Activision wants to sell to Microsoft.
Theres nothing illegal or monopolistic about it.
They know the benefits all of their timed and marketing deals combined will all be undone the day a single call of duty game launches on gamepass and they wont be able to do any thing about it…and I’m sure they know this will put Gamepass in the 50 million range. Gamers of all kinds…getting free AAA games, day 1.
Sonys biggest game did 4 million in 3 days. Awards or not…they got nothing.
This is just shockingly transparent by Sony as an attempt to protect a company’s current lead position and not to address anything anticompetitive. Sony could regret what may come with a larger review and certain people being educated on their practices. I am just one guy, but I have absolutely decided against buying God of War Ragnarok for my PS5 until much later next year when it is on sale or somehow makes it to one of their services where I can subscribe for a month and be done. I have truly come to despise their pathetic lies, and in some tiny way at least it impacts their bottom line from me at least.
The big thing that Sony stands aren’t getting is…
Of course Microsoft as a company isn’t going to sign a legal document promising Call of Duty on Playstation for ever. Hell them promising to extend the promise 3 years past the current one is actually freaking generous. As long as it makes business and financial sense, they will keep putting the game there? Will it be feature equal? Probably not as thats something thats been kept from Xbox fans for years with Sonys practices, but knowing Microsoft and how they like to actually pull “for the gamers” and be generous I could see them doing it.
Call of Duty is very much like Minecraft, its a world of its own and the more platforms you can play it on the better for the owner of Call of Duty. The moment its more expensive than its worth? No more on Playstation but for the forseeable future, it will stay there. Sony is just worried that it won’t be “Best to play” on Playstation anymore cause they can’t money hat features and game modes with it anymore.
There’s no way regulators block this acquisition. Microsoft is in 3rd place in terms of the video game hardware companies. And as far as pure revenue goes industry wide I’m pretty sure they are 5th. Also behind steam and tencent. Apple might have more revenue as well from games, I’m sure they make a boatload.
Sorry that was just lack of knowledge on my part, I just assumed it would be like other games where operator is like a different playstyle and abilities.
Destin doesn’t necessarily have to think it’s as bad as those for it to still be bad as it is an exclusive content for a platform, also coupled with early access beta on Playstation. Again, not as bad, but it’s something Sony do to have “exclusive terms” which they then are crying about to regulators, which is probably where Destin is coming from.
Things like the early access beta are going to persist for some time even after CoD is acquired…
Microsoft likes to honor existing agreements.
In my opinion they should just buy out of the contracts and shutdown servers for the games (including Minecraft, ESO, FO76 etc) on Playstation, but maybe that’s a bit extreme
