We’ve reached a point now where exclusivity deals are so transparently anti-consumer that Xbox boss Phil Spencer isn’t even trying to hide it any more. While there are still some in the gaming community who fervently and foolishly keep waving their flags of support for their favorite hardware manufacturer, his latest comment regarding Xbox’s recent purchasing of Rise of the Tomb Raider as a “timed exclusive” should have even Microsoft’s most ardent of supporters putting their Xbox banners back in their closet.
Allow me to repeat Spencer’s quote, taken from an interview with Eurogamer, verbatim:
“Do I wish I had an owned IP [intellectual property] first-party action adventure game? Absolutely. But I don’t right now. This is one that fits well.”
If that wasn’t damning enough, here’s another quote from said interview:
“I’m a big fan of Uncharted and I wish we had an action adventure game of that ilk. We’ve started some, and we’ve looked at them. But we don’t have one today of that quality. This is an opportunity.”
When Spencer calls the acquisition of Rise of the Tomb Raider a “timed exclusive” (meaning it’ll be coming “exclusively” to the Xbox One and Xbox 360 until Microsoft and publisher Square-Enix’s contract expires, at which point Square will come hobbling back to Sony when it realizes that signing an exclusivity deal with Xbox, after the last Tomb Raider reportedly didn’t live up to sales expectations, was a ludicrous idea) an “opportunity,” he means that it is an opportunity to replicate one of Sony’s biggest successes whilst putting in zero effort. Or should I say, minimal effort – he was at least required to reach into his back pocket in order to pull his wallet from out of it.
The selfless/sane among us who don’t hold candles to our favorite hardware manufacturers, and who don’t wish that owners of “rival” consoles have less good games to play out of spite, don’t like hearing news about a game releasing exclusively on one platform. Sometimes it’s inevitable, what with companies sometimes forming relationships with one another and deciding that working arm-in-arm would benefit the product (and not just their bank accounts), but in this instance it was an incredibly tasteless and indefensible move on behalf of everyone involved. We know that, and they know that we know that, and Phil Spencer isn’t even trying to hide how obscenely shameless it is now.
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What Microsoft has done here is plant a big roadblock in front of Sony and PlayStation owners, one which isn’t debilitating so much as it annoying. It is very likely that PS4 owners will get to play Rise of the Tomb Raider at some point, but Microsoft is forcing them to wait because, in their own words, they haven’t got anything else that can live up to Uncharted 4. Not only does Phil Spencer’s quote stand to make Microsoft’s plans for Xbox software sound weak, it also reduces Rise of the Tomb Raider to little more than a game which will fill the Uncharted “slot” on the Xbox One’s portfolio. When he says that he wants to “have a stable of hits” on the Xbox platform, I can’t help but think “well, go ahead and make them then.”
It obviously takes more effort to craft a new IP than it does to meet up with Square Enix and seduce them with a fat cheque, but is stealing away a formerly multi-platform game really the greatest alternative? No. No it is not.
Even looking at this in terms of a business decision, how lucrative could it possibly be to justify the PR headache that has now ensued, and for Phil Spencer to essentially undermine his own product in a fruitless attempt to justify the deal? Rise of the Tomb Raider has always performed better on PlayStation consoles and, no matter how good the 2013 reboot was, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will be laying down the cash for an Xbox One in order to get their hands on an “exclusive” game that isn’t really exclusive at all.
This deal instead seems oddly aimed at people who own both a PS4 and an Xbox One, and who will therefore simply pick up Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox as soon as it releases – but really, how many of those people exist? Enough to justify the inevitably inordinate amount of cash Microsoft has passed along the table to Square in order for the publisher to take such a huge risk with the series? The whole deal seems borne out of the idea that Microsoft must have a game in its library that directly competes with Uncharted 4, but considering Rise of the Tomb Raider would’ve been coming to Xbox before this whole “timed exclusive” nonsense, nothing has changed other than them pissing off PlayStation owners with a lamentable business deal.
In the end, though, this deal isn’t exciting news for PS4 nor Xbox One owners, as the former is forced to pointlessly wait around to get their hands on the game, while the latter will be receiving exactly what they had expected in the first place but with the added caveat that PS4 owners won’t. In this instance we all lost, and I hope the backlash faced by Microsoft and Square Enix will lead to more careful consideration when it comes to exclusivity deals in the future.
Paul Tamburro is the Associate Gaming Editor of CraveOnline. Follow him on Twitter @PaulTamburro.
