
Whenever I hear the term “day one on Game Pass,” it always makes me wonder how much something will actually sell physically and if the company behind said game will even make a profit. While some will sing the praises of Game Pass, and while I have used it to dabble in games a bit (unless Xbox servers are down), I’m afraid I have to be one of those Negative Nancy types that has to take a realistic approach to this recent announcement (and Hollow Knight: Silksong too, gee, we haven’t see that one for a while haven’t we?).
Its pretty obvious Microsoft paid Atlus and SEGA to even have Persona 3 (the lame PSP version), Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal on the Xbox ecosystem at all. How much, we don’t know, but hey, you win some, you lose some. I’m sure Sony was ok with Xbox paying its way for some games, because its also obvious they are keeping an iron clad exclusivity deal on Persona for as long as they can. Though, that also comes with a set of problems. Guess what though?
This doesn’t mean Switch is ‘dead’.
If anyone sees this announcement as Switch being dead, you are an idiot. The Persona games are anime-inspired JRPGs, Silksong is an indie game that is also a sequel to an indie game that was a hit on Switch. The Xbox ecosystem in general is considered sales poison to both types of games, and day one on Game Pass is like a physical sales death sentence. Sure, the allure of 60 FPS and 4K resolution seems nice, but is the Series X crowd even going to give two shits and run out and buy it? No, its being given away for free. How much of a splash do you really think Octopath Traveler even made on Xbox One in the first place? One of the best Switch JRPGs is still talked about on the Switch ecosystem, but not Xbox. Gee, I wonder why? But hey, I will eat my lunch of the Persona games get a Nintendo Direct announcement. Too bad if Sony is involved, I highly doubt it. But hey, sometimes I like to be wrong.
The Persona thing is just complicated from the beginning, since Sony paid for it to stay exclusive in the first place. I’d rather Nintendo stay out of those bidding wars to be honest. Just having the best selling platform is good enough incentive. Switch isn’t really in the same “race” as Xbox and Playstation, I haven’t seen many comments like that. Then again I tend to just ignore negativity these days, it’s really a great time for gaming. A bunch of great new games were announced, and we’re focused on petty bullshit.
The main objective for Xbox here it to gain a foothold in Japan I think, something that seemed impossible a few years ago. Now they have a huge amount of Japanese games while Sony ignores its own market.
LikeLike