The Xbox ‘MLB The Show’ deal looks bad for Sony

Yesterday, Microsoft shocked the gaming world when it announced that MLB: The Show 21, formerly a PlayStation exclusive franchise, would arrive on the Xbox Game Pass on launch day.

It was already known that The Show 21 would be released on Xbox, but moving from the PlayStation exclusive since 2006 to “free” on Game Pass is a radical change, and now, all of this is an extremely bad appearance for Sony, more than the situation normal “Game Pass has X new release”.

Here is an approximate timeline of what apparently happened here and where we are now:

• In order for Sony to retain the rights to The Show, part of the new MLB deal was that the game had to be multiplatform, hence the launch on the Xbox.
• But it seems that Microsoft went directly to the MLB to try to make a deal to put it on the Game Pass as well. The publisher of the Xbox version is listed as MLB, not Sony. And therefore, a (very large) amount of money was probably paid to make that happen.
• Now we have a situation where The Show went from being an exclusive Sony franchise for 15 years to being the first day of the Xbox Game Pass, with the game still built by San Diego Studios, an independent developer at Sony.
• The PlayStation version of the program is listed for $ 70, although it seems that the only way to get the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game together is a $ 85 package.

In short, alas.

While this is not like Microsoft stealing Kratos or Nathan Drake or anything, it is not This one away, honestly, and they deftly outperformed Sony here, which has now effectively produced a highly sought-after Game Pass game. I suppose it is possible that Sony / San Diego received some money for all this, as if you know the exact fine print of those deals, but most seem to be driven by the MLB, where they wanted their baseball game on more platforms, and if MS is going to pay them to have access to the Game Pass? Sure, why not.

Microsoft has always tried to force that advantage over Sony, especially in this generation, where Game Pass looks like a good alternative to regular-priced games, but is generally comparing things like Gears 5 or Sea of ​​Thieves to God of War or Ghost of Tsushima. A kind of apples and oranges and fans may argue that these games “are worth” the full price on PlayStation, and are just better games in general. But here, this is an example of the same game, where Sony, which made the game, is listing it for $ 70 on PlayStation, while Xbox players simply get it with Game Pass. This is wild. This also happened with Ouriders, another third-party game that Xbox bought for the launch of the Game Pass while Sony is selling it at full price, but the difference is that a Sony studio did not make Outriders.

The Game Pass will continue to be a thorn in Sony’s side indefinitely here, and they have no plans to overcome it beyond their current PS Plus / Now offerings and things like the PS Plus collection, a great package of great free games for players. But for new releases, you can bet that we will continue to see Microsoft making moves like this, but what they did with The Show here is on another level.

Follow me on twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Subscribe to my free weekly content summary newsletter, God Rolls.

Take my science fiction novels, Herokiller Series, and The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also linked audiobook.