game news On PlayStation, a million players just play Call of Duty… and absolutely nothing else
The issue of console exclusives is a big debate. They are necessary to convince a player to choose one machine over another, but are also discouraged because they are sometimes limited to players who have the right console. Things change, but the reality is that these exclusive games are rarely the best-selling games on any platform.
The excluded are important but do not dominate
From God of War to Marvel’s Spider-Man through Halo, Forza Motorsport, The Legend of Zelda or even Mario Kart, Each manufacturer has its own studios develop the exclusivities. These exclusions aim to be temporary or permanent Offer calibrated experiences and be true loss leaders for this or that machine. Today it’s these two video game giants: Sony and Microsoft Think more and more in the “ecosystem”. Microsoft sees Xbox as a brand accessible on PC, console and mobile, while Sony mainly promotes its PS5 and a few months/years later brings some of its games to PC.
To put everything together, Players can find services in the subscription, which offers extensive catalogs games. Sony on its PlayStation Plus offerings, Xbox has its game pass. Nintendo is a small band unto itself, betting only on its hybrid console and maintaining a strong inertia on its exclusive licenses. However, the ongoing debates about the relevance of exclusivity partially obscure the reality of the market. Yes, games like God of War or Forza can be sold on consoles. Yes, the services offered can Help players choose. Yes, both Sony and Microsoft are buying studios to offer even more first-party games.
But the best-selling licenses in Europe and North America are usually not exclusive. In the old continent, FIFA dominates the market, followed by Call of Duty almost every year, while in North America, Call of Duty usually takes first place. As we explained to you in the Journal, that a vast majority of players bought their consoles for titles of this genre and scale, it wasn’t in vain. The fact that Animal Crossing: New Horizons topped the best-selling cultural products in France in 2020 and that we considered it an event wasn’t for nothing either. Today, A new example reinforces this trendand it comes to us indirectly from our colleagues at Kotaku.
A million players would have just played Call of Duty!
As you have seen, despite being released almost annually, Call of Duty holds a very high profile in the industry. It is not It’s not inconsiderable that Sony is concerned about Microsoft’s acquisition of ActivisionAnd it’s no coincidence that the license is one of the FTC’s vulnerabilities to thwart the takeover. For Sony, this acquisition could allow Microsoft to make Call of Duty exclusivity and create a large deficit.
Microsoft has on its side proposed agreements, before reiterating in court that the franchise will remain cross-platform. At the time of writing, the court has not yet rendered its verdict and Microsoft will certainly still have to defend itself on appeal to the UK regulator. In other words, everything Sony fears and Microsoft offers, it is hypothetical. But we get a little better sense of the drive of SIE President Jim Ryan as we read one of his emails, sent in 2021
according to him One million PlayStation players played Call of Duty exclusively in 2021. whether on PS4 or PS5, and 6 million of them spent 70% of their gaming time on the license by Activision, with an annual average of 100 hours. It gets a little weird when, like the budgets for The Last of Us Part II and Horizon: Forbidden West, This data was heavily censored and should not have been visible by the public.
This page contains affiliate links to some products that JV have selected for you. Any purchase you make by clicking one of these links will not cost you more, but the e-merchant will pay us a commission. The prices quoted in the article are the prices offered by the merchant sites at the time the article was published. These prices may vary at the sole discretion of the merchant site without JV being notified.
Learn more.