If there is any hope of a PlayStation 7 sequel, is it going to be a Xbox extension? (pic: Square Enix)
Anyone who wants to play Final Fantasy 16 on an Xbox may be concerned because Microsoft has said it has a lifetime PS5 exclusive.
The endless war of words over Microsofts Activision Blizzard acquisition may be getting tiresome but it continues to provide some very rare nuggets of information that we would have probably never knew anywhere else.
So much legal paperwork has been produced over the last year, so certain details went unnoticed until now, as it seems back in October Microsoft claimed that Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 16 and Silent Hill 2 remakes, and Bloodborne all were permanent Sony exclusives.
It’s never been considered true by Square Enix, Konami, or Sony, but if Microsoft is right and there’s no guarantee they’re the bad news for Xbox owners and a useful argument for Microsoft in the attempt to buy Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft doesn’t reveal how to know any of this, but it’s unclear whether or not it’s through insider knowledge, educated assumptions or purposefully misinterpreted internet sources.
The statement in the report from October 2022 seems pretty clear though:
Sony has also entered agreement with third parties which require the exclusion of the set of platformable publishers that can distribute their games. Some of these agreements’ prominent features include Final Fantasy 7 Remake (Square Enix), Bloodborne (FromSoftware), the upcoming Final Fantasy 16 (Square Enix) and the recently announced Silent Hill 2 remastered (Bloober).
Only one of these statements is made, but when you click through the link that Microsoft gives for Silent Hill 2 on website Engadget, you don’t say anything about Xbox. This means that the exclusivity period is 12 months.
That is standard, but it is very unusual for some third parties to keep their deals longer than it was. Final Fantasy is not the same type of deal, but Square Enix already has a long-standing partnership. It’s not a same thing that is in this case the same as the 1968 deal in which Sony is a publisher.
The legal document was issued in October, two days after the Silent Hill 2 announcement, but now there’s a point when a person wrote that article too quickly. The passage above was only noticed this week, KoreaXboxnews reports.
If these games really are lifetime exclusives or not, it’s not uncommon but publishers have the chance to show this information publicly.
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