What you need to know
- Crimson Desert is an upcoming action adventure title from Korea-based Pearl Abyss, and it looks pretty damn great.
- The game has been announced for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC, although there's another timeline where Xbox would be excluded.
- A recent session at Kiwoom Securities in Korea with Pearl Abyss revealed that PlayStation had attempted to lock Xbox out of Crimson Desert, in much the same way it did with games like Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy 7, and more.
- Microsoft has seen some of its own third-party exclusivity deals bear fruit for Xboxo in recent years, with Q1 viral-hit Palworld, and soon, STALKER 2, set to release in November.
On paper, 2024 looked like it might have been a light year for PlayStation.
With few first-party titles on the docket, 2024 looked as though the lion's share of first-party exclusive game launches would land for Xbox Series X|S instead in the great battle of the high-end consoles. The reality, however, hasn't exactly panned out that way. Thanks to some savvy timed exclusivity deals across games like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Silent Hill 2, Black Myth Wukong, and Stellar Blade, PlayStation was still able to boast an incredibly strong line-up of exclusive titles for its core fans. PlayStation's Concord might have been a uniquely spectacular failure, but Helldivers 2 and Astrobot have more than made up for it. Conversely, Xbox first-party efforts like Hellblade 2 and Starfield: Shattered Space launched to mixed opinions, while other games like ARA: History Untold have skipped Xbox altogether so far. Microsoft has also seen other titles like Avowed and Towerborne pick up delays into 2025. Xbox has had its own wins too, though, but more on that in a minute.
Indeed, why are we talking about all of this? The timed exclusivity discourse heated up again today, with news that another major third-party title might have been gobbled up by PlayStation to the detriment of Xbox customers.
Korea-based financial reporter 에이치피엔스 shared details on the session with Pearl Abyss (via Knoebel), which revealed some details about how Sony attempted to lock Xbox customers out of access to hotly anticipated Crimson Desert, while also scooping up the PC distribution rights in the process. The reporter has since offered their own English translation of the proceedings, which you can read below.
"We [Pearl Abyss] spent a lot of time considering our release strategy. Sony has essentially seen the entire game and expressed interest in publishing it, offering several favorable terms. If we had gone with Sony as a publisher, the game would have been exclusive to PlayStation for a year, with no release on Xbox, and PC distribution rights would also belong to Sony. Despite these restrictions, Sony's marketing power and various unique incentives were appealing. However, after evaluating the expected sales and revenue-sharing structure, we decided that self-publishing would be more beneficial. It's 99% certain that we will publish the game ourselves.
Recently, Stellar Blade signed an exclusive deal with Sony, but that was mainly because they didn't have the necessary publishing team, unlike us.
In a typical contract, 30% of revenue goes to platform fees, and the remaining 70% is split between the developer and publisher. Since we already have the capability to self-publish globally and have overseas branches, we concluded that using our own resources would be more advantageous."
Crimson Desert is a fantastic-looking title, from the same studio that brought us Black Desert Online. Crimson Desert is, however, a single-player title, which has been compared to The Witcher 3 and other high-fidelity action adventure RPG games.
Thankfully, publisher Pearl Abyss sidestepped Sony's "lucrative" offers, but what intrigues me is the fact that it doesn't sound like Xbox was in the running at all.
Xbox has been known to grab exclusivity deals of its own, but it tends to come in early and help fund development. STALKER 2 is one such example. STALKER 2 is an independently-developed game and is absolutely fantastic-looking so far, but Microsoft has pretty much been there since the start of this current iteration of the game, per our interview with the developers. Microsoft also landed an exclusivity deal with Palworld, which was similarly "indie" and developed using funds from Microsoft. Pearl Abyss describes Sony as having seeing the "entire" game almost, which suggests these deals are less about helping developers from the outset, and more about locking out Xbox from the equation.
It's a business strategy that clearly works for PlayStation, which is outselling Xbox Series X|S at a rapid pace. Xbox fans have celebrated this year that titles like Final Fantasy 16 got essentially confirmed for an Xbox version, while Genshin Impact is finally set to hit Xbox — but fans are getting them several years after the fact.
If I'm a customer deciding which console ecosystem to buy into or buy for my coming-of-age young gamer relative, do I get the one that has more exclusive games or the one that has fewer?
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Should Xbox be more aggressive in pursuing third-party deals like PlayStation?
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Microsoft once tried its hand at a third-party timed exclusivity deal, and the backlash from the mainstream media was absolutely palpable. Rise of the Tomb Raider was very briefly exclusive to Xbox One consoles and PC, and since then, Microsoft has avoided committing itself to similar deals, likely in fear of triggering a similar backlash. Meanwhile, PlayStation has never really been subjected to the same scrutiny over its Xbox-exclusionary deals.
Xbox is clearly going to benefit from its partnership with GSC Game World on STALKER 2, however. It also benefitted from timed Xbox exclusivity with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which remains one of the world's biggest service games. But these types of exclusivity deals may be on the way out for reasons Pearl Abyss itself described. Square Enix has famously sworn off doing further timed exclusivity deals with PlayStation and has begun revamping its developer pipeline to support simultaneous multi-platform launches.
There's also the Nintendo Switch 2 wildcard. A more powerful Nintendo Switch 2 will likely lend itself well to receiving a greater share of AAA game support, without the types of compromises its aging predecessor requires. In that universe, does PlayStation continue to simply target Xbox for exclusionary deals, or does it pay more to also exclude Nintendo? If it's the former (and it most likely is the former), then I think Microsoft has a duty to its customers to get ahead of the curve.
I would argue it's neglectful of Microsoft to have even allowed PlayStation to lock games like Silent Hill 2, Black Myth Wukong, and Final Fantasy 7 into exclusivity contracts, given the chilling effect it has over broader customer and developer faith in the Xbox platform. Obviously, you can't win them all — but if you can't win them all, then perhaps it would be savvy business to seek out more of your own deals like PUBG, Stalker 2, and Palworld. Things have gotten better over the years, but Xbox should still have an answer lined up for every major piece of content that skips the Xbox platform owing to exclusionary deals. And this is all without getting into the Xbox multiplatform strategy discourse, by which Microsoft itself has begun giving Sony money directly to help them essentially fund these types of deals. But hey, it works both ways. Through game sales on PlayStation, Xbox should have more money of its own too to fund exclusivity deals, right? Righhht?
What do you think? Should Xbox gun for more exclusivity deals for console? Or is it a pointless waste of cash that won't move the needle either way? Hit the comments.
