My experience with xCloud hasn’t been great. The image quality is really bad. Same with Sony’s streaming. Both services fall short of Geforce Now which really should be the standard for streaming quality.

It’s not the only one like it. Sony has PS+ Extra/Premium, Ubisoft has Ubisoft+, EA has EA Play.

If Sony ever allowed GP on PS, it would only be for MS’ first-party titles. Even then, they’d require that the games also be sold separately on PSN. Basically how EA Play already works on PSN.

Being able to play games on your platform of choice has the following benefits for consumers:

Again, MS doesn’t need games to keep people using Windows. People would use Windows regardless because MS has a monopoly in the PC OS market and Windows is the default PC OS.

Yeah, exclusives are great for platform holders and the devs/pubs that sign exclusivity deals. They just suck for consumers. Ideally, everyone would benefit from business decisions, not just the platform holders and their partners.

MS doesn’t need games to get people to use Windows. MS has had a monopoly in the PC OS market for like 30 years. People are going to use Windows by default.

Third-party exclusivity deals (which are distinct from first-party exclusives) are all about suppressing competition. The contracts specifically require that the games not be released on competing platforms for x amount of time.

Established names like Levine and Kojima will eventually retire and be replaced by new names so I wouldn’t worry about that. Sequels aren’t going anywhere, though. They will always be a safer bet than new IP.

That’s assuming that Xbox gets rid of its hardware division entirely. That’s certainly a possibility, though they might keep it around as another way to access Game Pass.

Not sure how you equated “I don’t like Switch hardware” with “the Switch was a colossal failure.” The Switch offers portability, something that sets it apart from its competitors and a feature that’s highly valued by a lot of consumers. It’s just not valuable to me and doesn’t offset the Switch’s weak CPU and GPU or…

So again, how does Metro Exodus fit into your logic? It was available on Steam for pre-order until Deep Silver signed a timed exclusivity deal with EGS. The game was then pulled from the Steam store before launch. However, people who already pre-ordered still had the game in their library and were able to play it at…

As a consumer, I don’t care about platform sales. If you want me to buy into your platform, it needs actual features that set it apart. For example, PC has modding, superior image quality and performance, flexible peripheral support, lower prices, free multiplayer access, extensive backwards compatibility, etc. I…

So reducing consumer choice is fine, as long as it’s done before launch. Reducing said choice by the same amount after launch is unacceptable, though. Yes, that makes tons of sense.

Every game will make more money if it’s multiplatform. Companies don’t use exclusivity to sell more software. They use it to force people to buy into their ecosystem.

I wouldn’t call it a perfect balance. A perfect balance would be releasing their games simultaneously on PS and PC, like MS does with Xbox. Waiting 2-3 years for a PC port isn’t great, especially when said ports still cost nearly full price.

This is great. Relying on arbitrary exclusivity to sell hardware has always been dumb. People should buy hardware because the hardware itself provides benefits they find appealing, not because buying that hardware is the only way to play specific games.

Bioshock Infinite was about how a self-contained white supremacist quasi-theocracy would inevitably end in tears but then decided to “both-sides” the shit out of the situation and generally sympathize with the white supremacist theocracy (to the point of making the main character be an AU version of the lead theocrat…

I’ve cited and refuted your specific claims so I’m not sure what else you want. I’m not going to agree with flawed logic or demonstrably false claims, sorry. There was one claim that I forgot to address in my previous reply, though:

There is no default release plan. Just because a title is third party, it isn’t automatically multiplatform. That’s just wishful thinking.