If you think about it. Any deal MS makes has to account for the missing access to sony's user base. So if MS is at 60 and Sony at a 120m the contract has to be built in such a way that the dev gets paid on those lost sales. its a lot easier to be the company with the 120m install base trying to get a game exclusive.
More than missing access. You have to make up missing access in perpetuity which you cannot afford if people don’t switch over.
See: how mixer eventually died.
If everyone just stops for a moment and look at things objectively like a board game. If it’s true that COD has this type of impact and 70B is the only way to get it. The total investment to begin to catch up with Sony is the total sum of what MS has invested so far plus 70B, and even then COD still has to be on Sonys platform.
That is what it takes to succeed here right now.
Sony only needs to play it safe from here on out; no reason to shake the boat, just control content and lock users in. The only thing that can usurp their position is cloud.
And cloud requires content, and the path of least resistance to cloud content is to own. And Sony is definitely going to try to stop MS from owning anymore major content to stop cloud from moving forward. And today they ensure all marketing agreements with Sony that these games can’t be on gamepass and therefore xcloud.
I’m not going to say whose right or wrong, but Sony is actively making moves to ensure cloud does not happen or slow it down as much as possible, while simultaneously having a side gig in it in case they are outmaneuvered.
and MS desperately wants to compete in cloud because the market is so much bigger than consoles and there are other benefits for MS in cloud streaming technologies.
And games won’t come to cloud without heavy investment or ownership not to mention the support model etc.
the only model that works right now is games pass to xcloud because it’s hands off for now.
That’s how I see the landscape. I would be interested to see how MS and Sony continue to make moves here, but I see new cloud entrants struggling here until they can productionalize a model that works for publishers while having enough investment to support a large geographical space of market to support.