With Microsoft’s recent acquisition of publisher Activision/Blizzard, it comes as no surprise that SONY would follow suit. SONY just announced that it has entered a deal to purchase developer Bungie, who previously developed Halo (that is now handled by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft) and the popular Destiny games.
Microsoft has been buying many developers including the likes of Bethesda and its studios under its wing. These acquisitions fit in with its plans to offer games via its ever growing subscription service Xbox Game Pass which allows gamers on Windows PCs and Xbox consoles to pay a flat monthly fee for access to 100s of games. What sweetens the deal is the first party studios Microsoft owns means their games appear via Game Pass on launch day rather than weeks or months later (which you might find with third-party titles).
With these acquisitions and the huge franchises that come with them, gamers might be questioning what happens to games that are currently multiplatform. The indications from Microsoft and SONY appears to suggest that gamers need not worry, but we wonder whether this approach will stand the test of time. SONY already has a number of platform exclusives such as Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon to-name-but-a-few, yet some of these are now appearing on PC, albeit months and years later.
On one hand, it makes sense to garner as much revenue by keeping games like Call of Duty and Destiny 2 multiplatform (that’s for Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox and PC). But on the other hand, what a great opportunity for Microsoft or SONY to make said games exclusive to their respectable brands. We’re sure this would cause gamer uproar at first, but once the dust settled, having massively popular games appear on one console as an exclusive and in Microsoft’s case as a Game Pass title, would be a ginormous boon for their platforms.
We predict exclusivity will only be a matter of time. As far as SONY is concerned, there are still many developers and publishers in its native Japan up-for-grabs such as Bandai Namco and Capcom, alongside several well-respected studios. It will be interesting to see how the lie-of-the-land develops over the next 5 years as current gen console acquisitions ramp-up.
We live in interesting times indeed, especially considering the reaction from gamers and the gaming press when Microsoft’s Don Mattrick launched the Xbox One back in 2013. This current playing field was always Microsoft’s end-game. Now, almost a decade later and here we are, an “Always Online”, subscription based and downloadable software gaming platform.
