The annoucement that Forza Horizon 6 will be released on Xbox before PS5 is criticised by a reader, who thinks Microsoft is getting its multiformat policy wrong.
It’s not been an easy few years being an Xbox fan, but I think a lot of us are nearing the acceptance phase of dealing with the death of Xbox as a console format. It lives on as a third party publisher, and they even plan on putting out new hardware, like these new Asus portables, but we all know that the dream of an Xbox console being equal to or more popular than PlayStation is over. Well, fans realise that, I don’t know about Microsoft.
As much as I’ve loved my Xbox consoles through the years it’s been a lot harder to like the people in charge of it, all of which have come across as insincere or incompetent, or usually both. It’s never been much different at Sony, but the difference is they’ve never tried to be your cool gamer uncle. They’ve just been dull businessmen that make it clear they don’t actually want to talk to the public. To the point where I don’t think the current ones ever have.
Sony has almost certainly lied to fans, but I can’t remember any specific examples, whereas almost everything Phil Spencer and the rest say is immediately undone by the next thing out of their mouth. That’s most obvious in the awkward way they’ve introduced the concept of going third party, which absolutely definitely wasn’t happening right up until the moment where it was the future of the business.
I don’t think anyone expects the truth, and nothing but, from a business exec but the problem with how they’ve handled the multiformat angle is that they’ve been so weird about it you can’t tell if they’re embarrassed, confused, or angry.
I’m not going to try and second guess them but just this week we’ve had so many mixed messages it just hammers home how badly they’re handling all this. The first was the showcase for Hideo Kojima’s OD, where he once again explained almost nothing but did imply that the game was still an Xbox exclusive. Which makes no sense because a Hideo Kojima horror game is never going to sell enough to make its money back if it’s only on Xbox (and PC).
It might be an exclusive because it needs the Microsoft cloud to work but he never said that and so everything is still just as confused as always.
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I can understand that getting sense out of Kojima is maybe not the easiest thing but the other blunder this week was the annoucement of Forza Horizon 6, where Microsoft said that it would be on PlayStation 5 but only after Xbox. But why?
It would clearly sell much more on Xbox and if they’re trying to set themselves up as a multiformat publisher why do they keep treating other formats like second best? Are they doing it to boost Xbox console sales? How much of a boost are they expecting, from people who, six years into a generation, are suddenly going to run out and buy an Xbox to play Forza Horizon 6 a few months early.
If it’s some kind of workflow thing, where the PlayStation 5 version just isn’t ready at the same time then why not just wait? You’re not going to lose any sales overall, but you will gain them because PlayStation owners won’t be made to feel like second class citizens.
It seems such basic business advice, but Microsoft keep making these mistakes and they keep acting like they don’t know what they’re doing and are just making everything up as they go along. Probably they are but they could at least get better at pretending there’s a plan.
Just like Sony needs to bite the bullet and release games day one on PC, Microsoft needs to go all in on being a multiformat publisher or just admit they’ve failed and sell their business to Amazon or something. Xbox is dead as a console maker, but they could still thrive as a third party publisher, if only they got their act together.
By reader Hensteeth
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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