Xbox is Officially Going Fully Multi-Platform. Now What?
In a much-anticipated video podcast, Microsoft announced they will be taking a step further in making some of their first-party exclusives available on other console platforms, starting with four games. They were later revealed the following week to be Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment and Grounded (the only two of the four which are coming to Nintendo Switch), Rare’s Sea of Thieves, and Tango Gamework’s Hi-Fi Rush coming to PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. This is an unprecedented move in the industry as it forces gamers to rethink console exclusivity. Imagine Sony making Horizon: Zero Dawn or Nintendo making The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild available on competing platforms. To console fanatics, that concept is inconceivable. Yet it’s now becoming a reality.
While Sony has distributed some of their previously PlayStation-exclusive games on PC storefronts, it’s generally understood that the PC platform is an entirely different market from console. It’s functionally an open platform that isn’t beholden behind any hardware or software limitations as users can upgrade their computers or change the operating system to anything other than the default Windows. It made sense for Sony to invest in the PC gaming space, albeit to a lesser degree compared to Microsoft, which I’ll get to later. Now that we got that technicality out of the way, what does this really mean for the console market? Well, we need to look at each company’s position in the market before we draw any conclusions.
The Xbox Question
Prior to this podcast, rumors were running amok about Microsoft going third-party, akin to Sega after the Dreamcast failed. Reports and headlines of virtually every Xbox game coming to Nintendo and PlayStation riled up the Internet, fuelling intense speculation all over social media and gaming forums alike. While the reality of the situation is much less dramatic, it still calls into question the longevity of the Xbox console brand. In an interview with the Verge, Microsoft Gaming’s chief executive Phil Spencer said he won’t rule out any other game following the same fate, including some of their biggest releases. Needless to say, this is an actively developing pivot, but why are they doing this in the first place?
The answer, I think, is remarkably simple. Microsoft wants to focus on expanding their footprint into gaming now that they are the biggest publisher in the industry. Lately, their gaming division has been struggling to grow despite investing billions of dollars in mergers and acquisitions. Game production budgets are ballooning across the board. Their consoles are also struggling to grow year over year while being regularly overshadowed by their competition, likely prompting this decision to begin with. After spending exorbitant amounts of money on acquisitions, while sustaining the massive loss-leading subscription platform known as Game Pass, their decision makes more sense under this context.
Outside of this unending thirst for growth, I believe Microsoft realized they’re too big to just be a console maker. The amount of games in active development they have at their own disposal is incredibly expensive and far too costly to limit to an approximately 50-million console base and an auxilliary, yet-more-expansive PC base. Microsoft’s mission has been to reach “2 billion gamers”, which sounded lofty on a surface level, but it cannot be possible if they kept their content locked on the Xbox ecosystem. As such, they came to the inevitable conclusion that they need to serve as a major third-party publisher in addition to being a console manufacturer. Who knows how this multi-pronged approach will fare for them? However, in the short-term, it’s easy to predict they’re going to make a nice chunk of profits in the process.
The New State of PlayStation
Unlike Microsoft, Sony doesn’t have the same incentive to leave the console market. Their consoles are the biggest reason why Sony Interactive Entertainment is Sony Group’s strongest division financially. Hardware, in general, is also a much greater asset for Sony as a whole than it is for Microsoft. Not to mention the PlayStation 5 is selling incredibly well and even outperforming the PlayStation 2 in certain markets. Despite Sony’s remarkable success, that’s not to say everything is sunshine and roses for PlayStation. Sony recently downgraded their sales forecast for the PS5 in their most recent earnings report, with Sony president Hiroki Totoki endorsing the notion of making its first-party portfolio more multi-platform as well. Does that mean PlayStation won’t have any exclusives in the near future? Probably not. At most, we will start to see a higher quantity of simultaneous console and PC releases for their first-party games, such as the recently released Helldivers II, which is seeing historic success for a Sony-published PC release.
Like Microsoft, Sony will approach this multi-platform strategy with some caution, but eventually the majority, if not all of Sony’s first-party games will be simultaneous releases. Ultimately, first-party console-only exclusives may not be a thing in the next generation…at least for Sony and Microsoft. However, currently, Sony’s multi-platform strategy is rather conservative compared to Microsoft’s. For one, they rarely do simultaneous releases on console and PC. Oftentimes, PlayStation-published games that do ship on PC have been on console for a year or so. Even MLB The Show, which is the only PlayStation Studios game franchise to come to competing consoles, isn’t yet on PC. The only games that do get the simultaneous release treatment are the live-service ones like the aforementioned Helldivers II and their upcoming online multiplayer titles Concord and Fairgame$, both of which are developed by recently Sony-acquired studios.
In addition to their live-service games, Sony’s increasingly common remasters and re-releases also get the simultaneous release treatment, such as the Horizon games (excluding the VR spin-off), The Last of Us Part I, and the upcoming Until Dawn remake. Frustratingly for PC gamers, Sony’s consistency leaves a lot to be desired, with The Last of Us Part II Remastered skipping a PC version despite fitting the criteria of being a remastered release. Confusing release patterns aside, it’s clear that Sony wants to improve in their multi-platform strategy, as game production budgets are skyrocketing for their single-player juggernaut releases as well. Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 cost a staggering $315 million to produce, a figure that’s likely become the norm for major triple-A games nowadays.
The Odd Nintendo Out
It is generally understood that Nintendo is unique from their direct competition. For one, their first-party software is the primary selling point for their hardware and is arguably the major reason why the Switch is currently the third best-selling console of all time. Their highest selling game, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has outsold Nintendo’s previous home console, the Wii U, nearly six-fold. Nintendo’s games are the reason why the Switch is so popular. Consequently, the Switch’s enormous success is responsible for making Nintendo the wealthiest company in Japan (based on cash-on-hand and other similar metrics). Suffice it to say, Nintendo can’t really afford making their games available to other platforms like what Sony and Microsoft are doing without sacrificing a critical part of their core business. (Well…you could argue they could, but it’s a risk that a notoriously conservative company would never make.)
Of course, Nintendo has always been invested in businesses outside of gaming. After all, they started out as a card and toy company long before video games were even conceptualized. (Fun fact: You can still buy their hanafuda cards!) Merchandising is also a huge asset for Nintendo, much more than Sony or Microsoft combined. Ultimately, Nintendo isn’t remotely impacted by Microsoft’s decision to go multi-platform. They’re a company driven by tradition and they innovate and change at their own pace.
Closing Thoughts
There’s not much else to extrapolate from Microsoft’s decision to go multi-platform other than show that the gaming market is ever-evolving and slowly gravitating away from the walled-gardens many gamers have grown accustomed to. This doesn’t mean consoles are dead or that Microsoft is going to relinquish the console market entirely or that Sony is going to conquer the home console market and become a monopoly. This does mean, however, that each console manufacturer are constantly assessing their positions in the market and will act accordingly to maximize growth and to maintain financial sustainability. I know this is a boring conclusion to end on, but radical changes such as this are not always that radical when contextualizing the position of every major player in the console space.
