I'm tempering my reaction because if there's any shred of truth to all the rumors floating around, it might be a part of a larger plan going forward. At the most extreme, putting more of their titles on other platforms would make more sense to me if their still planning for more sizable acquisitions ahead. Fingers crossed if that's the case that they're eyeing Embracer's portfolio because if they land that, I think the Game Pass release rhythm will be phenomenal. As someone who loves Game Pass, making that better with more day one games is welcome, as long as the moves they make lead toward further growth.
I also wonder whether initial rumors are to put some games on other systems might be right, and the rumor mill went crazy with it. I also think there's some conflating of what something might mean. Mainly one going around the Call of Dury won't be on Game Pass day one, which snowballed to Xbox was abandoning day one. Frankly, we know Sony's deal with ABK still has one more game left, and Sony's deals no doubt have prohibitions against being on rival subscription services for up to one year after their release, plus 4 months while they wait out a subscription service priority negotiation window at the end (seen in the RE8 marketing contract). This being the case, we won't see any day one COD release until 2027. Whether the older stuff arrives on Game Pass likely depends on terms of whether their deal extends to games in the franchise arriving on rival platform subscription services. The terms of such a deal will be kept under NDA and MS will be unable to comment on what content will arrive and when. But I highly doubt MS will abandon day one on Game Pass unless there's extenuating circumstances.
Some people are speculating MS is doing this to prepare for pending regulatory agencies still trying to thwart their ABK acquisition. I actually think that's a done deal and sure they'll have to respond to FTC fighting tooth and nail to stop it, but in the end the FTC's got nothing, that was clear during their failed attempt to block the acquisition in court, that they've got nothing there. Again, I think this is about preparing for future acquisitions, and having a larger multiplatform presence will quell the worries of regulators hopefully. The idea being to bring more games to Game Pass, because it's the service that's central.
And I in no way believe doing this will be a threat to their consoles, not unless every Xbox fanboy prematurely abandons the platform before we even know what's going on, which seems to be the goal of those sensationalizing this. On contrary, what we see most from Xbox haters is to shit on every game they release that's left off other platforms. Well, people paying to play these on other consoles not only bolsters MS's ability to deliver more content, people will start reaching a point they'll question whether buying all these games on the other platforms is worth paying all that extra money, and start to question whether it might not be better to get an Xbox and Game Pass, or subscribe to Game Pass on PC.
Another thing to speculate is why put all the effort bringing everything else to other consoles, and potentially one aspect is MS will be putting Game Pass on other consoles. That'd be pretty huge if true. And I don't think MS's Game Pass growth sits at simply gaining new subscribers, no doubt that growth is designed to coincide with growth of more available content. I see future acquisitions in the works. Interesting to note there MS started the ABK acquisition process with $100B cash on hand and bolstered it to $143B before signing the deal, they're back up to $81B there and I expect them to keep raising that while. They'd easily be able to afford Embracer's publisher/developer catalog in short time, they even can right now, but I'd imagine they'd wanna bolster their security buffer, or look into financing options. But that will take time, regulatory hurdles and all.
And I actually think MS plans to release their next console to coincide with one more major acquisition completing, and the end of the COD deal ABK had with Sony. End of 2027 looks to be ideal there. I'm actually excited by all this news, even if everyone seems to be losing their shit over it. But that's me shooting for the moon in hope. But also, I don't think they just finished inking a $68.7B deal to throw in the towel. That's nonsense.
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