game news Final Fantasy 16: If You Doubt, This New Document Confirms Sony Paid Not To Release The Game On Xbox
As we know, the giants of the video game industry sometimes enter into exclusive agreements with studios to fend off competition and enrich their catalogue. For once, new evidence shows Sony signed such agreements with Square Enix to prevent Final Fantasy XVI from releasing on Xbox.
Pay for exclusivity
This is a common approach in the video game world, but players are not necessarily aware of it. Sometimes it happens that the big manufacturers like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo sign deals with studios and publishers to get permanent or temporary exclusivity for their games.
The industry has operated this way for many years, but the debate was recently reignited with Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. At the heart of this acquisition was the possibility of Call of Duty becoming exclusive to Xbox, which greatly worried Sony Interactive Entertainment officials, as well as some gamers.
However, those fears have calmed somewhat since Microsoft officially announced that it has signed a deal with Sony. Agreement with which the Redmond-based company undertakes to publish Call of Duty games on Playstation for at least another ten years (if the acquisition is effective because it has not yet been signed).
The temporary FF16 exclusive offer
During the very, very long Microsoft/Activision Blizzard soap opera, much of the video game community was offended by Sony’s statements and its attempts to prevent the acquisition. Fearing that Call of Duty would disappear from their catalog, they simultaneously signed numerous agreements to gain exclusivity on certain games against their direct competitors. “Business is business”, some will say, and that’s exactly what we understand with these new documents, which explain that the Japanese company has once again paid to receive the exclusivity of a particularly anticipated game: Final Fantasy XVI
The document, a report on Microsoft’s case at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, specifically states: “The reason Final Fantasy XVI is exclusive to Playstation is because Sony paid for Xbox exclusion“.
The document goes even further, explaining that Sony has taken the same approach to ZeniMax games. death loop etc Ghostwire Tokyo, which would have prompted Microsoft to buy ZeniMax to avoid such a situation in the future. So far, no Xbox version of Final Fantasy XVI has been mentioned. While the game is slated for PC, Xbox-only gamers won’t be able to get their hands on it until much later. Or they might even be forced to ignore it.
