Ex-Blizzard President calls out Xbox for lack of hit games & \u201c$18 skins\u201d XboxFormer Blizzard President Mike Ybarra is calling out Xbox for a lack of exclusive titles, while urging both Sony and Microsoft to cut it out with expensive skins and battle passes. Xbox\u2019s lack of hit games has proven to be one of the main drawbacks in the console wars, with the Sony PlayStation winning out through its exclusivity deals. Following news that Black Myth: Wukong\u2019s delay on Xbox is due to a Sony exclusivity deal, Blizzard\u2019s ex-president Mike Ybarra chimed in, saying that if he was PlayStation, he\u2019d double down, sensing \u201cblood in the water.\u201d \u201cIf your strategy is to win the living room, you need exclusive hits because winning is both a platform and games perspective. Sony knows how to make hits, and how to pick the hits from others to be exclusive,\u201d he said in response to an X post about exclusivity. If your strategy is to win the living room, you need exclusive hits because winning is both a platform and games perspective. Sony knows how to make hits, and how to pick the hits from others to be exclusive. If I was them I would double down right now because the blood in the\u2026 \u2014 Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) August 30, 2024 This resulted in others suggesting that Sony fumbled by focusing on live-service games such as Concord. The hero shooter failed to break 700 players on launch day after being in development for eight years. Ybarra urged Sony to \u201cstop the all in approach on this\u201d and further added that players are growing sick of some of the trends associated with live-service games, pointing specifically to how the titles are monetized. \u201cPlayers are tired of battle passes and $18 skins,\u201d he added. Microsoft notably bought Activision-Blizzard in a $68B deal, picking up franchises that have featured battle passes and expensive skins such as Call of Duty and Overwatch. Players have often voiced their displeasure at how skins are priced, frequently calling out \u201cscummy\u201d cosmetic costs on social media and beyond. The former president left Blizzard in January 2024 following Microsoft\u2019s acquisition of the company and its decision to lay off around 1,900 members of staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ex-Blizzard President calls out Xbox for lack of hit games & \u201c$18 skins\u201d XboxFormer Blizzard President Mike Ybarra is calling out Xbox for a lack of exclusive titles, while urging both Sony and Microsoft to cut it out with expensive skins and battle passes. Xbox\u2019s lack of hit games has proven to be one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}