What you need to know
- Microsoft Gaming is a new entity within Microsoft that Bethesda, Activision-Blizzard, and Xbox all fall under.
- The division is larger than Windows itself as of last quarter, due to the Activision-Blizzard acquisition, and the continued growth of mega franchises like Fallout, Minecraft, and Overwatch.
- To that end, Microsoft's heavy investments in gaming have led it to become one of the largest, if not the largest, publisher on consoles competing with PlayStation itself.
No one expected this to happen ten years ago.
spotted before Derek Strickland at TweakTownMicrosoft's Xbox platform appears to have effectively taken over the storefront of its arch-console rival, due to its massive content investment strategy.
Microsoft bought Activision-Blizzard, in a deal completed last year. The deal was worth more than $70 billion once it closed, and gave Microsoft control of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and several other billion-dollar franchises. Microsoft now also owns Bethesda, which recently launched its hit TV show Fallout in partnership with Amazon. It owns Minecraft, which is still one of the biggest games in the world, if not the biggest. Microsoft also has the greatest game of all time, DOOM, which can be played on literally anything. Well, you get the point.
In any case, Microsoft focused its efforts on its main strengths, most notably software and spending money. To this end, it has effectively become one of, if not one of these countries the The biggest player on PlayStation, in an amazing transformation that no one would have expected ten years ago.
Microsoft currently has more games in the PlayStation Store's top 25 bestsellers than Sony does. The list includes 2 Fallout games and 2x first-party Microsoft games that were previously only available on Xbox consoles. https://t.co/wE2trMBy0yApril 18, 2024
In an analysis from Strickland, seven of the top 20 most purchased games on PlayStation so far are all Microsoft-owned franchises. Call of Duty sits at the top, as you might expect, followed by Overwatch 2, Sea of ​​Thieves, Fallout 4, Minecraft, Fallout 76, and Grounded.
Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 have a huge shock from the popular TV series that just came out Amazon Prime. Sea of ​​Thieves is launching on PlayStation for the first time after ditching its console exclusive restrictions. Overwatch 2 just got a new season, with some much-needed changes. Well, Call of Duty and Minecraft are just Call of Duty and Minecraft.
It represents a brave new world for Microsoft, where bloated costs, runaway inflation and fixed silicon prices have forced it to break with tradition in order to achieve further growth. None of this is to say it's going out of development with its own hardware brain, as Microsoft learned the hard way with Windows Phone what happens when you completely remove yourself from the platform equation. Indeed, Microsoft has repeatedly confirmed over the past year that it is working on new Xbox consoles to compete with PlayStation, which will now be supported, at least in part, by the sale of games on PlayStation's own store.
The gaming landscape is changing
When Valve brought the Steam Deck to the world, it was perhaps ironic that it came with both “exclusive” titles from Xbox and PlayStation. The “console exclusive” Sea of ​​Thieves was running side by side against the “console exclusive” God of War game on the Steam Deck, making the entire console war redundant in some ways. In fact, Microsoft has been teasing its intention to open up Xbox itself to similar policies, allowing competing stores to enter the Xbox platform in the same way that the Steam Deck can run Battle.net and the Genshin Impact Launcher if you're willing to do a few things. Tweaking.
Increasingly, as margins in console gaming shrink due to mobile and PC gaming, owners of closed platforms are rethinking their approaches — particularly in light of the unfavorable regulatory landscape across the US and EU, as the two regions compete with Apple to open up its platform. In front of competitors. Microsoft seems to be ahead of the curve here in some ways. Will we finally see PlayStation games running on Xbox console hardware via Steam one day? Probably not, but honestly, crazier things are happening in games now.
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