Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win
From the article, quoting Judge Corley:
… the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED.
As primarily a Playstation and Nintendo gamer, I think this acquisition is going to be 99% bad news for me. Oh well.
Can I ask why? Microsoft has a monetary incentive to push the games to other platforms wherever possible. Yeah they may hold a few back (see Starfield) to try and sell consoles but I don’t expect them to withhold all. There were some interesting articles that this deal is more about the mobile gaming (King) rather than COD or other AB games.
As an Xbox and Nintendo owner I feel Sony/Nintendo have done more harm to the industry by reinforcing exclusives (both times and complete) than Microsoft. Wouldn’t it be in Microsoft’s right to do what the market leaders are doing and take advantage of exclusives to try and gain market share back? We also saw with testimony/discovery during the trial that Sony would often say one thing publicly and another internally. I think Sony only opposed this cause they wanted to stoke the fire of fandoms.
Phil Spencer said every single future Zenimax game is going to be exclusive, so it’s not just a few being held back.
Exactly. Sony have spent years leveraging their market leading position to further put them in the lead via paying to keep content and games off Xbox. Their market position is their strength and they leverage it. Microsoft’s strength is their financial power, and they’re now finally leveraging it. Sony need to be pulled back to the pack and pulled in line with their anti-consumer practices. The more market share and dominance they get the worse they get for consumers, as they’ve shown many times.
Sony has the superior hardware, and superior first party titles. Sony has often financed some third party development which keeps things playstation exclusives, but to my knowledge this has always been new IP not existing sequels like Microsoft has done in previous generations.
No console has had superior hardware since 1992. The release of the IBM VGA and Gravis UltraSound sealed the superiority of the PC, a title it has held ever since.
The only time Sony’s ever had stronger hardware was PS3, which was a dumpsterfire that never even ended in a profit. PS1 < NS4. PS2 < GCN. PS4 < Xbox One (by a small margin). PS5 < Xbox Series X.
The only thing they have to their name is a bit of code made for their platform and not others, and the opportunity to buy a $700 headset that’s outclassed by a standalone $400 headset.
The best thing that ever happened to Sony was a) Nintendo using cartridges to solidify FF as a PS franchise, and b) Sega marketing Nintendo as “for kids” back in the 90s, a stereotype they’ve never been able to get away from.
That is however, with the caveat that all Xbox games have to run on Series S as well.
And nearly all PS5 games have to run on PS4. I fail to see your point.
Not true. There are now current gen only games, and the Xbox Series S is current gen. It’s really become a problem. I think Balder’s Gate is getting delayed on Xbox because of problems running it on S. Microsoft doesn’t allow developers to support the X and not the S.
I didn’t say they had the highest specs on paper, I said they were superior, and I was talking about now.
The PS5 outperforms the Series X in most games despite having slightly worse specs on paper. But it’s basically the same. The fact that you can get a digital console for $400 and add a standard Nvme drive instead of a proprietary card makes the whole package way cheaper too.
But I’d you want to talk about past consoles, the N64 having a much faster CPU didn’t matter a ton when the limitations of carriage storage prevented or delayed a lot of third party titles. They did the same thing by using the mini disc in the game cube. Sony screwed this up during the PS3 era with how difficult it was to program for. But the 360 was defective, and the wii was under powered and pretty much broke them off to do their own thing. so that’s really a wash.
Microsoft are no longer interested in selling consoles necessarily, otherwise they’d be holding stuff back from PC as well. They’re interested in getting people into their ecosystem through Game Pass.
And while I agree with you that Sony and Nintendo have used plenty of anti-consumer practices, Microsoft has also done so in the past and I think the only reason they’ve been more pro-consumer of late is because they’ve been the underdog for a long time now. I would be anticipating a change in their behaviour the more people they get to subscribe to Game Pass, and this Activision-Blizzard deal is a huge step towards that.
It’s ActiBlizz. You aren’t missing much.
As for Starfield, it’s a Bethesda game. Even if it weren’t exclusive to Microsoft platforms, you’d still be seriously missing out if you played it on anything other than PC. Bethesda games without mods, like sundaes without toppings, just aren’t complete.