As part of its ongoing arguments as to why it should be allowed to acquire Activision Blizzard in a major deal valued at $69 billion, Microsoft has pointed out some of the exclusivity arrangements that its chief competitors have recently made, including PlayStation, which has “excluded” some highly anticipated games, such as Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XVI and Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake, from the Xbox platform, according to Microsoft’s response to the UK’s CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) and its investigation over the anticipated acquisition, as highlighted by publications that include Xbox News for Koreans.
“Exclusivity strategies are not uncommon in the games industry and other market
participants have access to their own content,” reads a subsection of the document titled “no anticompetitive effect,” which goes on to list a handful of games that Microsoft suggests are either timed exclusives or won’t be released for the Xbox at all.
Both Sony’s and Nintendo’s exclusive first-party games rank among the best-selling in Europe and worldwide. Current Sony exclusive content includes prominent first-party titles such as The Last of Us, Ghosts of Tsushima, God of War, and Spiderman. In addition to having outright exclusive content, Sony has also entered into arrangements with third-party publishers which require the “exclusion” of Xbox from the set of platforms these publishers can distribute their games on. Some prominent examples of these agreements include Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix), Bloodborne (From Software), the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI (Square Enix) and the recently announced Silent Hill 2 remastered (Bloober team). Nintendo’s exclusive content includes well-established globally famous and iconic franchises such as Super Mario, Zelda, Xenoblade, Pokémon, and Animal Crossing.
Square Enix shared the launch date for FFXVI earlier this month, revealing that the 16th installment of the long-running RPG franchise would be headed to Sony’s PlayStation 5 consoles on June 22, 2023.
“FINAL FANTASY XVI introduces gamers to an all-new standalone story in the Final Fantasy universe, an epic dark fantasy world that takes place in the realm of Valisthea—a land blessed in the light of the Mothercrystals, and where peace falters as the spread of the Blight threatens to destroy their dominions,” reads a description for the game. “The fate of the land is decided by the Eikons, powerful and deadly creatures, and their Dominants, men and women who have been blessed with the ability to call upon and wield them.”
A Collector’s Edition of FFXVI that includes a premium statue of Phoenix vs. Ifrit, a SteelBook Case, and more will be available when the game launches.
Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, is a full remake of Team Silent’s 2001 classic from Bloober Team (Blair Witch, The Medium) that has been confirmed for both PlayStation 5 and Steam, featuring a new soundtrack by original composer Akira Yamaoka.
An NVIDIA GeForce 2080 RTX or AMD Radeon 6800 XT graphics card is listed under the recommended system requirements for the game, which doesn’t yet have a release date.
Discussion (1 reply)
Join Discussion →Funny - S/E tried like hell to get Microsoft to bring FFXIV over to the XB360. FF11 was, at the time, on the PS2 and MS negotiated to get it on the new 360 when it released. But S/E had a firm requirement that it not require additional paid services to run on a console and all servers be cross-platform, since it was already a for-subscription game (ie. you do not need PS+/XBLG to play the game multiplayer).
When Microsoft was trying to move people to the 360 early on, they had no problem waiving the requirement that XB Gold be required for Multiplayer and PC/Xbox/PS2 servers could be cross-platform. But they would not do so for FFXIV: they stuck to the XB Gold requirement for multiplayer and a requirement that there be no cross-play servers, and because of that S/E wouldn't bring 14 over to the Xbox ecosystem.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.destructoid.com/square-explains-why-theres-no-final-fantasy-xiv-for-xbox/[/URL]
Now, in some hindsight - that original FFXIV .... it was awful. One of the worst received MMOs and Final Fantasy games of all times. It wasn't until some time later, when FFXIV ARR was re-released that it saw a good measure of success, and that just before the series migrated from the PS3 to PS4.
Now, today, when there has been a good deal of interest from the side of Microsoft to bring FFXIV over (and FFXIV is now one of ~the~ largest MMOs) : I couldn't say if S/E just gave up trying and now doesn't even care to listen to what Microsoft has to say, or a case of "You wouldn't help us out when we were small so screw you now that we are big", or if this is just lip service from Phil Spencer, or if Sony is tipping the scale and providing some incentive to keep it console-exclusive to Playstation, or if Xbox just isn't a big audience for MMOs (compared to Playstation), or some combination of such.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-14-xbox-version/[/URL]