You can still buy games for 60.00 if for some reason you wanted to. Some games have left Game Pass but that's not the norm and they don't leave after a month. You'd have to pay $9.99 instead of FREE. Anyone complaining about not being able to finish bucketloads of AAA titles for FREE in a month is a little out of touch when you could have 6 months for the price of a single game or if you budget 2 games a year, you have paid for Game Pass an entire year non stop but even better is if you aren't playing, there's no contract, easy cancel, easy start back up. So you could pay for those 2 games a year or you might only game half the year buy still play multiple AAA titles for less than you would for a single game.
As with music, as with movies/tv, games are now subscription or at minimum digital purchases. No one except Aslanna wants a boxed game like an old CD or cassette to stick on a shelf. I own many games on steam and some on other platforms. I dont' care one bit that a box isn't wasting space somewhere in my home, and how often do you return to games anyway to replay them? Probably less often than rewatching favorite movies and all of those are on my hard drives anyway.
Sony plays the same game as Microsoft with exclusives and buying companies to add to their exclusives, they just don't have the bank Microsoft does so their exclusive tactics are going to backfire on them as they'll be out "exclusived" at some point soon.
Most of us are getting up in age so 1 exclusive a year from Sony might be all you need as long as you like one of like three franchises they have.
Hardware matters less and less with quality streaming options coming online.
I don't necessarily want to see Sony squashed but they are fighting a losing battle vs Microsoft that earned zero revenue from gaming and still raked in 46 billion in revenue last quarter. 68 billion for Activision is a pure cash buy and it will take them about 4.5 months to make that money back as a company even if they gained zero out of the deal. I doubt that's going to be the case with the 400 million worldwide users of Blizzard's games.
I've always hated the smugness of Sony. Hated their controller, removing haptic feedback from their controller claiming their players didnt want it when it was really because they didnt want to pay the royalties and had to add it back anyway, the way they did everything in their power to stop cross play and still make it a pain in the ass, were morons for years on changing user names etc with crappy online services. Microsoft will probably keep CoD multiplatform because it benefits them to do so but Sony can go fuck themselves when it comes to complaining about exclusives. As always, Microsoft knows the money is in software/services not hardware, that's how they've made their money...Windows, the cloud services, game pass, Office 360, etc etc.
Microsoft is a juggernaut, this is their 2021 4th Quarter report:
· Revenue was $46.2 billion and increased 21%
· Operating income was $19.1 billion and increased 42%
· Net income was $16.5 billion and increased 47%
· Diluted earnings per share was $2.17 and increased 49%
Microsoft returned $10.4 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, an increase of 16% compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020.
They are crushing it and they still lost money in Xbox Content/Services (down 4%). Microsoft is way outspending Sony in an area that still doesn't make them money but they can do it. If Japanese companies could be bought, Sony's market cap would have been a joke a few years back to buy them. Their market cap is 140 billion now. That's about how much cash Microsoft had on hand prior to the activision purchase. 68 billion is half of Sony's entire Marketcap while it's only half of the cash reserves of Microsoft's multi trillion dollar cap.
Sony is hanging onto Spider-Man for dear life because that's what makes them money in movies and games. They were extremely lucky to get a few of the Marvel Characters before Disney bought Marvel...and even then, Spider-Man movies BOMBED until they made a deal with Disney/Marvel to get help making decent movies in which Disney gets part of the profits. Sony is hanging on to very few assets. Microsoft's way of thinking is great for anyone that's not a Sony fanboy.
Sony has their phone camera image sensor business to keep them afloat. Microsoft still seems to be taking its time with VR so maybe Sony can get an edge with the PSVR2. Meanwhile, Sony pays Microsoft for its cloud services while this all plays out. Microsoft makes money one way or the other.