Xbox is about to leave PlayStation in the glittering space dust of Starfield

Post updated below on 8.28.23.

It’s been a long time coming, but star field It’s almost here. The day is almost upon us. The time is near. September 1 for pre-orders and September 6 for everyone else.

And for the first time in a long time, very Xbox has long been on the verge of releasing the biggest console exclusive of the year, bigger than Sony’s. spiderman 2, bigger than nintendo The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

In a year filled with massive game releases…Hogwarts Legacy, Diablo IV, Baldur’s Gate 3, etc., etc., none is as expected as starfield, Bethesda’s response to the question: “What if Skyrim, But in space?

This is partly because star field It’s been in development for so long, and partly because Bethesda’s other great RPG…The Elder Scrolls VI—still years to go. star field it was announced in 2018, before Microsoft acquired Bethesda parent company ZeniMax in 2020 for a whopping $7.5 billion.

In fact, Microsoft decided to pull the trigger on that acquisition out of fear that Sony would make a deal with Bethesda to lock down Xbox.

“When we acquired ZeniMax, one of the reasons for this was that Sony had reached an agreement to death loop and ghost wire “Pay Bethesda not to ship those games to Xbox,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer said during an FTC hearing against Microsoft earlier this year. So the discussion about star field when we hear that star field “We would also possibly end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-party console where we fall further behind in our content ownership, so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in business.”

Now it looks like the goose is coming home to Sony. Those exclusivity deals may have paid off in the short term, but now that Xbox outright owns Bethesda, it’s unlikely more of its games will make it to PlayStation. star field is the first of many. A Indiana Jones Bethesda is preparing a game that will also skip PlayStation, and it seems unlikely that The Elder Scrolls VI it will be released on any console other than Xbox.

And Bethesda isn’t the only game developer Microsoft has gobbled up. Along with a group of smaller studios, Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Obligations publisher Activision in a nearly $70 billion deal.

With Microsoft making these massive games part of Xbox Game Pass, the barrier to play has never been lower for Xbox gamers, who can easily start a Game Pass subscription just to play a title, then cancel their membership until they’re done. come out another game they want. play.

Whether or not that is a healthy future for the video game industry or sustainable for game developers and publishers is another question entirely.

This could be the start of a major change in the console wars, especially if star field turns out to be a success. Judging by the success of the Fall and ancient scrolls series, that seems like a foregone conclusion.

Update 8/28/23

I have a couple more ideas to add to the previous post, so I thought I’d add them here.

First, I want to make it very clear that I have nothing against Sony or PlayStation. I love a lot of PlayStation exclusives from Spiderman to Ratchet and Clank to The last of us.

Gave Spiderman a 9.5/10 when i checked it. demon souls and bloodborne, Both are PlayStation exclusives and are among my favorite games of all time. Love Unexplored and God of War and so on and so on. Sony has some great games and I love playing them on my PS3, PS4 and PS5. I would still play on my PS Vita if it hadn’t broken.

But I also think competition is a good thing, which is why I like rooting for the underdog. In this case, that’s Xbox. I want Xbox to give Sony a run for its money. I want Xbox to offer more compelling exclusives. I think that leads to a healthier market for players.

This brings me to the second point, perhaps contradictory. As much as I want Sony and Xbox to keep releasing exclusives, I also don’t love the trend we’ve seen of so many studio acquisitions recently. Microsoft has been on a huge buying spree, and Bethesda and Activision will now be Microsoft developers, with previously cross-platform content leaving Sony.

Of course, this is partly Sony’s fault. As I noted above, Microsoft was prompted to buy Bethesda specifically because Sony was doing exclusivity deals on Bethesda games. Sony has bought many top-tier developers in the past to keep as many compelling titles exclusive to the PlayStation as possible. The only way to answer this is to do what Microsoft is doing now and get more studios to compete.

Finally, I don’t know what to think about Xbox Game Pass. It’s a smart business move on Microsoft’s part, but I’m very concerned that the subscription model is a house of cards. We are already seeing this with streaming media, and the ways in which Netflix “disrupts” the entertainment industry could lead to its complete implode. I would hate to see something similar in games.

So no, I don’t want PlayStation to fail. I want Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and all game studios to succeed.

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