They're in the negotiation phase, but they're not in the board meeting.
NDrake: An acclaimed Xbox 1st party title, in GOTY convo for the year it released, will come to a compt pltform in 2024. HiFi Rush, Sea of thieves
- Thread starter Puff
- Start date
I know that and have commented on it here in the past if you've paid attention. I'm just venting.
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The shills are falling like dominos, checkmate.
I went to xboxera to see how they were taking the news. Most of them are in the Denial stage still. Its all fake news until cult leader Phil says so!
Well Nate the Hate said in that era thread today hes heard of another game besides sea of thieves and hifi rush. Id assume starfield at this point. Maybe ori?
We already know of As Dusk Falls.
HiFi Rush seems likely.
Sea of Thieves and Grounded can also make sense.
RedFall too, once they have the 60fps patch and the additional content.
Starfield I don't know if we'd see it this year, but everything under Zenimax I think is a safe bet.
I wonder if Indiana Jones will also come day 1...
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How, precisely, does one devalue a product line that loses billions of dollars a year?
How does one expect that losing that much money won’t damage the value of the corporation?
That article is ironic as fuck given how obsessed with destroying PlayStation most of XboxEra is.
Anyone else seeing some of the Xbot posts lately and getting the feeling they could have come from a bunker under Berlin?
That would be true, but no on is running out to play on xbox 1st for anything.
They can try, but it won't work. The traditional console business model generally involves subsidizing hardware costs to some degree, in return for making up those subsidized costs and getting profits through the sales of 1P games, and 3P cuts.
The only ways I can see companies like MS & Epic trying to argue in favor of Sony & Nintendo to allow open alternative storefronts on their consoles would be in analogies to established distribution methods already in effect. But none of these would work IMO:
1: Brick-and-mortar stores
Brick-and-mortar stores buy their stock at wholesale from distributors and then mark up the price at an MSRP to sell to end customers. The difference in those prices is the profit margins (usually) for the brick-and-mortar stores (it's their cut). While the inventory brick-and-mortar stores buy game-wise comes from various companies (Capcom, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, SEGA, Square-Enix, Take-Two, EA etc.), the vast majority of said stores STILL have to negotiate business deals with the platform holders (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) to carry game stock, hardware and peripherals.
If that's the case, why should companies like Microsoft or Epic, be excused from dealing with the platform owners of consoles like PlayStation & Switch, to effectively be "virtual distributors/shops" on those systems, when companies like Walmart, Target, Best Buy etc. have to engage in such dealings with not just console platform holders, but ALL companies selling physical product via wholesalers? Another way to look at it, is MS or Epic attempting to set up a shop in a mall (the console platform of PlayStation or Switch being the mall in this analogy), without paying the owners of the mall location a penny for setting up shop there.
If it would obviously be in the wrong to do such in the mall analogy, why would it suddenly be okay with competing alternative digital storefronts that still have to be hosted on consoles owned by direct platform holders? The brick-and-mortar/wholesaler analogy also works here; both are reasons why an argument for open alternative storefronts on consoles just won't work.
2: Film industry
This one is more about the degree of vertical integration between the content creators, distributors, and suppliers. Before, film studios were able to own their own movie chains and exclusively show only their own films in those theaters. However that was eventually seen as anticompetitive, and that's how the modern theater industry came into existence.
I could see companies trying to argue that platform holders like Sony & Nintendo locking down their consoles to only hosting 1P digital storefronts is similar in concept...but it's not. The digital storefronts are closer to being the theater chains, but the content on those storefronts comes from everyone, which would obviously include 3P publishers (film distributors if sticking with the analogy) not owned by Sony or Nintendo. What's more, a lot of that 3P content is priced lower than Sony or Nintendo's own games.
Now, it could be argued that Sony & Nintendo withholding their 1P games from being made available on alternative storefronts on their own consoles could be a point of contention...but is it really? Are film distributors required to license their movies to competing film distributors to put in theaters? No? Oh okay so why should platform holders be forced to do similar? If, say, Sony want to put some of their games on PC storefronts like Steam & EGS, but not on a hypothetical Microsoft storefront hosted on PS5 consoles, that should be their choice and no outside group forcing them to capitulate. Same goes for Nintendo, or any other console platform holder actually.
Even the argument that brick-and-mortar or film theaters are "dying markets" can't be used as a means of successfully opening up PlayStation or Nintendo to allow alternative storefronts on their systems (or especially doing so where the owners of said storefronts don't have to pay anything for being hosted on those consoles). Both industries are still very healthy on the whole, it's just specific segments in them (and even there, specific companies in those specific segments, like Microsoft for console gaming or Disney/Marvel for films) who are experiencing declines. Their declines cannot be made indicative of the industries as a whole, even if there is some indirect correlation (being sizable companies in those segments of industries, any declines they see would at least on the surface, immediately appear as some declines in those industries as a whole. Even if they're only temporary declines for the industries in question).
There are only two potential avenues a company like MS (or Epic) could try arguing forcing platform holders like Sony & Nintendo to open up their platforms to alternative storefronts freely. The first is through an analogy with the physical software market: in this case, Sony & Nintendo work with 3P brick-and-mortar stores (or in some cases, online shops selling physical goods) to sell the physical games to customers. If 3P brick-and-mortar stores can sell PS & Nintendo games, why can't other companies with digital storefronts on those consoles?
Well, the reason that argument likely wouldn't work, is because Sony & Nintendo can easily say the reason they have those relationships with brick-and-mortar stores is because 1: they don't have physical shop locations of their own, and 2: those physical stores aren't exactly selling software of their own for those platforms. Even if they were, they would still be paying a license of some type in order to produce the software. This whole thing with licenses is actually something Sony & Nintendo could use to further argue against opening up their platforms to alternative storefronts (with owners who don't want to pay them anything for hosting said storefronts on their systems), but I'll mention that later.
The common thing with a competing digital storefront and the physical brick-and-mortar shops is they'd both be selling games for closed, embedded consoles like PlayStation and Nintendo. However, brick-and-mortar stores buy their stock wholesale before selling at a marked-up MSRP to end customers, the difference usually being the profit margins for those brick-and-mortar stores. But digital storefronts don't operate like that
Allow me to reiterate:
Anyone who isn't an insane radical leftist and/or a raging Xbox fanboy who still goes to REEEEEEEEE is getting exactly what they deserve.
Powertripping biased mod BS like this is only going to get worse. Wonder if the mods will end up getting exposed in some huge scandal like what happened on Gaf back in the day.
