a simultaneous release with Xbox. Xbox paid for the development for DR3 on Xbox One. It's why PS still doesn't have the game.

So no it's still the same as the SFV deal. I don't know what's so difficult to understand the similarities or differences with these situations. You were trying to come from a place where there was an established IP like SF versus a brand new IP at the time like DR we're different situations, but some research will tell you different. I'll let you do your due diligence and see it for yourself.

The point of all of this is that they both do it. It's only because Sony is on top right now that they're getting scrutinized for it. The one thing that I will say, as a individual with all current gen consoles, is that Sony is very transparent with their timed deals. MS definitely is not. You would have no idea when a game that you wanted was coming to your console til months or years later. Sony said from the jump that SFV will not go to any other console. Very much akin to the Bayonetta 2 situation, except Nintendo fully funded the game.