I don't feel like the comparison is apt because back then there wasn't even digital distribution, let alone services like GamePass. Back then the business was entirely running on the razors and razorblades model, and this is no longer the case.
But Sony still leveraged the tools available at the time, and which were in their means of use through financial capacity. Microsoft is doing the same today. Yet for some reason people want to excuse the former as being perfectly valid and the latter as being a potentially unfair business practice, on the grounds of an ethical argument....
in relation to a corporate-standard, corporate structure-centered business practice.
AFAIK unless actual human or civil rights are violated, or legal laws are broken, a deal's a deal and any method is potentially one worth pursuing, and valid under the
legal definition.
The issue is that they will have personnel and resources either earmarked for, or actively working on Playstation SKU's. Yes they can write off the work, reassign the teams. return the devkits, sack everyone surplus to requirements, whatever. The problem is that they've just turned a profit generating unit into nothing or worse. These are people, not lego bricks, you can't just plug them into the nearest free slot. Its disruptive, and there's no gain to be made.
We don't know how much has been earmarked for PlayStation ports of games, nor do we know how far any of those versions are. I think you are overestimating the impact of those costs in spinning down PlayStation versions in development to what is essentially a revitalized Xbox division, that now has more support from the main company. Dev kit prices aren't anywhere near as high as they used to be for consoles back in the '90s or '00s, relatively speaking, because now much more of the bulk work can be done on general-purpose PCs.
Companies handle internal reorganizations/reassignments often; I'm certain there are contingency plans in place if certain versions of games are cancelled, as it's not like cancellations of ports haven't happened before in the industry. This is actually something that happened somewhat frequently with the Sega Saturn back in the '90s, even in 1997 (when the system was still commercially viable and still
somewhat competitive with PlayStation in the West). Even at that time, when Saturn ports of certain games like Tomb Raider 2 or Resident Evil 2 (both of which had planned Saturn ports, and other games with Saturn versions at decent rate of dev that still got those versions cancelled) would have recouped their porting costs, publishers (some at the behest of Sony via exclusivity deals) still cut those versions loose.
(
And yes, I'm fully aware of Bernie Stolar's (idiotic) statements regarding Saturn at E3 1997 which led to a lot of Western software cancellations for Saturn. However, a decent deal of those ports were somewhat decently along, and could've sold to Saturn users desperate for content to recoup dev costs...and yet were still cancelled.)
This is with keeping in mind that you needed to do actual
full rewrites of code for ports back in the day, which incurred major relative costs for software development and R&D. It's not like today where the systems share a lot of the same architectural and feature-set DNA, so porting costs, while likely being higher in a raw comparison to costs back in the day, are a lot cheaper platform-to-platform in a modern
relativistic context, mainly influenced by the size of the porting team and salaries/paychecks to cover for the time invested in porting.
I'm kinda tired of this discussion because it seems to me that noone wants to factor in basic business concepts like opportunity cost and return on investment. The basis of my position is that its simply easier and more profitable to allow Zenimax studios to keep operating as previously and modify the publishing conditions so as to best leverage Gamepass and the overall Xbox ecosystem.
I just did all of that above
But with that said, you're not considering the
impact allowing Zenimax studios to continue releasing software on competing console platforms/ecosystem will have to their new parent company and its console platform/ecosystem AND subscription service (GamePass).
You've heard this before: if fervent publishing of most major Zenimax games is allowed to occur on Sony or Nintendo platforms, and Microsoft has no inroads for GamePass being available on those platforms, both Xbox AND GamePass
suffer. The only benefit for Microsoft to take this approach would be if they planned a
full transition into a third-party publishing company.
And hey, maybe for all we know that's something they're considering. But it'd be a wild theory, with
no proof to corroborate it at this time, and runs contrary to many statements from top figures. The only way to even begin considering that being an option is if Sony and Nintendo allow GamePass, as-is, to come to their platforms. Which last I checked, isn't happening.
Never mind the argument of MS doing this, in some appeal to go 3P, completely cuts them out of royalties of 3P software sales in their own established ecosystem, which would negatively impact them, at least as things are right now.
To reiterate: Bottom line is the opportunity cost is relatively low and the earning potential is high. That's the motive to do it, at least in the short term. Its an entirely reasonable proposition and it boggles my mind I've gotten so much static over pointing this out.
So you say the opportunity cost in putting their software on PlayStation and Switch is low, yet your earlier statements I quoted above
contradict this belief. Which one is it? If the opportunity cost is low, then cancelling versions of software in-development for other consoles is
also low, while the earning potential for making those games exclusive to their platforms and platforms that support their ecosystem/services is high, potentially even
higher because it will drive those on competing console platforms to consider jumping into the Xbox/PC/GamePass ecosystem to get access to these games.
The reason you've gotten static over it is because the POV itself has flaws in it, and we're discussing those flaws with these responses.
Lifetime exclusivity is less common than timed exclusivity and co-promotion deals because generally its simply unnecessary. When it does happen there are typically compelling reasons for not producing other SKU's, stuff like (as I mentioned) elevated opportunity cost due to unavoidable re-tooling, or a projected sales performance insufficient to justify the effort.
That is valid for
third-parties, but we're speaking of a publishing firm that is now technically a
first-party entity. Naturally, first-party studios enjoy privileges, financial security, resource access etc. that third-party developers generally do not have. Microsoft will be providing all of that to the Zenimax studios going forward, there is no doubt about that.
For first-party studios, lifetime exclusivity tends to be the favored approach by far, and we have both Sony and especially Nintendo's own 1P library to prove why.
Firstly, it creates a vested interest for people to come to your platform-ecosystem and stay within it (that doesn't mean they ONLY use your platform-ecosystem, just that yours will be one they utilize in addition to others, most likely).
Secondly, it adds perception of product value by the customer base; valuation by the customer base within the ecosystem or willing to join the ecosystem translates to increasing the valuation of the IP the exclusive software in that ecosystem belong to.
Thirdly, it acts as a means of securing the platform holder from certain types of market volatility. Third-party support can come and go, or not prioritize your platform/ecosystem in comparison to a competitor. Having first-party content that remains exclusive to your own platform-ecosystem allows the first-party studios to hone their development to a specific platform (hardware or software dev chain, or both) and leverage the most out of its capabilities. This is
exactly something that benefits Sony's own first-party developers, so if they seem to understand that...why wouldn't Microsoft? Especially considering Microsoft was hurt the most by lack of curating consistent 1P content last gen?
Now I can seen an argument for stating that, since Microsoft has so many first-party studios now, they can simply afford to have some of these prioritize multi-platform for competing console platform-ecosystems (or service-ecosystems, i.e Amazon Luna) because they have sheer
volume of studios.
Maybe there's some truth to that, but this is where I can probably give my own perspective on that "case-by-case" statement made months back. To me, "case-by-case" means late ports of very specific titles Microsoft would like to leverage to bolster attention to the Xbox/PC/GamePass ecosystem, to act essentially as "advertisments" and appetizers to Sony and Nintendo gamers...
...or in other words, almost
exactly what I see many people frame
Sony's increased expedition of select 1P content to PC as: "advertisements" and appetizers to PC gamers to jump into the PlayStation ecosystem (i.e buy a PS5) to play their other 1P content and sequels to those older ports, or squeeze out some last profits from the games. That last bit, at most, would maybe factor for some of these Zenimax games as well, so even if they were to come to Sony and Nintendo platforms, I would not expect that until the games have essentially run their course on Xbox/PC/GamePass, likely 2-3 years after initial release at earliest (and again, only for very select pieces of software).
In the case of Zenimax product, and I'm thinking specifically of Bethesda and ID's stuff here, we have low opportunity cost because these games are built using multi-platform tech, and being proven popular IP outside of Xbox there's no impediment in terms of expected return on investment. Apply that business logic to the counter-examples people have put forward and a consistent pattern emerges.
Or we can compare them to the examples I mention in this post that I feel have poked holes in your own logic on this topic and shown at least some element of (likely ironic/unintentional) contradiction within your POV here
At the very least tho, it is very clear you've put a lot of thought into framing your POV and I commend that. I just simply don't agree with it and I believe to have made very clear now with this particular post.