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Microsoft completely misjudged Baldur’s Gate 3
(www.polygon.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Releasing a game and denying it to a console that outsells your own 2:1 shows how little Microsoft knows about gaming.
So… This isn’t surprising at all.
It's outselling is what caused Microsoft to not deny it. It originally denied it because they had a rule that games needed feature parity with both Series X and S. BG3 split screen couldn't be done on S. The massive success is what led them to relax the rule. And virtually no one saw this level of success coming from within the gaming industry, including the developers themselves.
Edit: I just realized this is being upset about Starfield.
That is totally the fault of gamers. The biggest reason given for buying a PS5 over Xbox was exclusives. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Sony started the exclusives battle and continually came out ahead. Obviously MS is going to fight. Making exclusives such an important decision in console purchases drove exclusives to be important overall. There's no sense in being upset that the industrynis literally responded to gamer's actions and stated motivations.
Microsoft would develop their existing first party studios and improve the quality of their first party titles, invest in third parties that they already had exclusive relationships with, or invest in up and coming studios?
Had Bethesda published a Microsoft exclusive since Morrowind?
I don't understand how anyone could use Windows 11 and think Microsoft would, at any point, improve anything.
You don't expect that from Sony so why expect it elsewhere? Sony started this game, gamers lauded them and rewarded them for doing it. Microsoft tried to not do that, and got beat down further than they had when they tried playing that game against Sony. Gamers wanted exclusives. Microsoft is providing that. You voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party and now are surprised leopards are eating your face.
This was a forgone conclusion for awhile now. Folks are just upset because Microsoft has an exclusive that Sony gamers want to play. Boo fucking hoo. I'm pissed it came to this, but gamers did this. I'm angry about it, but I don't feel sorry for gamers as a whole about it.
Did they, though? I think exclusives predate Sony and even the PS1. They've been a part of the console space since basically the inception of the medium. Xbox itself launched with an exclusive "killer app" in Halo. Timed third party exclusivity and exclusive Map Packs were very popular with the 360 when it was on top in the seventh generation as well.
I don't think Sony has ever made an acquisition of the same scope as Zenimax either in price or in how much of the market was fenced off from a studio they previously had access to. That's not even going into the Activision deal.
Maybe we can now point to Bungie, but that was still half the price. Most of Sony's acquisitions over its time were studios that were already de facto developing exclusively for their consoles. Even Insomniac. If you look at their history, Sunset Overdrive is a lone anomaly.
Exclusives suck, but I don't see them going away as long as consoles and capitalism exist. You're basically throwing shade at Sony for daring to fund the development of critically and commercially acclaimed games that gave them the reputation of having a quality first party library. Starfield on the other hand was developed as cross platform title until Microsoft paid 7.5 billion to acquire a major publisher. Wasn't this confirmed this week by the document leaks?
Few complain when Halo is released exclusively because no one is being surprised that those games are now exclusive titles. That isn't the case with the new Bethesda deal.
Atari and Texas Instruments started the console exclusivity wars, and promptly shot themselves in the head.
Sony and Microsoft used to pay for exclusives without buying the studios. So there's no real meat to the argument that "oh, the games were always exclusive because first party" or whatever. The consoles didn't really buy that many game studios until relatively recently in gaming history. They would pay a studio to not release on other platforms. This whole buying studios thing was just cheaper in the long run. So there's no real argument to be made about Sony just making better first party games. That's what they do now given that they own the studios. Both companies are guilty of buying out studios.
Exclusives pre-dating the PS1 was more out of lack of technology. No cross platform tech really existed. There wasn't a lot of crossover. Many platforms didn't last more than a generation or two. There wasn't even much cross over in the kind of games. If you liked fighting games, you bought a Sega over Nintendo for example. With the PlayStation, they competed against Sega first, Nintendo as more an afterthought. Xbox came in later to compete against PlayStation 2. The Nintendo 64 was just a different class, and even later, the GameCube. With Xbox and PlayStation, they had similar amounts of power and restraints (an N64 cartridge could not compete from a technical perspective against the storage of discs, plus multi-disc games could exist, not really feasible with cartridges) plus abstraction technology was more advanced and one could more easily write cross platform code. Now, you either had to pay for an exclusive or simply hope they only had the intent to target one platform (whether through preference or resource limitations). So the console wars really started to heat up after the death of Dreamcast and mainly between Sony and MS. Exclusivity wasn't via first party existed, but not to s great extent beyond their flagship games.
So, tldr, exclusivity has always been acquired via money and buying them. It's easy to say it's about developing better first party once those studios were bought outright to begin with. That's how most first party titles exist now.
If you disregard windows, and VR, yes.
Sony doesn’t buy IP and deny it to other platforms. Their IP starts on Sony. If Microsoft never wanted to release Halo to Sony, it’s their decision to do so, but buying something that don’t had access to, then denying it is a shit move.
Lol, Starfield was originally going to be a Sony exclusive. That means Sony was literally going to pay Beth money to deny Xbox gamers access.
MS just made the better offer.
Yes they do. They used to buy exclusive rights back during PS2 days but eventually both MS and Sony realized it's cheaper to just buy the studios. Sony has only a small number fewer acquisitions than Microsoft. Both companies have always bought exclusivity.
My reason for buying a PS5 is my Xbone bit the dust, and my Xbox 360 also had issues when I traded it in. My ps2 and ps1 still work. There was also the fact that the only available options were PS5 or Series S. I didn't buy the console for exclusives, I bought it because it was the better available console and my previous one was dead.
Ok? But your experience doesn't change what the number one reason given is though? Sure, I don't get Pixel phone anymore either because two in a row failed on me, but I don't go around telling everyone "no one buys pixel phones because they die easily"
No I didn't. The announcement of their intentions to fully absorb Bethesda didn't even come out until around the PS5's release, and wasn't completed until like 6 months after. Not everyone pays close attention to gaming news. And if you bought the console early on, there is a chance you never would have even heard about it, let alone completely understood the implications of the purchase.
Only if your goal is selling the game and not the console
They're not selling large amounts of either.
MS is in the subscription selling business now. Their entire gaming future hinges on GamePass, and while I like the idea of games on tap (I've basically bought BG3 for my PS5 and nothing else in the year since I bought it, enough on PS+ to keep me going and I can barely catch up let alone keep up), I suspect the big devs that spend hundreds of millions on making AAA games are less than enthralled with the idea and if GamePass and day one "free" games win, the outcome will be more games that I'm not really interested in.
PS+ is not as good a product as GamePass, but I believe it's healthier overall for the gaming industry.
When you say PS Plus, do you mean the Essentials tier which is (was) equivalent to Gold or the other tiers?
For the record, I think PS Plus Premium and Extra are great (until the price hike). The vast majority of time when I want to play a game day-1, it's not something that's even on GamePass. So their day-1 stuff means nothing to me.
But also, Essentials has given me enough to play I could just never run out of games.
The higher tiers. Not sure about the top one (Premium) any more. I got it because I thought I might want to play the older games, but it turns out there's plenty of PS4 and PS5 games to keep me going, and frankly not enough choice of PS1 and 2 games to tempt me. A more complete library would have made sense, but I've literally got more on my shelf than they've got on PS Plus Premium.
And my internet is too rubbish for me to want to stream the handful of PS3 games either. It hasn't even got MGS4 which would be the one interesting thing that hasn't been anywhere else.
A worst product is better for the industry because gamers should pay for inferiority?
What are you smoking?
I'd rather play great games 18 months after they come out, than mediocre games on day one. What's hard to understand here?
The industry needs that day one £60 a box money, the same way the film industry can't do without cinema takings.
If it doesn't get it, we devolve further down the predatory DLC route.
Then we get great titles from other studios that just repackage the same shit day in and day out.
How’s that working out for them?
The reason it's not working out is because they had no exclusives, now they do and the people on the platform that always had exclusives are suddenly upset.
PlayStation doesn’t buy out IP that once was on all platforms and turn it exclusive you knob. They have ip that begin as exclusive.
These aren’t the same things.
If Microsoft want to exclusives, they should home grow it like Sony does. But they can’t. So they just buy it out.
They’re the Yankees of gaming, only they still can have a successful season.
What's truly not surprising is Sony fanboys defending the benefits of exclusives up until Xbox has an exclusive they want.
Point out to me where I’ve done that please. And point out any fanboyism while you’re at it.
Well there's the fact that you omitted Sony and Nintendo from your criticism entirly, despite the fact that both companies have bought numerous studios and paid other studios to make games exclusively for their respective platforms for decades, thereby reducing their potential revenue for some benefit that's clearly obvious to those companies.
And yet, when Microsoft does it....they are just limiting their potential market for no reason and it's obviously a stupid business move. Sure. Seems a little sus, is all.
Either the entire fucking industry is guilty of this "bad business practice" or maybe there's a calculated reason for it. Pick one.
You don’t see me complaining about Halo, do you? Do you wonder why? It’s because Microsoft did it with an IP that was already widely popular across all platforms, and then pulled it. And if I remember correctly, told everyone they wouldn’t pull it.
Sony hasn’t don’t that. Again, as I’ve said, they begin with their own IP. And that IP from creation is Sony exclusives.
Um....Sony was in talks to pay for Starfield to be a PS exclusive - which would have taken it from PC for a year and from xbox permenantly - until MS bought Beth.
Also, Starfield is a new IP, not an "already existing and widely popular" one..
I'll also mention that Phil Spencer publically admonished and fought against exclusivity agreements for years. He has said in interviews both private and public that he prefers a world where there are no exclusives. Until the market spoke and declared "exclusives" to be the measuring stick of a platform's health, thus forcing his hand. And now here we are.
Elder Scrolls and Fallout are existing IP. Who cares about Starfield?
And here we finally have the primary motivation for this comment.
Well we won't know for sure on those for a few years. All we have are old FTC docs and no public statements. Regardless, existing games aren't going anywhere. But even if it happens for future games, well, Sony's been sowing this harvest for some time.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/imran-khan-sony-has-locked-timed-exclusivity-for-some-huge-and-widely-known-multiplatform-games.263403/page-40#post-41953314
At least you can still play on PC on day one. Can't do that with PS exclusives.
I guarantee you it’s not doing what it could if they released cross-platform.
ROFL… if you don’t think a company as big as Microsoft can’t make mistakes, I don’t know what to tell you.
And talking about a game isn’t selling copies. Nor is modding. People are pirating it and for good reason. It’s not worth the cash spent to donate to a company that thrives based on free labor to fix the bug ladened disasters they release.
Clearly you’re a white knight for anything Bethesda, so I’m gonna dip out.
Hope that check your receive pays for your much needed vacation to reality.
I thought this article is about BG3, wtf are you talking about?
They think only PlayStation should have exclusives because it's the biggest.