KI should never have been an EXCLUSIVE< TErrible business decision by Microsoft

@VerminatorX just to raise one point, MS did not go out and grab KI and make it exclusive. They had it in a shoebox in the back room. Remember KI was a Nintendo exclusive up until this one too. So there had never been a multi-console KI and in fact the release on Steam and on Windows Store makes KI 2013 the most widely released game in the franchise. But just to be clear that what MS didnwoth KI is very different than say, Sony lying Capcom to make SFV exclusive.

I donā€™t dispute that MS does not have rights to do whatever they want with their licenses, if they had profits from KI, thatā€™s fine.

But I dont give a ā– ā– ā– ā–  about MS profits or their exclusives. From my perspective, I want(ed) KI to have biggest reach and leave as biggest mark in FGC as possible, but throughout its lifespan it was always shrouded in obscurity.

Around release of Win10 port, I played with couple of friends. They did not continue though, I was sending them character trailers and such, and around Kilgore release few of them literally told me they forgot KI existed.

Tournament KI scene suffered too because PS4 is dominant platform for fighting game events and organisers wont set up a bunch of consoles with one obscure FG for like, a 30 contestants.

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Minecraft on 3DSā€¦? ā€¦Three years after MS originally purchased the IPā€¦?.. Switch version seems doable if publishers really want to :smile:

If you think about it, How come Sony didnā€™t get flack for trying to Keep SFV an exlusive?

Its funny really. Even though there are many gamers who want to promote less bias, there is so many double standards when it comes to consoles.

People didnā€™t seem to mind having Street Fighter V as a PS4 exclusivity but they condemn the exclusivity of KI.

As far as KI being an exclusive to Nintendo consoles back then, I think the reason no one seemed to mind was because most had a Nintendo console at the time.

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Well from my point of view they can get away with itā€¦simply based on the fact that itā€™s street fighter and it has been the main FGC game for years and years. KI was a newcomer that had a lot to prove so keeping it exclusive right out of the box probably wasnā€™t the best choice. Another point that seems to get shoved to the side was the fact it came right at the same time of a release of a new console generation which is always iffy because there is never a way to tell which console will be dominant. Xbox One had a pretty crappy start because of DRM, being underpowered, no exclusiveā€¦etc etc

Also from what I understand Microsoft had a chance to make an offer on the SFV deal but chose not to. This is what the tweet from Phil Spencer was referring to all those years ago. He mentioned they would rather focus on home franchises I.E Killer Instinct.

https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/541334394623905793
I guess things didnā€™t turn out they way they wanted. But just imagine if Phil had decided to do the deal and SFV was exclusive to Xbox, the FGC and KI in general would of turned out so much differently.

Definitely a fair statement to make. Back then I would agree that the type of consoles wars that exist now definitely were not to the same degree then, as like you said everyone basically owned Nintendo stuff.

Well I said many, I know not everyone had a Nintendo console. Some were either strictly Sega or didnā€™t have any consoles at all.

Obscurity. So true. From casual gamers to actual fgc folk. Just this past Friday at our monthly KI meetup (at a local GameStop), a fellow gamer walked by in a happy shock of the KI action. He excitedly asked ā€œIs this a new game?ā€ We told him this game had been out for 5 years now. He was like ā€¦ ā€œreally!!?ā€

Well the game still looks and sounds amazing, still plays great and definitely still brings the hype.

At the end of the day. Iā€™m sure MS will learn from all these experiences, positive and negative and make solid decisions for the future of the franchise ā€¦ that will hopefully include stuff to make the devs more money (like all of those costume/accessory slots, seasonal accessories) and stuff to keep the player base thriving (ki on multiple platforms, proper marketing for steam release, unified crossplay in ranked mode as well as exhibition, more pot bonuses in the fgc, etc).

Hereā€™s to the future! :slight_smile:

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They did get flak for this. But Sony tends to get a pass on a lot of things. MS is often vilified for normal business practices just because they are an American company. Life is not fair.

I wouldnā€™t read that much into Phil Spencerā€™s tweet. Itā€™s more ambiguous than that. It could also be read to mean that other people can make deals but hey, we have our own franchise too invest in.

Itā€™s also worth mentioning that although the deal was made into a huge prop in the fanboy wars, SFV has been pretty dismal commercially and I doubt it has sold a lot of PlayStations. Itā€™s hard to say that MS got the short end of the stick on that one.

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True, many donā€™t agree with the decision thatā€™s true also. That being said I donā€™t agree with alot of what MS does like I mentioned before.

Also, the way I see it, life is always unfair.

True, I trie dplaying SFV once but it didnā€™t appeal to me. It also didnā€™t have Blanka at the start and at the time I was think Blanka was not going to appear until Street Fighter sixth. By the time my favorite character Blanka showed up it was already too late.

I found Injustice 2 to be abit boring too. But netherealm hasnā€™t lost me. I will continue to buy the MK games. If Reptile gets left out in any future installments, I will skip that one instalment and wait for the next one.

Itā€™s still ironic though. especially when others have been trying to convince me that the PS4 ha better exclusives than the Xbox One during that whole controversy behind the Xbox one.

But all Is aw from PS4ā€™s launch exclusives were games that did not grab my attention or did not appeal to me.

But really finalized my decision was when one guy said some crap made me disregard anything else about the PS4 for a time. Itā€™s also what gave me a disdain for console war bull crap in the first place.

:joy::joy::joy::joy::joy: omg lol

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Use this too explain the shortcomings of KI. and other fighting games in general. Life is not fair and sometimes franchises (especially KI) donā€™t get the justice they deserve.

You guys got to let this go sometime or another.

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Fighting games do get their justice sometimes.

But life as a whole is always unfair.

Tis true.

Well, to be fair, KI was in development before the Xbox One released. During the previous generation, the 360 was the system of choice for the FGC. Iā€™d have to think that during KIā€™s development, no one at Microsoft was thinking that they were going to lose an entire genre to their competitor. So my guess is that they didnā€™t think theyā€™d be releasing the game on a platform that few would want.

Also, as far as the comparison of a few extra Xbox Ones sold versus thousands of extra copies sold if itā€™s on PS4, Iā€™m not sure thatā€™s a cut and dry comparison. I mean, maybe itā€™s sold more on Xbox One because it doesnā€™t have as much competition and maybe it wouldnā€™t have done as well on PS4 becaue itā€™s going against twice as many games in the genre.

Plus, first party software is made to sell first party hardware. Saying a game wouldnā€™t sell that much, so why not just give it to the competition doesnā€™t really make sense if youā€™re trying to lure people to your ecosystem. Thatā€™d be like telling Sony during the PS3 era, when 360 was outselling it, that they should keep God of War, Uncharted and the The Last of Us, but go ahead and put Twisted Metal, Sly Cooper, and other titles in lesser genres out on Xbox 360. Wouldnā€™t they want every arrow in their quiver if theyā€™re taking shots at MS to dethrone the 360?

Thatā€™s understandable from your perspective, but again, from MS, Sony and Nintendoā€™s perspective, theyā€™re trying to sell consoles first. Yes, they obviously have their heavy hitters that both sell a lot of copies and drive hardware sales, but even the games that donā€™t do huge sales matter because theyā€™re all entry points in to their specific ecosystems. The more you have and the higher quality they are, the more likely (in an ideal world), people will want to buy in.

To use myself as an example, Iā€™m not a big shooter fan, yet Xbox One is my primary system. Sure, I still play my PS4 and I buy games for it, but my XB1 has Killer Instinct, Sunset Overdrive, Ori and the Blind Forest, Dead Rising 3 & 4 and the Horizon line of Forza games. Those were all entry points for me, even though Ori is an indie title and not a massive, AAA title, itā€™s still a reason to buy in (for me). Same goes for Killer Instinct.

I can respect that. I personally love the job MS, IG and DH did with this game, but I get wanting it to be enjoyed by as many people as possible. At the end of the day, like you said, it is what it is.

In an ideal world, MS would announce KI2 at E3 with the whole game coming this year on XB1, PC and Steam. I think that most would agree that the current game was a great foundation, but it also took them a long time to both create the whole game (by design) and rebuild the brand and its reputation. I think that long, uphill battle paid off in the form of a great foundation and a largely positive reception, regardless of the fact that it only came out on one console.

So instead of being satisfied with having done this experiment that turned out well enough, Iā€™d hope that theyā€™d want to keep building the momentum for this franchise. MS has a well documented weakness with regards to exclusives. Halo, Gears and the Motorsport line of Forza games are both getting a bit long in the tooth and the hype around them isnā€™t really what it was ten or so years ago.

Still, theyā€™re well made games, and MS only has so many quality, known brands right now. Remedy has gone multiplatform, Fable has largely disappeared (though that could still change), and many of their other hits from the last few generations, not to mention games from earlier in this generation, have mostly been one-offs. Building a newer stable of reliable brands, regardless of size, to help buttress some of their elder statesmen, wouldnā€™t seem like the worst idea. Ori is getting a much deserved sequel, I think KI would make sense as well.

I really donā€™t think this KI was a disaster, but I do think that there so things that they were likely able to learn along the way. Yeah, a simultaneous release on Xbox, Steam and W10 would be a great idea. I also think that since this experiment likely did moderately well for them, that with the KI brand back again, maybe they could afford to put a little more money in to it, both on the development side and on the marketing side. Who knows, but hereā€™s hoping!

Well, thatā€™s fine. But MS has to care about that stuff, otherwise theyā€™d be pretty bad at their jobs. Itā€™s not like we can just disregard what MS wants simply because we choose to prioritize KI, the tourney scene, etc differently than they do. Iā€™m sure youā€™re not doing that, but still.

Yeah, I hear ya. Thatā€™s why itā€™s actually kinda cool to see that KIā€™s done pretty well sign-up wise at Combo Breaker. I mean, for all the money WB put in to MKX, both in development and in marketing (and having it on both PS4 and XB1), I believe KI has more entrants this year if Iā€™m not mistaken. They also have more than MvCi, Smash 4, KOF 14, etc.

Iā€™m sure that there are reasons for this beyond the games themselves, but either way, itā€™s nice to see.

I think people were bothered by SFVā€™s exclusivity back when it was first announced, though I do recall a lot of Sony fans loving that they got a big game like this and Xbox didnā€™t. Hereā€™s an interesting question though and Iā€™m curious what people think:

Capcom is largely blamed for the initial roll out and quality issues early on with SFV. Letā€™s say, hypothetically that instead of having Sony fund the project and partnering with them on SFV, theyā€™d partnered with MS instead. Do you think that if the launch had gone the same way, that fans still wouldā€™ve blamed Capcom or do you think theyā€™d have blamed MS?

Bear in mind that MS has taken been bagged on a fairly decent amount around here and in other places for their supposedly anemic investment in KI. Anyways, just curious.

Personally, I disagree with both of these. Genesis had about half the market share at one point, so by no means did everyone have an SNES back then, LCD. This is completely anecdotal, but most kids I knew had Genesis. Sega also had a VERY aggressive marketing campaign centered around the idea that Genesis was awesome and Nintendo was a dopey kids system.

Sega, in my opinion, openly fanned the console flame wars back then, even if they didnā€™t have a legion of fans online in forums and on comment boards the way MS, Sony and Nintendo have today.

Iā€™ve had every Sony and MS system and Iā€™ve enjoyed games on both systems for years and Iā€™ve absolutely found this to be the case. Part of me wonders if itā€™s because Sonyā€™s so beloved in this industry now; that theyā€™ve built up this massive, loyal fanbase since the PSone days, but even when they make mistakes, such as the starting price for the PS3 or jumping on trends as they wane in popularity (such as PS Move, Eye Toy, mobile gaming, etc), they never seem to get as much vitriol as MS gets when they ā– ā– ā– ā– ā–  up.

Even when MS apologizes profusely and reverses course, like they did with bundling Kinect 2.0, having a higher price point, etc, rather than people rejoicing in the fact that a massive company actually listened to them and tried to make the system the way people wanted it to be, people still bristled at the fact that they had to ask in the first place.

Even stuff that was removed from the console before it launched, such as the no used games idea and the always online requirement, were still pointed at as these huge failings by MS and the PR disaster lingered over the launch of the system for at least a year, if not longer. MS became synonymous with these greedy, evil practices that they ultimately never even went through with.

Personally, I always have my XB1 plugged in and in rest mode and I freakin love the fact that it downloads any and patches while Iā€™m not playing. If I could ever get my PS4 to do that, Iā€™d be thrilled.

Regardless, and I know Iā€™ve gone on for a while here and I apologize for that, but I do think that if Sony had tried to do any of those things and then reversed course on them, that Sony fans wouldā€™ve forgiven them. Heck, they mightā€™ve even been thrilled with how receptive Sony was to them. MS never seems to get that kind of benefit of the doubt.

While I think that PS4 has been far better on exclusives than MS for about the last three years or so, I actually thought MS was better than PS4 on exclusives for the first few years. I was actually turned off by PS4ā€™s offerings in those first few years and was more than happy just owning an Xbox One. Wasnā€™t until early last year, when the number of great AAA single player games were rolling out that I finally gave in and bought one.

While I still prefer the XB1 controller, their UI, and I still love playing KI, Iā€™ve still gotten a ton of usage out of my PS4. Some really great games out there! :slight_smile:

Thats why I said most, not all.

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I didnā€™t mean to suggest KI was a disaster, clearly overall the game itself was great. All of the logistics surrounding the game were a disaster in terms of marketing, budget etc. I mean do you remember how right after Phil made that tweet about how theyā€™d rather invest in their home IP (KI) they turned right around and sponsored Mortal Kombat X for ESL? Why didnā€™t they sponsor KI for ESL instead, why did they sponsor pro tours for Gears of War and Halo but not KI? Why did they wait 3 years to put the game on PC? The list goes on and on.

From my point of view the people directly working on KI were passionate about it and wanted the best for it, but the higher ups that shot call everything clearly didnā€™t believe in the game shown by past evidence. Iā€™m sure there were internal conflicts just to get to season 3 which is a fair speculation to make on my part seeing as how they had to cut stages to fund other aspects of it. Why not just give them a full budget to do what they needed to do? We can only guess.

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I hear ya, I just donā€™t think it was even that high of a number, but Iā€™m just splitting hairs here. No big deal. :slight_smile: If anything, Iā€™m probably relying too much on my own childhood memories. I didnā€™t know any kid that had an SNES. Granted, I didnā€™t go around quizzing every kid at school, but most people I knew had a Genesis. Again though, not a big deal at all. Not sure why Iā€™m still going on about it lol.

I do tend to wonder how much of it was them deciding to grow the game through the FGC and how much of it was MS just wanting to see this game prove itself before they really bought in (if they bought in at all). I mean, they had to buy in somewhat, right? You donā€™t put out three seasons worth of content for a game over the course of four plus years if you donā€™t think itā€™s worth investing in.

I think part of it is the fact that many of us are used to seeing AAA games marketed in a certain way and perhaps couldnā€™t square with the idea that this game, recognizable to us as it is and as it has been for years, was never going to be a AAA game with a AAA budget due to the genre and due to how long itā€™d been since the last one came out.

I mean, we know the game isnā€™t going to get a Halo sized team and a Halo sized budget, but I think itā€™s easy to look around and see KI not getting a ton of attention and assuming theyā€™re totally dropping the ball. Iā€™m not here to defend anyone or place blame. Iā€™m just saying that I personally donā€™t know enough to say that they did everything they could with the money they had or they made all of these easily preventable mistakes that hurt its ability to be as big as it couldā€™ve been because I have no idea how big this game couldā€™ve been.

As much as Iā€™d love to think that the FGC wouldā€™ve gotten behind KI in droves if theyā€™d seen commercials for it or if tourney pot bonuses had been big enough or if the game had come out on PC and Steam earlier, I really have no idea. My common sense is telling me that none of that stuff wouldā€™ve moved the needle in an overly substantial way, but again, who knows.

Yeah, I think most of us can agree on that, no question.

I still wonder if there were ever any plans to do a stage per character in season 3 regardless of Shadowlords. I have a feeling that they kinda thought from day one of season 3 planning that they had enough stages, and that theyā€™d maybe add a few, but that the focus should be elsewhere. I tend to doubt it was ā€œwell, letā€™s do 8 stages. Wait, weā€™re going to have HOW MUCH for the budget? Okay, we gotta cut that stage number down.ā€

I mean, even if they had the money for both Shadowlords and 8 stages, I still tend to think that they wouldā€™ve prioritized money for some of those stages someplace else, leaving us to wonder if they didnā€™t have the budget for both stages and whatever else they chose to do.

Yeah, the logical side of my brain hopes for this as well. I mean, your team took a niche game that was 20 years past its relevancy expiration date, brought it back, then scratched and clawed for every fan over a four year span of putting out objectively quality content.

You took this IP that was left on the scrap heap and you built it in to something. You built it in to a known Microsoft commodity. A quality fighting game in a genre that doesnā€™t see a whole lot of innovation or IPs that havenā€™t already been putting out sequel after sequel already. The experiment, as far as I can see, was a success.

So why not keep that momentum going? Why not say ā€œokay, we put a modest investment in for the first game because we honestly had no idea if anyone would care about this game and had no idea how itā€™d turn out. It turned out pretty well and people seemed to take to it. We donā€™t have a ton of quality, known commodities as far as our exclusives right now, so maybe we put a bigger focus financially on a game thatā€™s had some of the best reviews any Xbox One exclusive has received over the last five years.ā€

Itā€™s nearly the opposite for me. Iā€™ve known some kids that had a genesis, but most of my friends had an SNES.

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I think speculating on MSā€™s process of decision making is pretty pointless. We donā€™t know what they had planned that didnā€™t make it for S1,2 or 3. Itā€™s clear their ambition exceeded their reach (which is not intended as a criticism). I also think that broad assertion of the gameā€™s success or failure are not really fair. What does ā€œsuccessā€ look like? I especially think the idea that KI is ā€œobscureā€ and that people donā€™t know about it is just plain ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– . If somebody walks by and says ā€œis that a new gameā€ then that person has been living under a rock. KI has had tons of exposure especially in the FGC since 2013. Anybody who doesnā€™t know about KI by now is well outside the target demographic and VERY unlikely to be interested in the game. It was on the freaking packaging for Xbox One for two years for heavenā€™s sake. It had two retail physical releases. Iā€™m just not buying that somehow if MS light a super bowl add KI would dethrone SFV as the de facto FGC game of choice. Itā€™s nonsense.

What I will say is that Iā€™ve been generally very happy with the game throughout its development, but I am incredibly disappointed in how MS has dropped it like a stone since development ceased. We should not be having server problems at this point. Clearly thereā€™s $0.00 left in the kitty for technical support and thatā€™s just bad planning. The highlight of the game is itā€™s superb online play and now itā€™s broken and people are having to vodoo guess how deleting dlc characters might improve this. Very disappointing.

Iā€™ve said this before but while Iā€™m ranting, the people who worked in the game did excellent excellent work. But my opinion is the total package has been hurt by the contractor development model that MS has adopted for making games. Contractors look amazing on budget spreadsheets because they externalizations a lot of your costs and you arenā€™t paying for people to waste time, take sick days, accrue benefits and generally sit idle. But the downside is you have to write a detailed agreement and the contractor does exactly what is in the agreement - then thatā€™s it. You donā€™t get to go back and say ā€œcanā€™t we just polish upā€¦ā€ ā€œnope. Itā€™s not in the agreement. We can do it for more money.ā€ Good luck getting a big shot to pay attention to you long enough to ask for another 100k to fix a five year old games practice mode. And this is especially evident now when IG keeps tweeting ā€œwe are no longer able to do anything on KI. Go ask MS.ā€

While Iā€™m ranting, can I take a moment and say that while I really LIKE Phil Spencer and he says all the right things about gaming and game development, I canā€™t really look back at the last 4 years and say heā€™s done good things with Xbox. Now maybe he kept the ship afloat and that was hard enough. But Iā€™m looking at a pretty steep decline in all of their first party software and zero new and interesting things besides KI. I WANT to be happy with MS. But they arenā€™t helping me out much.

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IMO What MS really needs to do is rebuild and acquire a circle of talented, reliable studios and have them develop their IPs like Sony and Nintendo have for over the past two decades. Microsoft have been letting their pillars and partnerships in software development fade away and fall apart ever since the original Xbox, and they really need to start investing in finally restoring them.

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