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Comment by pepemon | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what is wrong here, taking into account that it's usual for Sony to make titles produced by their subsidiaries as exclusives for PS only (yes, e.g. God of War was released on PC too, but that was almost 4 years after the initial launch as PS4 exclusive). At least Microsoft releases games on Windows simultaneously with Xbox launch, and these Windows releases could run on Linux too (thank you Valve & Proton). Not possible with Sony stuff.

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Wow. Microsoft releases games for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Xbox? And thanks to tremendous efforts by third parties they work on other platforms? Amazing!

I doubt you or most people would consider Breath of the Wild not to be Nintendo exclusive despite it being on TWO different Nintendo platforms and playable on other platforms thanks to third parties. Microsoft plays the exclusive game too no matter how much people like to pretend that they don't control Windows and benefit from keeping it the dominate PC gaming OS.

You can't run yuzu or Cemu on PS even if you wanted too. The Sony's platform is tremendously locked. Also I mentioned Proton in my original post, you get Linux compability for the "Microsoft exclusive" game basically for free.

With Yuzu and Cemu you get Linux and Windows compatibility for the "Nintendo exclusive" game for free.

I can't run Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 either regardless if I wanted to.

You can't run Breath of the Wild too.

> Also I mentioned Proton in my original post, you get Linux compability for the "Microsoft exclusive" game basically for free.

You got my hopes up:/ I just looked and I don't see a single COD game showing proton/steamdeck support on steam. Maybe there's workarounds for some of the old ones, but I don't think any recent ones with working anti cheat have anything but Windows support.

The old ones work pretty okay. I played through WWII's campaign on my Steam Deck and a bit of multiplayer too. Black Ops III as well although my campaign save broke itself multiple times so I gave up. The Modern Warfare reboot and up ones seem to not work though. I think they also have more extensive anti-cheat too that might not be doable on Linux.

The issue is that this isn't Microsoft bootstrapping a new division that produces games exclusive for their platforms. This is a problem of Microsoft trying to buy one of the larger existing game publishers with some very popular titles and likely make many of them Microsoft platform exclusive.

That's why I additionally pointed about Windows releases. With Microsoft exclusive, you can play the title on Xbox, Windows PC, Linux PC, Steam Deck. With Sony, it's PS only.

Sony's actually made an effort to get many newer games ported to PC, and Steam Deck verified.

What kind of "newer"? I only consider Spider-Man: Miles Morales as "new enough" and it was still released over 2 years ago. When God of War: Ragnarok will be available on PC? You get Xbox titles on PC on the same day of their console release.

Returnal which came out April 2021 and the PC version just released, technically Destiny 2: Lightfall (if that counts) was day-and-date.

Sony still has an incentive to sell hardware and keep games exclusive though. Unlike Microsoft, they don't control Windows and don't have an incentive to keep Windows the gaming OS of choice. Microsoft is also trying to push their own Xbox Game Pass and get users gradually away from Steam.

When Sony buys company to make exclusives - good. When Microsoft - bad

Can you share an example of Sony buying a company at the scale of Activision and turning it exclusive?

The only recent significant studio acquisitions I can think of already had a long history of making PS exclusives (e.g., Insomniac).

Because they don't have the kind of money to do that.

But they never cared about windows and Xbox players when the game stakes were low enough for them to play the exclusive game.

The fact that Sony, who Microsoft insists is absolutely obliterating them in the gaming space, doesn't have the money to enact these sorts of massive mega-mergers seems telling that this kind of a deal is not just a natural part of the market. Rather, Microsoft is just leverating their wealth from their other businesses to armstrong the market.

And why is this any different other than from some naive puritanical point of view?

Developing new versions and new games will take as much money and probably more than the initial versions.

Because it’s anticompetitive and MS should have not been allowed to purchase such a company.

And what sony does is different? Just because they pay less at an early stage?

I was so sure that rise of PC ownership would spell the end of consoles. I still can't believe console gaming grew and became even more entrenched the last 10 years. It would be like if blockbuster grew and became more popular with the rise of netflix.

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