“Many” PlayStation exclusives are “better quality” than Xbox games, Microsoft says

“A lot” of the Xbox exclusives aren’t as good as the PlayStation exclusives. And that’s what Microsoft says.

This statement is included as an argument in documents that were made publicly available as part of the review of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

For more competition

Microsoft argues that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard – contrary to Sony’s view – encourages competition more since Sony is the dominant platform provider.

“Sony is not only the dominant console provider, but also a powerful game publisher,” it says. “Sony is about the size of Activision and almost twice the size of Microsoft’s publishing business.”

Sony’s first-party franchises have been described as “legendary,” including God of War, The Last of Us, and Destiny 2, which Bungie recently acquired.

“In 2021, there were over 280 exclusive titles from first- and third-party providers for PlayStation, almost five times as many as for Xbox.”

Better quality at Sony

Later, the quality of the exclusive games is also discussed in order to prove that Microsoft’s takeover of Activision Blizzard has not had a negative effect on Sony.

“Sony has more exclusive games than Microsoft, many of which are of better quality,” the company writes. Both Sony’s and Nintendo’s exclusive first-party games are among the best-selling in Europe and worldwide. Current Sony exclusives include prominent first-party titles such as The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War and Spider-Man.”

It also says Sony has “agreements with third-party publishers that require Xbox to be ‘excluded’ from the platforms on which those vendors can distribute their games.”

Examples include Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Final Fantasy 16, Bloodborne, and the Silent Hill 2 Remake.

Another argument is the higher percentage of exclusive games in sales on PlayStation versus Xbox, although specific numbers have been removed.

“Sony, with their leading console by more than 2:1, is unlikely to be penalized by not having access to a single franchise,” the company writes in reference to Call of Duty.