made by microsoft The four Xbox-exclusive games available on Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation will mark the first time the company will share its homegrown titles with rivals in a significant way as it seeks to boost revenue in a stagnant gaming market.
Adding more retailers to increase game sales could give Microsoft the resources to move forward with “initial plans” for future consoles and new devices, gaming CEO Phil said.・Mr. Spencer said in an interview.
“The more successful the gaming side of the business is, the more innovative things we'll be able to do with the hardware,” he said. “We're excited about the different form factors that allow people to play in different locations.”
Spencer said not all four games are available on both rival consoles. He declined to name the title.
After a nearly two-year process, Microsoft completed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October, giving Xbox a huge amount of new content, but also making it imperative to reap the financial benefits. did.
Microsoft currently faces a choice about when to give Xbox an edge when it comes to exclusive games. Exclusive merchandise may drive purchases of Xbox hardware. But sharing titles with Nintendo and Sony means more games will be sold.
Over the past decade, Microsoft has made three major game acquisitions and several smaller ones to further increase the appeal of owning an Xbox and give the tech giant access to more exclusive content. I did. But Microsoft also has to be careful about making titles exclusive, as it was a major sticking point in the antitrust review surrounding its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. As a concession, Microsoft agreed to continue selling Activision's lucrative Call of Duty on competing platforms.
Diablo IV
For example, if Microsoft were to buy a company that supplies games to Sony and make those games exclusive to Xbox, it would lose a revenue stream. After acquiring ZeniMax and its storied Bethesda Softworks in 2020, the company has kept Minecraft, its first major acquisition under the Spencer administration, on a rival platform and continued to deliver the games it promised exclusively to Sony. And in a 2022 filing with Brazilian regulators, the company simply said: It would not be in Microsoft's interest to remove Call of Duty games from PlayStation.
Microsoft announced Thursday that the first Activision Blizzard game to arrive on its Game Pass subscription service will be Diablo IV on March 28th. Game Pass will continue to be Xbox and PC only.
“If you're a PlayStation customer, you shouldn't think that the plan is for this to be the beginning of all the games coming to PlayStation or Nintendo,” Spencer said. “I don't have any plans for that today.”
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At this time, the company has no plans to make the role-playing game “Starfield” or the new “Indiana Jones” game from Microsoft's Bethesda Studios available on other consoles, despite speculation to the contrary, Spencer said.
“We want to learn, we want to see what happens,” Spencer said. “We don't know if these games will be considered Xbox games when released on other platforms. They probably won't find an audience for some reason.”
By not revealing the four games that will be available on Switch and PlayStation, Microsoft risks continuing to anger Xbox players, who have protested the move on social media. They say there's no point in buying an Xbox without exclusive games. Game developers have come to the same conclusion, creating titles for the higher market share of PlayStation and Nintendo, further eroding the value of owning an Xbox and ultimately reducing the potential of future Xbox hardware. They fear it will disappear.
However, Spencer has said in the past that the idea of games made exclusively for one device is “going to become less and less common.” — (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP