Re: So
Microsoft doesn't have to do any of this to fuck Sony.
None of this makes any sense and none of that screws over Sony. If Microsoft does any of that, Sony won't care...because people will still buy the game...and people will still buy Playstation consoles.
It alarms me that some people think that Microsoft might go after the consumer to fuck Sony...that would be a massive shooting in the foot moment...especially given that there are plenty of other ways to fuck Sony without screwing the consumer.
If we think of this from a business perspective...Microsoft will have much bigger margins than Sony on Call of Duty, so either, Sony will have to suck up the cost and make next to no money on Call of Duty, or Call of Duty will end up being more expensive on a Sony console. If Sony decides it doesn't want to lose the margin, it will lose customers to XBox...if Sony decides to absorb the cost and lose margin, then Sony will lose revenue. Either way, Sony gets kicked in the balls, the consumers are no worse off (because they can still choose to play it on a Playstation) and Microsoft wins.
This move by Microsoft isn't about "fucking the gamer", it's about shifting revenue out of Sony's pocket into theirs whilst keeping the status quo for gamers...
Microsoft doesn't give a shit where the game is available, they just care about where the margins are.
It's the same with pretty much any product. If you buy straight from the factory, it's almost always cheaper than going through a middleman. In the case of Call of Duty, Microsoft has bought the factory...so they are both the factory and the middleman...which means it will be very difficult for Sony to compete on price unless they take a shot to the nuts and hope that other games...namely, platform exclusives...will make up for the lost revenue...and treat titles like Call of Duty like loss leaders.
I am not, and have never been (since the SNES) a console gamer...so none of this matters to me at all...as a PC Gamer, I look at the "console wars" and wonder what the fuck people are on about...if you bought both consoles, it would still cost less than a decent gaming PC...this is probably why neither side gives a shit, because a large proportion of the customer base probably has both consoles anyway.
I think if Microsoft is going to do anything customer facing that could fuck Sony, it will be dropping long term support for older platforms late into a consoles lifecycle.
Nothing has fucked game launches in recent years harder than trying to release a game that still works on last gen (notably PS4). It's one of the things that fucked Cyberpunk 2077 and it's a problem that keeps on happening.
I'll bet there are fucking bucket loads of devs out there that would give their left bollock to not have to produce games that are supposed to be next gen, but somehow still work on last gen. It's the bean counters that push that narrative. Which is a negative feedback loop...because if people see that you can back port a game to the previous gen, why would they upgrade early? They won't, which keeps the old gen in play much longer than it otherwise would be, creating demand for something that shouldn't exist...which shows up on a pie chart in a board room as "customer demand", where artificially exists because some bean counter wanted an extra 10%. Ironically, that extra 10% they make is just taken from another one of their own pockets...because people hold off upgrading, which means less demand when a new launch occurs, which means you have to produce less consoles, which means the price is higher, which drops demand because people hold on to their older consoles for longer. It's so dumb it's migraine inducing.
Backwards compatibility is fucking weird to me...yes, games being forward compatible makes sense...what I bought for a PS4 should work on a PS5 (if feasible and the hardware allows it), but why the fuck should anyone expect something that works on a PS5 to work on a PS4? I never expected Super Mario World to be released on the NES back in the 90s. Nor would I have wanted it to...it would have been shit because a NES is nowhere near as capable as a SNES.
What we need in the console space is for consoles to converge around a standardised open API (like Vulkan) and have them compete solely on hardware capability alone rather than game compatibility and exclusivity. At the moment, watching console fanboys fight each other, from a PC Gamer standpoint, is like watching two one legged fuckwits going at it in an arse kicking contest. The difference between the consoles is marginal and arbitrary...and the worst thing, the major difference between them is the exclusive titles...there is no technical reason an exclusive title on a Playstation couldn't run on an XBox other than Sony decided it can't and likewise with XBox...and people arguing over which is better because of exclusives is inane. Doesn't matter which side of the fight you're on, you're getting fucked either way.