Will the tech giant remove sports titles? High probability that they won’t.
As I stated before - and Microsoft realizes it - Day 1 releases drive the game pass. We can debate forever how the game released 6 months or 1 ago in the Game Pass is the amazing value, but the growth of the service was at its best when they started to release Day 1 titles.
You give too much credit to older titles - just like with new releases - release Day 1 is what brings the consumers. You can ask even yourself - would you buy Starfield Day 1 or would you wait 6 months to get in Game Pass?
If they had a competing subscription service of course they would. Or another platform (PS) could strike a deal with the new owner to bring it to their subscription service exclusively.
The same way Disney took all of their Marvel content from Netflix as soon as they launched Disney+.
As much as I’m hyped for Starfield if I only had to wait 6 months I would just personally wait it out, my backlog is still huge at the moment. Fortunately that won’t be the case as it’s first party.
Coming from the previous gen my main was the PS4 and I wasn’t paying PS prices so I’m use to waiting (GP Day 1 is still a luxury to me).
But if Day 1 is the biggest seller then surely to use the same argument getting Madden NFL, NHL, PGA, FC, UFC and F1 on Day 1 would be humongous. There are many consumers who mainly (or even exclusively) play sports games. I would argue with those type of games it’s even more important to get them Day 1 due to their annual content/revision. When you throw in all of the other EA content Day 1 it would sell subscriptions like hot cakes!
Playstation does not have a clout to bring it exclusively to their service (especially with big tech giants lol). And again - sports titles won’t become exclusive (at least for a time being until the market is saturated with sports game like in 90s I believe). Sony failed to do that with MLB this gen. And we are talking about NFL, NBA, FIFA-not-FIFA.
They don’t need to acquire a publisher for that.
Anyway, I wonder in the end who (not Microsoft) - if it happens - will get EA.
Of course they do! They are currently still the market leader (for how long we will see). If they propose to the publisher that they have 50+ million subs on PlayStation Plus compared to the 20-30+ million on GP and they also have more units out in the wild they definitely will.
Why do you think they still get away with money hatting games? Because the developer knows the majority of the sales will be on PS anyway.
If that was the case EA Play Pro would already be part of GP.
Day one game deals are expensive especially for many of these sports games where the bulk of the sales are within the first month.
It wouldn’t be viable to get all these games on GP day one every year, it would only make sense if they were first party as it would instead sell subscriptions.
If it’s true that Madden is coming to GP tomorrow it will be Huuuge for GP (even though it doesn’t appeal to me).
Why don’t you assume that Microsoft just not interested to bring EA Play Pro on Game Pass in the first place? You assume that Microsoft wants that, but I see no indication of that why would they want all EA first parties launching Day 1 in Game Pass.
PS as market is relatively small to make subscription service (especially from the tech giants who own their own infrastructure).
How many moneyhats has Sony made starting this gen that was not arranged early? RE4 multiplat, SF6 multiplat, other games are multiplats. We only have exclusive FF7R or FF16 that were made years in advance and was delayed (like for a year or two at least).
Huh? If you’re talking cloud streaming yes but not subscriptions.
Their newly renovated PS Plus already has more subscribers than GP (although it’s not as good IMO).
A tech giant could create their own subscription service but PlayStation, Nintendo or Xbox as platform holders don’t need to allow it on their devices.
It’s also a fact that there are more PS4’s and PS5’s in people’s homes compared to Xbox One/S/X.
PlayStation still has the leverage (unfortunately) over Xbox to negotiate better deals due to a larger user base.
There’s been plenty of timed ones:
Forspoken
KOTOR
Deathloop
Ghostwire Tokyo
Kena
Oddworld: Soulstorm
Returnal (now acquired)
Bugsnax
Stray
Jett
Godfall
Then there’s all the marketing deals, exclusive DLC, CoD deal and:
It tells nothing about engagement of the community. It is like that situation with Gold - we don’t know how many people moved to higher tier at all.
Yet, games coming out on both PS5 and PS4 sell more on PS5 (I have been wondering even why people continue to release games on PS4)
Huge publishers (aside SE with old moneyhats) are not present there.
I don’t believe that.
I doubt about exclusive DLCs (won’t happen anymore I think), marketing deals - yeah, this will happen but it does not change much considering that the same content can be accessed easier on Xbox (cheaper and easier access)
I still think Microsoft are interested in EA (as they have been multiple times before). It’s not my personal preference but in my personal opinion there is incredible growth for them there (and a lot to loose if EA play drops out).
Your personal opinion is that they are not interested in EA, let’s just agree to disagree eh?
I see - as it’s not strictly related to acquisitions it’s probably better in the PS thread, I was only mentioning PS/other Publishers in relation to MS acquiring EA (ultimately as a form of defence/protection) .
I won’t reply to that here as I think we’ve hijacked this thread enough .
Yep always said my prefences for Japan would be SEGA/CAPCOM.
GTA (T2) is the next big IP that MS logically would go after.
Outside of GTA the only other franchises they could go after which have sold more than 200 million would be FIFA (FC), LEGO & Sims.
Unless they want to go after Tetris Holdings too .
I wouldn’t say no chance, that is a bit far, but unless SEGA hits a financial herald where they need to sell some shit I really don’t see SEGA happening (and this is just my opinion but I think their are multiple better buys than SEGA)
Yeah but why would Sammy SEGA want to sell their most profitable division which is important to a ton of their other divisions e.g. pachinko
I disagree. I think people are looking at these acquisitions from a too limited perspective, we know some core stuff that MS is looking for (longevity, high player count, e rated content, content that appeals to Japan and legacy) but i think their is a lot more too it like what they can take away from their competition as an example. I think EA is a great pick up personally, SEGA is great if you deal with the other stuff, ubisoft is temping considering the drop ect. Regardless, I stick with my comment that EA is the best potential buy unless we count Nintendo
Yeah, capcom is a treasure trove of IP and T2 has one of the biggest mobile devs now and some monster franchises like GTA. I don’t if i would call them the best ones but they are up their (personally if we don’t count Nintendo I think T2 is the 2nd best pick up and Capcom is 3rd IMO)
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