Until recently, Sony has done a good job of keeping quiet about Microsoft gobbling up some of the biggest third-party publishers in the industry, but it finally seems like Sony is starting to feel the pressure. They haven’t really admitted publicly that they feel the weight of Microsoft buying up companies like Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard, but in an official response to the Brazilian regulator (via VGC), Sony admitted that the importance of Call of Duty “is indescribable”, effectively saying the game is capable of single-handedly swinging the console war. Here’s the main point:
“Call of Duty is so popular that it influences users’ console choice, and the community of loyal users is so entrenched that even if a competitor had the budget to develop a similar product, they couldn’t match it. “
Now, Sony is not wrong. Call of Duty is one of the largest game franchises in the world. Just a few months ago, it reached 420 million historic sales, making it the third best-selling game series of all time. His latest outing, Modern Warfare (2019), has recently surpassed 30 million sales and is on track to become the most popular Call of Duty entry to date.
Call of Duty is in fact such an a commercial franchise that is the kind of game that more casual gamers buy without even thinking about it. Go to the house of someone who doesn’t play that many games, and they probably have Call of Duty, some triple-A exclusives for that console, possibly an Assassin’s Creed or two, and [EA Sports game of choice] on the shelf. It’s the kind of game that many gamers who may not have the time to find their ‘dream online shooter’ will automatically buy – reviews and opinions are damned. I know because I used to do this myself, standing in line at the local grocery store to get heavily discounted versions of Modern Warfare 1-3 on launch day on the PS3. I never even counted CoD among my favorite games – it was just a standard game to get, a baseline for a 20-year-old console owner like me.
Of course, Call of Duty also has a very dedicated hardcore community that really loves these games, but it also relies on a more casual gaming audience – an audience that doesn’t necessarily have to go through the inconvenience of getting it. to follow to another game console should platform exclusivity take effect.
However, the next Elder Scrolls is a very different story.
The Elder Scrolls series may not be as prolific as Call of Duty, but that’s part of what gives it its prestige and mystique. The frequency with which Call of Duty games are released means that their annual or semi-annual releases are almost becoming background noise – as sure as there will be an annual FIFA release, so is an almost annual CoD release. The next Elder Scrolls, meanwhile, will be out a good 13-15 years after its predecessor, and part of the reason for that is because the 11-year-old Skyrim has brought continued commercial success to Bethesda through its many ports, re-releases, and the modding community. .
The appeal of RPGs has grown exponentially since Skyrim in 2011 (thanks in large part to the game itself). Just look at the incredible popularity of The Witcher 3, or Elden Ring, which I can confirm from many a baffled Facebook post not the game many expected from an open-world RPG. Yes, Elden Ring is great in many ways (even if Cuphead is better in some of them), but there’s no doubt that some of its success can be attributed to a strong marketing campaign, George RR Martin, and the modern allure of the epic fantasy RPG, rather than the nature of the game itself, which was a brutal reality check for many players naive to the FromSoft way.
With all that in mind, the launch of The Elder Scrolls 6 is arguably one of the biggest events in gaming history, and it’s one that Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has already suggested PlayStation-only owners won’t be a part of. from. I can imagine Sony’s console getting it a few years later, but by then the console war could have turned in Microsoft’s favor. The cultural capital of Elder Scrolls 6’s exclusivity will be unparalleled, especially as the series is known for being multiplatform (although technically only the last two entries, Oblivion and Skyrim, were).
As a commercial benefit, Call of Duty will undoubtedly be valuable to Microsoft, but the company itself has already effectively recognized that it’s better to keep the series multiplatform than limiting it to Xbox. In February 2022, Microsoft president Brad Smith said that Call of Duty . “We have promised Sony that we will make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and in the future, so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love,” said Smith. That’s by no means a “forever” promise, but also suggests that Call of Duty may be more lucrative for Microsoft as a multiplatform game rather than the exclusive “prestige” that The Elder Scrolls 6 allows.
If Sony doesn’t seem as alarmed by the prospect of Elder Scrolls 6 exclusivity as it does Call of Duty, it might be because the game is still a while away. The good thing about this for Sony is that it can brace itself for the seismic impact of an Xbox-only Elder Scrolls 6 by working on its own great exclusive output over the next few years and acquiring its own stable of third-party publishers. The bad news is that it’s hard to see what could fill the Elder Scrolls-shaped (or more specifically, High Rock and Hammerfell-shaped) hole in the future Playstation roster.
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