Final Fantasy 7 Remake blocked from coming to Xbox

[MrDawn]

Well....crap. I was really wanting this game on my new Xbox Series X. Thoughts?

This new bit is not actually new, as it was originally published back in October when Microsoft issued their response to the UK’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA). Twitter user @KoreaXboxnews dug into the legal docs, where Microsoft said numerous big titles will never come to Xbox.

“Exclusivity strategies are not uncommon in the games industry and other market participants have access to their own content.” Microsoft opened with arguing that consoles have always had exclusivity. They claimed this has never harmed the console space and is in fact how they compete in the first place.

“Sony has also entered into arrangements with third-party publishers which require the ‘exclusion’ of Xbox from the set of platforms these publishers can distribute their games on.

“Some prominent examples of these agreements include Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix), Bloodborne (FromSoftware), the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI (Square Enix) and the recently announced Silent Hill 2 remastered (Bloober team).”

It appears they confirm that certain titles will never be coming to Xbox, but it’s unknown how Microsoft came to be aware of this, or if they being truthful in this statement.

Though one could believe them considering that select Final Fantasy titles have yet to be released on Xbox. This is despite the FFVII Remake having already made its way to other places such as PC, after it’s timed exclusivity.

Microsoft says Final Fantasy XVI, FFVII Remake, more will never come to Xbox because of Sony

As Microsoft continues to plead its case on the attempted Activision Blizzard acquisition, new bits of information regarding titles on either console come to light. This new bit is not actually new…

nichegamer.com

 

[Moonface]

Bloodborne is a little unfair to use because Sony outright published that game and therefore likely aided in funding it; it isn't like the other titles listed that are all published by a third-party that agreed to giving console exclusivity to Sony. Square Enix did timed exclusivity with Xbox for Rise of the Tomb Raider despite Tomb Raider 2013 selling the most copies on PS4, which shows they'll make deals that benefit themselves monetarily at the expense of the fans. The difference between RotTR and FF7R/FF16 is that the latter will make significantly more money and so Sony could fork over a lot more cash for much longer exclusivity compared to what Microsoft would have given SE for RotTR.

For the Silent Hill 2 Remake I can understand maybe Konami doesn't really have faith in it selling well, especially since they've practically abandoned console gaming in favour of gacha machines, and it may have taken money from Sony to get Konami willing to let the project move forward. SE on the other hand doesn't lack the funds nor has any reason to be wary about a franchise as big as Final Fantasy; they're just notorious for setting stupid sales targets that most of their games struggle to actually reach and they also tend to have a big miss for every big hit (see Forspoken for their most recent big miss example) which doesn't help matters. TR2013 for example sold incredibly well, but SE claimed it was a failure because it didn't push something like 10 million units, as if a Tomb Raider game would ever hope to hit such a number in its opening months of release.