Re:Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
by NovaDudely on Wednesday July 12, 2023 @03:01AM
(#36691266)
You don't just cut it off in a single go, Microsoft make their platforms more enticing. Heck they can do game companies used to and have timed exclusive releases. COD dropping on Xbox 2 months before anyone else.
Microsoft are REALLY good at playing the long game.
Re:Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
by robertlagrant on Wednesday July 12, 2023 @08:10AM
(#36693364)
Thanks for the reasoning.
My disagreement would be that you're comparing an installment with a franchise. The whole of the Elder Scrolls is bigger than Skyrim, although Skyrim was the biggest standalone seller. Elder Scrolls online has I think about 750k MAUs, at $10-$15/mo.
And, I suppose more fundamentally, why would MS turn down a good chunk of $3.6b for the dev costs of making a Playstation version of Starfield?
Re:Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
by johnnyanmac on Wednesday July 12, 2023 @11:14AM
(#36695768)
>My disagreement would be that you're comparing an installment with a franchise.
funny thing is that if you compared the last 15 years of COD to Elder scrolls, you're still comparing some dozen COD games to Skyrim and ESO. And I guess that one mobile game? 15 years ago is still a year after Oblivion launched.
Skyrim has supposedly sold around 60 million copies over the span of 12 years. Let's be generous and say those sold at an average of $60 each (probably less in practice due to sales, etc.)
That's $3.6b USD in raw revenue. Pretty sick!
On the other hand, as of 2022 (Skyrim numbers are 2023), Call of Duty as a franchise had generated over $31b USD in raw revenue. 10x that of Skyrim, Bethesda's biggest title.
So in terms of scale, I don't see how making Starfield exclusive can possibly be on the same level as the idea of making the whole CoD franchise exclusive. Certainly it would be impactful but I can understand treating them differently.