Here in Europe the game is €20 on the Xbox store compared to €50 on the PlayStation store. And there is play anywhere in addition, as a reminder that means that you can play on Xbox, PC, the cloud and you can keep your game anywhere.
Yet another exclusivity less for PlayStation which mainly has exclusive games from third-party publishers and ultimately temporary, it's normal that third-party publishers want to make a profit. It's like for Square Enix, they understood that it's not profitable to develop only for PlayStation. It's a safe bet that Death Stranding 2 will also be released on Xbox given the rapprochement between Kojima and Xbox (can't wait to see the next OD on Xbox).
PS exclusives made some sense when the games cost $40-50M over three years to make and Sony had 100M PS4 owners.
They make less sense when they take 5-7 years and $100-300M to make and have to make the money back from 60M consoles. To make money under those terms they need to sell 5-10M copies and fast. Not exactly doable for every game.
DEATH STRANDING, for all its acclaim sold only 2M copies before its PC release in 2021 and 5M before its console exclusivity expired. It made a profit but likely not a great one. And its sequel has already been reported to be day one everywhere when it arrives. That says it all.
By contrast, STARFIELD sold 3M in its first month alone despite being on GamePass and a year later it is closer to 10M than 5M. Plus its DLC and paid mods are bringing in extra money. Add in new GamePass subs and it is safe to assume that first party games can still be profitable if tied to other revenue streams. (Yes,live service still works. If good enough.) Oh, and STARFIELD plays fine on cloud so once MS brings owned games to cloud, it can sell to older consoles without GamePass if MS allows it. Expect sales for cloud to be an added revenue stream.
Contrary to what many pundits say, there will still be ecosystem exclusives but mostly first party games where "profit" isn't defined solely by launch window sales.
Third party games will be different. The days of third party PS2 games being Sony exclusive simply because they didn't need to port to make a healthy profit and could instead use the time and money to make other games? Those days are gone. No single console platform can support a AAA game anymore. Not at 60M installed base or even 100M if either gets there.
Not only do most current generation third party games need to be crossplatform to make money, many are belatedly cross-gen, needing to reach PS4 and XB1 as well as PC to maximize revenue, which in turn reduces the need to upgrade for those owners. (100M is not coming soon.)
On top of all that, there is the matter of time to market.
When a AAA game took 3 years to develop it was possible to make good money off a quick sequel or me2 game, even if not great (Dragon Age 2 took barely a year). These days it takes so long, a derivative ends up dated and non-competitive more often than not. (Cough*CONCORD*cough)
Of note, it's been 5 years since DEATH STRANDING released. To be competitive, the belated XBOX version is "on sale" at $18-20(or equivalent); a third of the PS price and a third of what it might have made on XBOX in 2019.
Third Party developers need to be very careful with exclusivity deals; we'll still see short timed exclusivity deals (3-6 months) but 5 year deals? Don't see those being too popular. The math no longer works out.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram