It’s not up to us but to Sony and Phil to duke out": Helldivers 2 dev says Xbox release is possible, but PlayStation has to play nice first

[Windows Central]

In a new statement, a Helldivers 2 community manager has said an Xbox release could come, but it will depend on Sony and Microsoft working something out.

It’s not up to us but to Sony and Phil to duke out": Helldivers 2 dev says Xbox release is possible, but PlayStation has to play nice first : Read more

 

[Ron-F]

Which studio wouldn't like to reach a few dozen millions extra players? The problem is convincing Sony this is a good proposition.

 

[fjtorres5591]

Considering Sony is still paying studios not to release on XBOX (or trying, in some cases) the likelihood of that is a hard NO.

Wouldn't want the Sony Japan guys noticing how much money they are missing out on. Might give them ideas...

 

[Lurking_Lurker_Lurks]

Sony is stuck in another decade and I don't think even gamers realize how much its choking an already stagnant console market.

 

[fjtorres5591]

Sony is stuck in another decade and I don't think even gamers realize how much its choking an already stagnant console market.

They are certainly leaving significant, and necessary, money on the table.

It reminds me of the corporate publishers ebook policies, over-pricing high profit margin ebooks to minimize,ebook growth to protect the stagnant low margin dead tree pulp market. (Thereby ceding a big chunk of the market to digital first and digital-only publishers.) Or, back in the 90's, the encyclopedia publishers rejecting CD-ROM editions to protect their door to door, which pushed MS to create Encarta which then starved the publishers out of the market. (And was in turn starved by Wikipedia. But unlike the print publishers, MS saw the handwriting on the wall and divested ENCARTA before it hurt the bottom line.)

Sony (and to a lesser extent Nintendo) are sacrificing high margin software sales in order to protect the low margin hardware gross numbers. As recently reported, Sony's net margins on PlayStation have been steadily declining despite their "domination" on hardware sales despite the reality that the raw numbers are hollow because what matters is attach rate, which for PlayStation has been lower than both XBOX and Nintendo since the PS3 era. Delaying PC ports a year or more brings in some needed money but only a fraction of what they could be getting releasing with maximum hype day and date.

Sooner or later they will have to admit MS has been right all along and move to day and date on PC and multiplat on live service. But that might come too late. They need day and date today and that isn't happening. If the next Xbox really is PC compatible they'll be forced to choose between maximizing sales and exclusivity. And either way they lose.