“Doomsday Scenario” might be a bit much as a descriptor. XD
And yes, be it Nintendo, Sony, EGS or whatever, it’s the same deal. The biggest difference is simply that MS is so big that it not even close to a risk for them. As long as Xbox’s income evens out to zero and they aren’t actively losing money, it’s “a win” and they can easily make up for it and add to it until it starts making money. But it already does, so…
A juggernaut that size is hard to contend with and usually gets it’s way.
It will be interesting to see how many of InXile, Obsidian, Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzards future games will be Windows Store and Xbox exclusives. (timed or otherwise.) They are the new bargaining chips after all.
Palworld isn’t a MS Exclusive and the studios they bought haven’t churned out anything of note, yet. So it makes sense there hasn’t been any inclination of sudden growth in subscriptions.
But as I said, it’s a long con. The plan remains the same, get Game Pass into as many homes as possible. Let subscription become the new standard. It’s Microsoft after all, their track record speaks for itself.
You don’t have to agree with me, time will tell if it works out for them or not. But as for my part, I’m still actively against it and will stick to my guns about “Subscription Services and Storefront Exclusivity” being a no go.
Both yes and no. Epic hasn’t gotten anything out of their attempt. Xbox is another matter, they are still trying. It was more or less the point of buying all those developer studios. They are just not rushing it. But yeah, the plan is to get the Game Pass concept to a certain point of normalization. Which they’re quite close to achieving.
Yes, but I’m talking about in this day and age. There are no Hint Books or Hotlines anymore. So we fall back on ye olde walkthroughs, as without them, the games are close to impossible.
The Devs take a pay for timed exclusivity and this helps development.
This is only in the case of Indie Devs. And again, only if the deal is struck before the game is done. For any studio tied to a publisher, it’s just money up front for the publisher.
Plus, I remember the stories some Devs told of how egs tried to strong-arm them into going exclusive. Didn’t score them any bonus points in my book.
But as I said, everyone has they’re own principles.
If they had stuck with being a cheaper alternativ for Indie Devs and maybe followed it up with even more favorable deals for using their Engine and being on their platform, I wouldn’t have had a problem with them. It would have been a good strategy to compete with Valve.
Like GOG did with retro games. Tapping into something Valve didn’t focus on.
But they didn’t. It all came down to a shitty attempt at Storefront Exclusivity. And that isn’t competition, that is just removing customer choice.