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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

Look I love Game Pass as much as anyone but it's a true act of cuntery for Microsoft to do things as heinous as making Elder Scrolls 6 a Microsoft platform exclusive and then cry foul when Sony does the same. "Cries out as he strikes you" indeed.

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The article suggests that Microsoft is attempting to defend against a lawsuit by Sony attempting to block an acquisition here, in which Sony is suggesting it would be anticompetitive because it would make a popular franchise platform-exclusive. This doesn't look to me like Microsoft is "crying foul" at all - instead, they're "crying fair", arguing that they should be allowed to do it because Sony is doing something similar.

Isn’t it the other way around? Sony pushes hard for platform exclusivity and deals that work against Xbox and now Gamepass. It’s only natural that Microsoft will want to compete and get leverage.

Realistically, didn't most of this start when MS paid massive amounts for time exclusive DLC in the 360 era for some of the biggest games like Skyrim[0] or COD (5 years in a row)[1], or flat out exclusive content in GTA IV[2]? To me this seems like MS is crying that Sony stole their playbook and is doing it better. Granted either of them doing it is bad for consumers in general.

[0]: https://www.eurogamer.net/skyrim-dlc-timed-xbox-360-exclusiv...

[1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/after-five-years-of-xbox-exclusivi...

[2]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/gta-iv-downloadable-c...

No, Sony has always had exclusive agreements with certain studios properties (and then purchased those studios later on) going back to the late 90s, before Microsoft ever entered the console market.

This sort of behaviour was well established in the industry.

Everyone has been doing this since forever. Halo was originally supposed to be released on MacOS (!!); then Microsoft bought up Bungie and made it an Xbox exclusive. Sony paid Call of Duty / Activision millions to get exclusive content (like maps, cosmetics, marketing, etc) on PlayStation; before Microsoft bought up Activision. Epic is infamous for their massive spend to gain exclusive distribution of PC games; in only one example, it was revealed that they paid ~$10M USD for one year of exclusive distribution of Control (the game's budget was only ~$36M USD, if that's any indication of how insane these deals are, but oftentimes they're structured in-part as a pre-payment of sales, not just a big free check).

All of this is shitty, but its like two pigs arguing who is more covered in mud.

Halo was released on Mac OS X though. I have the game on dvd.

Right yeah, that's my mistake; it was showcased for release on both OSX and Windows at a MacWorld conference in the late 90s; Microsoft purchased Bungie in like 2000, and after that acquisition they added on an Xbox release.

2 years later though.

Bungie used to make games for macOS. The predecessor Marathon Trilogy was originally released on macOS (and only Marathon 2 was ported to Windows). Halo was supposed to be originally released on macOS too, and then Microsoft bought the studio and turned it into an Xbox game, leaving all of the existing macOS userbase out in the cold.

Their purchase of Bungie also screwed up the IP rights to Oni. Wikipedia says that when Microsoft acquired Bungie, negotiations with Take-Two Interactive (which owned a share of Bungie) left Take-Two with the rights to Oni, and the sequel was eventually canceled. I don't have a citation on this but from what I understand, nobody is willing to touch Oni again (not even for an HD remake) because something about the IP rights is so messy that nobody wants to (or maybe nobody is even able to) untangle it. Which really sucks because it was a great game.

Halo was an xbox exclusive for ages. I mean, not even available on Windows. They eventually released it for other platforms but it was years after and it felt dated and boring already.

I think Microsoft is claiming that Sony is paying for third parties not to go to Game pass, while Microsoft bought Bethesda, so now it will be first party.

The complaint is against paying 3rd parties though, not owning your own first party and doing it. I guess it would be like if Apple paid Uber, Whatsapp etc to only make their apps for the AppStore and not Android. I don't know if that's a good argument though because music streamers do it all the time.

Do you believe that Apple does not participate in this sort of behavior? Because they do.

That's a bold claim. Not that I doubt you, but do you have references to Apple doing this sort of thing?

Apple explicitly does this with Apple Arcade, Apple TV, has done so with podcasts and albums in its music store.

I've personally been involved in one business discussion involving folks from Apple about platform exclusivity for an app.

I remember a small studio/individual developer who had their iOS update stuck in review hell after they publicized an Android port.

The app had been previously featured in the app store, and had no feature changes when the review process screetcyed to a halt. I'm hoping someone on HN remembers the details, but I'll try to Google and update this comment if I find the article. In the mean time, take it wirh a pinch of salt as I may be misremembering.

As a big PlayStation fanboy who pretty much hates Microsoft… Sony aren’t saints either. The stuff Microsoft attempted with the Xbox One being online only, Kinect only was really bad though

It is "exclusive" to Xbox and PC.

PC/Windows? or PC/Linux?

Unless they only distribute it on the Microsoft store does it matter? I play a lot of Windows "exclusives" on my Linux desktop.

Should work just fine on Proton, previous-gen Creation Engine games worked fine with Wine and DXVK. A few games even have Linux-exclusive patches to prevent crashing on alt-tab, as well as a few performance improvements under the hood.

It really depends on much more locked down the engine will become with ES6. Fallout 4 was notoriously hard to mod for and the modding community suffered for it.

Of course modding difficulty doesn't translate directly to how well Proton will run it, but I fear it will make it difficult for it to be optimized.

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