The idea that sony pays for 'Blocking rights' on premium games is nonsense: These developers don't want to be in gamepass in the first place

[Bodycount611]

Welp, no one can deny this has been one of the worst years ever for gamepass, with no new premium games offerings for the entire calendar year, bar the late port of Persona 5 which MS is shamelessly propping up as some sort of huge get.

I wonder if people understand that MS abandoning the traditional games market for gamepass has in fact had the disastrous effect of hand-delivering all premium, high budget games directly into sony's arms for exclusivity.

-Callisto Protocol: extra stuff on Playstation
-Hogwarts: extra quest on Playstation
-Resident Evil 4 and 8: VR mode on Playstation
-Modern Warfare 2: early/extra stuff on Playstation
-Final Fantasy (franchise on Playstation)
-Silent Hill (franchise on Playstation)

Notice a trend? Seems like all of these developers have opted to turn down the gamepass lumpsum and instead take a Sony marketing deal + actually recieiving full-priced sales for the game they worked so hard to create, and spent so much on development costs.

unproven games like scorn, Crossfire X, and the like? Gamepass makes perfect sense. the sales potential is already extremely low. the lumpsum from MS is probably in reality, a safe bet on return for these devs, as opposed to making nothing on the free market.

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/madden-nfl-23-ea-xbox-game-pass-leak-debunked/

Madden NFL 23 Won't Be Coming to Xbox Game Pass at Launch, Says EA​

why do premium game offerings opt out of gamepass? Is is Sony's fault? or is it the fact that gamepass is a budgetware platform by design?

the idea that FF, silent hill, or Callisto would somehow be on gamepass if not for Sony is... INSANE.

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

Not only that but correct me if I am wrong that nothing is keeping Final Fantasy 7 remake from xbox since the game was exclusive for like two years. It is just that some of these games don't find good amount of audience on xbox, let alone the less profitable gamepass.

 

[Yurinka]

-Callisto Protocol: extra stuff on Playstation
-Hogwarts: extra quest on Playstation
-Resident Evil 4 and 8: VR mode on Playstation
-Modern Warfare 2: early/extra stuff on Playstation
-Final Fantasy (franchise on Playstation)
-Silent Hill (franchise on Playstation)

Notice a trend?

Sony, MS and Nintendo pay to get 3rd party exclusive games or content, or sometimes a marketing deal. These are some of the games Sony paid for. You can add there PS4 previous gen console exclusive for RE4R and Street Fighter 6.

When paying for these deals, or when paying for adding a game to a game sub they often also include a clause preventing to include them in rival game subs at least during a portion of time. We saw it in the leaked RE Village document and looking at the examples of published game seems to be a common case. It also makes sense: if you pay for the marketing or to get some stuff you prefer to don't see it on rival platforms at least for a while.

Another case are some key games from recently acquired MS studios not being added to GP: pretty likely is because they had some exclusivity or marketing deal with Sony that prevented to add it to GP for a while.

unproven games like scorn, Crossfire X, and the like? Gamepass makes perfect sense.

Crossfire (without X) is a very successful F2P game. Crossfire X had a campaign by Remedy, so on paper when MS paid them to make the deal was a great idea. I assume back then they didn't expect the metacritic that Crossfire X was going to get. Scorn while ago -when they probably signed the deal- looked as a cool and promising indie, but they weren't lucky and the game didn't end being very good.

In these cases they made a bet and didn't work, but the bets did make sense when were made. I think it's positive for them to make many bets of this kind, some of them may not work but others will work.

Obviously with these games they didn't want to compete against AAA games: they are second/third tier fillers to have fresh new content every month in GP. To do it only with top tier AAA games would be too expensive, so they add big AAA games from time to time and add there indies and smaller projects, which are way cheaper so with the money of a big AAA game they can include many indies/AA games.

why do premium game offerings opt out of gamepass? Is is Sony's fault? or is it the fact that gamepass is a budgetware platform by design?

Publishers and devs get most of their revenue from selling games and add-ons (DLC, IAP, season passess...) and game subs only provide them a tiny portion of their total revenue. So specially for big budget games doesn't make sense to put their on a subscription at launch. It makes more sense for them that if they put a game on a subscription, to do it once it sold most of their stuff, as a secondary extra revenue source.

The platform holders of these subscriptions want to have cool content, so they pay 3rd parties to put their games there and compensate the lost sales for doing so. They obviously pay more for bigger names and for putting there the games at launch than when the game is already dead. They spend a lot of money on signing games to grow their subs and these subs don't generate enough money to compensate it: they make it as a long term investment. But this also means there is no money to pay every single dev that they like, so often choose not new games or no name devs over big brands to be added to their subs.

The pricing for a small exclusive like some extra quest or minor DLC, or a timed exclusive should be way smaller and more profitable for both sides than to put a top tier AAA day one on GP. With their day one on GP strategy MS isn't chasing short term profitability, they are chasing to make standard a highly unprofitable business model that would kill their direct competition, who wouldn't be able to afford it.

 

[DonFerrari]

Not only that but correct me if I am wrong that nothing is keeping Final Fantasy 7 remake from xbox since the game was exclusive for like two years. It is just that some of these games don't find good amount of audience on xbox, let alone the less profitable gamepass.

Yet smaller SE games and even smaller scale Final Fantasy games continue to release on Xbox?

So they can’t find an audience on Xbox for the FF7 remake, which is a remake of their most popular game ever…. but they’ll release the Crisis Core remaster on Xbox, or Stranger of Paradise? Doesn’t make sense.


Also to the OP… if there was no need for Sony to make these clauses or requirements in their marketing deals, then they wouldn’t.

 

[azertydu91]

Yet smaller SE games and even smaller scale Final Fantasy games continue to release on Xbox?

So they can’t find an audience on Xbox for the FF7 remake, which is a remake of their most popular game ever…. but they’ll release the Crisis Core remaster on Xbox, or Stranger of Paradise? Doesn’t make sense.


Also to the OP… if there was no need for Sony to make these clauses or requirements in their marketing deals, then they wouldn’t.

Yeah they 'd release the low cost porting/develloping games on Xbox because even though small it is big enough for small games....Just like Lexus don't sell in poor places but Toyota does after all .

 

[arvfab]

Yet smaller SE games and even smaller scale Final Fantasy games continue to release on Xbox?

Like Octopath 2?

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

Yet smaller SE games and even smaller scale Final Fantasy games continue to release on Xbox?

So they can’t find an audience on Xbox for the FF7 remake, which is a remake of their most popular game ever…. but they’ll release the Crisis Core remaster on Xbox, or Stranger of Paradise? Doesn’t make sense.


Also to the OP… if there was no need for Sony to make these clauses or requirements in their marketing deals, then they wouldn’t.

Do you believe Sony paid for 3 years+ exclusivity? Because that means they paid more than what the game can make from xbox which in turn proves that the game has limited audience on xbox. IMO, I don't think Sony paid more than 2 years of exclusivity and there was a rumor about this last year.

 

[IntentionalPun]

So thing they pay for isn't thing they pay for?

OK.

 

[KickNamesTakeAss]

Yeah the definition of exclusivity has changed this year. It’s no longer a marketing deal, it’s now blocking the other platforms or even worse in the eyes of its supporters blocking Gamepass. Of course it was always that, it’s a competitive market and deals exist but now it’s used as some way to show Sony’s abuse of power. When In fact like the Op mentions, its Sony taking advantage of its nearest competitor weakening its own position in the market further by changing its focus to a subscription model. A business model at odds with the rest of the industry.

It’s an interesting turn of events. Offering value to its customers with the downside it being much harder to get deals of premium games. Obviously MS realises this and has the financial power to buy buy buy. But as we’ve seen, regulatory concern means this path will only get them so far. It’s pretty much irreversible now and it’s why MS need big ticket games like COD to continue to drive adoption.

 

[kaluas]

If we were the devs and we had a choice, ofc we would prefer to take Sony's money and accept timed exclusivity than see our product be rented for pennies, especially if you have a product that most people wanna play and will wanna play when the exclusivity is lifted.

GamePass never made sense for big productions. You can't have eg Elder Scrolls 6, the successor to a game that allegedly sold more than 50mil copies, announced that it'll be rented for breadcrumbs to a much smaller audience, mid production. Productions have to shrink in order to break even.

 

[Swolf712]

Honestly, they're playing off the General Public's ignorance as to what a Right of First Refusal Clause is. It's not some sort of active "blocking", it's establishing that they get first dibs on a game entering a streaming service for X amount of time specified in the contract. These sorts of deals are quite standard to boot.

 

[PlacidusaX]

Makes no sense. If Sony was paying than MS would outbid them.

I think these companies choose PlayStation.

 

[DynamiteCop]

Makes no sense. If Sony was paying than MS would outbid them.

I think these companies choose PlayStation.

Of course Sony is paying lmao... Even if a game would not sell as well on Xbox the cost to port it would at minimum be overcome hundreds of times over.

These deals come at the cost of expected loss from the title being absent on competing platforms...

 

[PlacidusaX]

Of course Sony is paying lmao... Even if a game would not sell as well on Xbox the cost to port it would at minimum be overcome hundreds of times over.

These deals come at the cost of expected loss from the title being absent on competing platforms...

It's not about the payment or they would go with xbox.

A smaller payment and better brand which=more sales is why they choose PlayStation.

 

[DynamiteCop]

It's not about the payment or they would go with xbox.

A smaller payment and better brand which=more sales is why they choose PlayStation.

This has never been the case, money talks. They pay to offset the loss they get the game.

 

[Bryank75]

This has never been the case, money talks. They pay to offset the loss they get the game.

Well then, Xbox has no excuses since they have all the money! Or so I'm told...

 

[PlacidusaX]

This has never been the case, money talks. They pay to offset the loss they get the game.

Than how is the much,much smaller Sony getting better 3rd party deals? lol

 

[peter42O]

Sony pays extra money to prevent games from going on Game Pass day one and for whatever amount of time that is in the contract but this only applies to games in which they have a marketing deal for. It's already been proven with RE 8 via the Apple vs Epic court case and recently with COD MW 2. It's pretty obvious at this point that Sony doesn't want Game Pass to succeed because if it does, they would possibly have to adapt to the same business model and they simply don't want to, at least not for this generation anyway.

Business wise, I would do the exact same thing if I was Sony so I can't blame them for doing what they're doing. And it's understandable because a lot of PlayStation fans don't want the business model to change and/or go in a subscription direction and neither does Sony.

As for Microsoft outbidding Sony, I wouldn't expect them to outbid Sony for any major third party multi-platform game. If anyone watched the 2020 Xbox Showcase, there were a few third party AAA multi-platform games. In 2021 during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, they had three AAA multi-platform games - Battlefield 2042, Diablo II Resurrected and Far Cry 6 which was less than 2020. This past June, they didn't have any whatsoever.

Microsoft's business model is all about Game Pass and if they can't get games into Game Pass day one, they simply pass on them. After this past June, im not expecting to see any major AAA third party multi-platform game to be under a Microsoft marketing deal because the vast majority the third party AAA publishers will decline a Game Pass day one deal. So it's not about being outbid, it's about Microsoft not spending the money on just a marketing deal. They will concede to Sony in this regard. Instead, they will do what they've been doing since 2018 and that's acquire development studios and/or publishers in order to gain ownership of IP's which in turn allows them to add a lot of games and content to Game Pass and it's all done internally.

Of course, most third party AAA publishers will pass on Game Pass day one deals but in some cases, they probably shouldn't and instead should just accept the upfront payday. A game like Gotham Knights which im 75% through the story, I can see why it's a 70 rated game on Open Critic. If within two weeks of release, pre-orders are lower than expected, WB/Discovery should have looked into a Game Pass deal to offset the monetary losses.

Personally, if I can get two or so AA/AAA third party multi-platform games a year via Game Pass, I will be very pleased because im not expecting a GTA or some shit like that on Game Pass day one so if I can get a few of the smaller games, that works for me as I will still be saving money.

 

[Vertigo]

Gamespass is an undeniable failure for third parties on the service. They’ll take the handout but lose the players and actual revenue. Latest releases are a fart in the wind too and don’t even chart on XBL. Gamepass and square basicaly killed People Can Fly with that outriders release, especially since it didn’t help expansion sales but in fact killed it quicker.

Games need to make money. Gamespass is not enough to sustain shit. They’re just gonna lose more third party support. RE8 flopping big time on Xbox vs ps was the first sign of bad news.

Not on gamespass. Xbox consumers won’t buy it or play. Put game on gamespass and make no money for all your hard work either because Xbox handouts are pathetic.

Not good. Buy games and sustain those who make them for you. They’re worth it.

Gamepass is fucked right now anyway. Without starfield or any legit major release it will no doubt lose a shitton subs. No games LOL. Enjoy that 6 year old port of persona.