Businesses rely on some degree of loyalty from customers. Outriders, Game Pass, and Being Part of an EcosystemĮcosystems have been at the forefront of business for ages. Whereas the solution on the ground floor for each player is simple: swallow your pride and accept that you’ll have to play Bethesda games somewhere else if you really want to play them. On the business side of things, these solutions need to be grand. For Bethesda, it’s a huge win, because the studio has first-party resources it’s never had before. Both Sony fans and Microsoft fans have felt this sting back and forth for well over 10 years.īut for Microsoft, it’s an enormous win, because it’s about getting players into their ecosystem. It sucks when your side “loses” something. And that’s why fanboys tend to lash out at things like this. Personally, as someone who is locked into the PlayStation ecosystem with my own money, time, and energy, yeah, that stings. Now, am I a little bit sad that I’ll most likely never be able to play a Bethesda game on PlayStation again? Sure. But still, elements like Trophies, first-party exclusives, PlayStation Plus, and PS Now are all tools to get you locked into the Sony PlayStation ecosystem. Sony just arguably has fewer doors into their ecosystem, even if it’s opening some of them up with PC releases of older PlayStation exclusive titles. Sony’s strategy with the PlayStation, which hinges much more directly on sales of the console itself, is similar. So while Xbox’s may have their own selling points, they are merely potential gateways into the Microsoft ecosystem, rather than the product at the center of the strategy. It’s all about making people a part of the ecosystem. Microsoft and Xbox are not and have never been about sales of individual products. It’s a massive feather in Microsoft’s cap though, and as a company whose exclusives have been less-than-enthralling for the past few years or more, it’s a way of cultivating a first-party lineup from previously established and reputable studios.īigger still, however, is the additional heft this adds to Game Pass, a part of the Xbox ecosystem you don’t even need an Xbox to be in. With confirmation that Bethesda/ZeniMax games are expected to largely be exclusive to Microsoft and any platforms that Game Pass is on (at this point Xbox and PC), PlayStation fans have felt an enormous loss in a number of industry-shaping franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, and more. But I see the moves Microsoft is making as good things, understandable for their own business, and better for the growth of the industry in the long term. I’m about as big of a PlayStation fan as you can get. I’m heavily invested in my Trophies, with 216 Platinums and over 16,000 total Trophies. I’ve never even owned an Xbox, and my Switch hardly gets any playtime. I’ve been playing on the PlayStation platform near exclusively for over 25 years. Let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m the editor-in-chief for a PlayStation enthusiast site. Watch From Bedrooms to Billions: The PlayStation Revolution to get enlightened on that subject. It comes from pushing the boundaries beyond what anyone else was doing at the time. The very origin of PlayStation comes out of just trying to make the best platform possible for developers and players. Think about it this way: We wouldn’t even have PlayStation if Sony hadn’t made the kinds of bold and brazen moves that Microsoft is making today. But business is also about growth, evolution, and challenging the status quo. And Sony and Microsoft are competitors, to an extent. Sure, business is competition, to some degree. The corporations that fanboys go to war for don’t want or need the kind of toxicity that tends to fester on the fanboy battlefields. In fact, there’s really not a console war even happening on the corporate level. The truth at the top is a bit more nuanced. The console wars are fought in the trenches by fanboys vehemently and blindly defending their positions for General Sony and Sergeant Microsoft. But no matter which “side” of things you fall on, Microsoft’s aggressive moves can arguably be seen as a good thing (even if technically the monopolization/Disneyfication of the industry is a whole different subject to be discussed far beyond the context of the “console wars” as most fanboys know them). With today’s news that Outriders is coming to Game Pass on day one, and last week’s revelations about Bethesda games likely being mostly exclusives now that Microsoft owns that swath of studios, there’s been an uproar from fanboys on both sides, shaking their spears at one another.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |