Microsoft has added another tool to its own games stable. Ark II, the sequel to the hottest bug simulator of the 2010s and by Vin Diesel, is likely to appear as an exclusive Xbox, although it seems to be limited by time rather than locked to permanently away from the stage.
The interesting thing about Microsoft choosing to acquire Ark II is that the company in particular has moved away from this strategy with the Xbox One. This is true even if you extend the exclusive definition to “Distributed on Everything but PS4, Including PC” instead of “Released Only for Xbox.” The former is much more likely to match Microsoft’s exclusive blockchain going forward, as the company makes services like Xbox Game Pass and xCloud vital for the future, and both service intended to make the games you want to play easier on the device you want useful. If you haven’t seen the Ark II trailer, or enjoy watching Vin Diesel spear a dinosaur spear, check out:
The trailer features Vin Diesel and his family beating up some new humanoids (as opposed to Ark: Survival Evolved), looking away with Yutyrannus, and then interfacing with far more tech a soil that knows its character. There isn’t much of a backstory or plot story specifically conveyed in the video.
If you’re wondering how Vin Diesel fits this title, in particular, Microsoft writes:
Ark II will also feature Vin Diesel as a heroic character, Santiago, who will also be a crossover character in the upcoming “Ark: The Animated Series”. While Vin Diesel will lend his acting talents to Ark II, he is also a huge fan of the franchise, now serving as an active producer on the game’s sequel and having more than 1,000 hours of recorded in Ark: Survival Evolution.
Microsoft is rebuilding a specific (or ‘exclusive’) game strategy
Microsoft has been on a studio buying spree recently, sculpting up Bethesda (acquiring id Software, Arkane Studios, and MachineGames) in 2020, and companies like PlayGround Games, Obsidian, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory , and Compulsion Games over the past couple of years. Where Bethesda is concerned, Microsoft has said the whole point is to create an ecosystem. In theory, at least, that means that some of the titles developed by these studios in the future will come to PlayStation 5, although discounts could still apply for the Xbox side / PC of things.
Sony, of course, continues to invest in building a more conventional ecosystem of first-party PlayStation 5 titles that don’t focus on sharing games across devices in the same way, probably because Microsoft has no connections like the equivalent Windows ecosystem. . The next generation of token machines has hardly been launched, but games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Astro Playroom have both steered chat in ways that the Xbox Series X has been struggling to match.
Both companies are tackling this problem, with Sony suggesting that next-generation games appear to be a year or two away, but that gap also means Microsoft has time to polish on his strategy to entice gamers in the Xbox or PC universe to sign up for an Xbox Game Pass. Sony will benefit over the same period from its own unique calls, even if they are not aiming for the same goal.
The launch of a console is generally seen as an opportunity to re-establish the competitive position between the manufacturers, but given its current weirdness, it is difficult to get a feel for the market dealing with the systems. Early data suggest that demand for the PS5 is running nearly 2: 1 ahead of Xbox according to StockX. The disk-based versions of each system are sold ahead of the digital-only editions in all cases.
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