Sony has been securing more and more exclusivity deals with third party game developers. Destiny 2, Call of Duty: WW2, and others all have some sort of bonus for players on PS4 that they won’t see on Xbox One, at least for a while. According to Xbox head Phil Spencer that’s not too surprising, or concerning.
When asked whether he was concerned about all of these marketing deals that gave PS4 exclusive content or early access to content Spencer responded, “It’s all just business. We have a long term vision for Xbox and we are building towards that. Marketing deals are great but not the strategy.”
So, what is the strategy for Xbox? Apparently it’s to have the very best console versions of all of these games. As Spencer said in another tweet, he expects games on Xbox Scorpio will be the best out there on console. With Project Scorpio launching as the most powerful console of all time, the improvements could be substantial.
However, could these graphical and performance enhancements be enough to pull away those interested in the exclusive and early content? It’s an interesting discussion to have, and we’ll likely be having it for some time. If players want the very best version of these games, many times they’ll have to get it on PC. That can be expensive though, and many gamers simply prefer the simplicity of consoles.
For them Xbox Scorpio is the best way to play these games, but they will miss out on a lot of special content due to these marketing deals that Sony is so interested in securing. Which strategy will win the day? We’ll have to wait to find out, but Microsoft is going all in on their current focus. If it backfires it could go very poorly for them and the launch of Xbox Scorpio.
