Xbox's Activision Blizzard Deal Could Be 'Harmful' To The Industry, Claims UK Regulator

OMG NO WAY this is a joke right?

I will hear about that on Destin) not some rubbish talk of CMA incompetent sonyboys. Since when Blizzard became world’s most important game publishers? X_X

@Kaloudz so much of the uk government(and the judicial system) is out of touch with reality it beggars belief.

An important detail is that the 10year offer to steam/nintendo was not considered at the phase 2 stage, and the cma states that would be considered in the next remedies phase which begins now.

I have tried reading the report and it's just really confusing. They list 3 structural remedies, but then mention that behavioural remedies may also be possible later in the report.

I think it's just a 'wait until the end of April and see' kind of situation as MS statement doesn't seem to indicate they are dropping the deal just yet

all a shambles. Just forget about it and move on.

Damn I thought I could cut my cost of yearly COD with 1 time subscription fee. Can't do that anymore. Government is too damn stubborn to milk my money and call that good for the people. Idiots are running the government.

@Kaloudz I did think at one point that being pm was the prize in a pass the parcel game

Why are these regulators so concerned with protecting Sony? Why is it that this one company is deemed so precious that government powers must intervene to protect it? Nobody cared when Sony bought their way into the industry and crushed Sega. Nobody cared when Nintendo showed up and crushed Atari. The industry has a history of leaders coming and going.

@JayJ Sega crushed themselves and Sony didn't buy up the industry when they entered gaming, funny thing though MS tried to buy Nintendo almost instantly so it looks like they never changed.

Its amazing the amount of corporate a$$ licking are giving MS over this deal on here.

@WallyWest Wow that's some revisionist history there bud, Sony was famously buying their way in after the deal went south with Nintendo.

They should just pull out of the deal at this point, especially when the FTC come out with the same conclusion and findings.

Hell, It's blindingly obvious WHO is really the one controlling the investigation due to the 'suggestion' that 'removing Call Of Duty' would be a good remedy, or Microsoft just taking Blizzard.

That reads more like 'Just give Sony everything they want and more and we'll allow it to go through'.

In their mind Microsoft is a bigger company because they mail with outlook and they write reports in windows.

In entertainment it’s absolutely the contrary though. And it would be wise to let a company like microsoft be able to compete with sony…

Man it will be hilarious if UK stands their ground on this, and MS goes through with it anyway and then cant sell activision games in the UK. What a huge win for UK consumers that would be brought to you by the CMA.

Hopefully EA will buy Activision, Xbox will then buy EA, then Sony will buy Microsoft, then Nintendo will buy Sony, then SEGA will buy Nintendo, then we can play the perfect hybrid game , God of Wario Duty Legends on the Dreamcast 2.

so FTC, CMA, EU all against, wonder what concessions MS will have to make.

regulators are behind the curve on big tech, but they are willing to go against them... EU and Apple chargers recently.

the CMA does actually do a decent job on large mergers, they have stepped in around mobile/supermarkets in recent years.

MS will have known it would be opposed. they will have prepared.

its all down to what the concessions are and if that leaves it viable

@Friendly MS is a much bigger company than Sony???

I feel that way too much importance is put upon COD, sure its a huge seller but let's not pretend that God of War hasn't already sold 11 million copies with the upcoming Spider-Man likely to match or even eclipse that. With or without COD Playstation will continue to flourish on the strength of its own exclusives and the many, many other games

@themightyant Sony themselves may not even want it on PS Plus, even if its on Gamepass as they still get a percentage of each sale of the game. Let's not forget that Sony's own MLB The Show is on Gamepass but not PS Plus, that just isn't their business model

Let's look at the remedies the CMA are suggesting...

1. Microsoft and ABK put Call Of Duty up for sale for anyone to buy. Now, even if Sony aren't allowed to put a offer in, you can guarantee they'll put the usual pressure whatever company does, and it becomes 100% Playstation Exclusive. Sony win.

2. Microsoft spins Activision back off as it's own company. Again, Sony could easily approach New Activision and claim excessive control over Call Of Duty behind the CMA's back, due to their way of doing exclusivity, which doesn't trip their checks.

3. Microsoft buys King. Sony laugh their head off at how much Microsoft paid for a mobile platform.

All the offered remedies are not going to help Microsoft one bit, and will only benefit Sony in the long run. This judgement by the CMA is a massive success for Sony.

I don't think the CMA have a clue about what is in the consumers best interests. Apparently it's better to pay £70 for CoD than be provided with the option of access for the cost of a gamepass subscription. Consumer choice is a bad thing, let the CMA make the choice for you.

Also, with regards to gamepass becoming a monopoly, have they heard of Netflix? The once dominant monopoly within the video streaming market who were replaced by Disney plus within a few years and are being challenged by both HBO and Amazon? Ironically, the CMA approved Disney acquisition of fox has led to a more competitive landscape within video streaming and has also led to cheaper pricing for consumers in the form of ad-subsidized netflix subscriptions.

Microsoft owning CoD isn't going to kill off PlayStation or lead to a monopoly within subscription based gaming services - Microsoft's IP, even with ActiBlizz, doesn't come close to monopolizing the total sales count of the video game market (even ignoring mobile and Nintendo).

There's other companies with Microsoft level money capable of challenging gamepass in the future should the business model prove profitable (which it currently isn't). Netflix was posting significant losses for the opening years of it's existence, it wasn't until it started profiting that other players entered the market.

Finally, should the ActiBlizz deal go through, it will effectively end Microsoft's acquisition spree - the growth in exclusive owned IP will be restricted to home grown generated titles. The huge number of remaining titles, studios and publishers will remain independent from Microsoft studios.

@ABNJ because it says so in the cmas report. The 10year offer will only be considered at the next stage

@Kaloudz The point isn't that they're considering the 10 year offer 'at the next stage', it's that their ideal offer is to literally give Sony the keys to the kingdom, with no other choice.

If the CMA's offer was 'Sell Activision' or 'Sell Blizzard' or 'Sell King' or any combination of the above, that would be pro-consumer. That the offer is 'You sell Call Of Duty OR you sell Activision OR you only buy King at a ridiculous price', says that the current offer is that they give Sony a perfect way to acquire control of CoD for the foreseeable for little financial gain.

That the ten year deal and everything else is to be considered AFTER pushing for this completely unworkable divesting deal, well, Microsoft need to persuade them that they're listening to the wrong people.

At this point, selling CoD sounds like the least offensive to MS, because then the deal will go through and then the heat of these “exclusivity wars” goes to Sony. CoD is not all that is worth MS has been pursuing. Sony ought to be questioned and be giving a public grilling with the same heat for a full view of the competition… and what Sony will do can be turned against them, if talks and rumors play as they would.

In the end whatever way this deal goes, it won’t end well for Sony.

releasing COD on Nintendo platforms is harmfull for sony in Asia, to be clear

How would it reduce the competition? Wouldn’t it only increase it.

The CMA's offer would be like if, when Disney acquired Marvel, the FTC went up to them and suggested they either:

A) Sold the Avengers to DC or IDW.
B) Allowed the Marvel Comics imprint to spin off on it's own.
C) Allowed the Marvel Comics imprint and any Marvel movie rights to go to the highest bidder.

Option A would cripple their early financial gains from the deal, since they just gave up their biggest asset.
Option B would sound better, but the rights would be a nightmare for a long time.
Option C... So what exactly do they buy then?!

@themightyant absolutely they could....if they pay for it. It's why MLB is on gamepass.....cuz Xbox paid to have it there. They've already said that they are willing to have it on other supscription services.

For Pushsquare, They're interested intently in every stumble Microsoft does, looking forward to CoD Exclusivitiy in 2123 for Sony.

For Purexbox, they're actually reporting on something that will affect Xbox's output for 2023.

@themightyant

This is disingenuous. Microsoft want to add CoD to Game Pass at no added cost, if it is truly "100 percent equal" are we safe to assume it will be appearing Day 1 on PS+ and NSO too? Didn't think so.

No offense but to me its this logic loop that sounds disingenuous. Its as much as claiming they will get 100% of the revenue from the game on XBox while Sony will only get 30%.

Microsoft did state they would offer CoD day one to PlayStation if they wanted it, but that (obviously) wont come for free, just as CoD sales wont come at 100% revenue to Sony either. They will need to negotiate a fair deal given the size and impact of the IP, and even if it was a bargain, I doubt Sony would want it, because they are simply not fans of big day one games on the service.

@themightyant Microsoft has already stated that they would allow Sony to put Call of Duty on Playstation Plus... so it is not as disingenuous as people think.

It is really simple for MS at this point. They just need to pull a Sony. Sell of CoD to a different studio then pay that studio for exclusive rights to the game, similar to what Sony is doing with Square Enix. If they keep it up, Sony is about ready to find out the difference between "petty" and "multi-billion dollar company with deep pockets petty".

@Neither_scene

Ironically, the CMA approved Disney acquisition of fox has led to a more competitive landscape within video streaming and has also led to cheaper pricing for consumers in the form of ad-subsidized netflix subscriptions.

Its interesting you bring up Disney, since their preliminary report also found that said merger was "against the public interest due to media plurality concerns", yet it went through.

The EU also approved it but only subject to Disney selling interest in factual TV channels (A+E Television Networks, History, H2, Crime & Investigation, Blaze and Lifetime) in Europe. Disney still owns History and Lifteime but does not own the local EEA channels.

In the US they had the condition of selling Fox's 22 regional sport networks.

XBox spinning of CoD is a harder proposition than this, as noted Disney (i think) still owns History and Lifetime, just not the local EU channels, and the US sports networks were of little interest to them (well, I'm sure they would had loved a monopoly on sports content) since their biggest goal was to get their hands on the movie content and re-absorb licensed Marvel IPs.

Spinning off CoD is a lot more complex, since that does not mean spinning off the development studios. Forcing MS to sell off the CoD IP does not mean anyone would have the resources to continue making the games, and trying to sell that IP, and practically every ABK studio has been involved to various degrees on making CoD entries, so a structural remedy, IMO, is simply not viable for anyone. The most viable outcome would result in the death of the IP.

@Gloki_junior To be fair videogame prices have largely remained immune to inflation for the last 20 years. I'm not saying every game is worth $70 but I do know that I paid £60 each for Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask on the N64 in 2000.

Microsoft has publicly said that it will treat the ABK acquisition with the same approach as the Mojang acquisition: IP's will be available on other platforms.

I just don't know how many more ways Microsoft can say that before it sticks.

Typical government verdict that is completely backwards. The deal would make xbox and playstation more competitive not less. Without the deal Sony is far ahead, with the deal Sony is still ahead but only slightly.

This document is absurd. It's a document that drafts a rejection based on NOT actually considering the offers and proposals on the table to remedy it in advance, which will be taken into account in the next round. So basically it's a 5 month late long form document based on the initial conclusions 5 months ago, before they look deeper into it?

Isn't this like a document outlining how CoD could be made a more competitive shooter with improvements to the ranking ladders, by someone who just finished the campaign and hasn't played an online match yet?

What is the actual purpose of a document that highlights that it doesn't actually take current information into account? Only governments can produce entire documents over 5 months that tell you "we haven't looked at this properly yet, we'll do that before the next one."

I'm also bemused at the complete lack of understanding of business in general, let alone the specifics of this business in general, that their suggesting to get rid of CoD from the deal, as that's the most valuable reason MS would pay $70b for this company, and without that brand the deal is worth $30b at best, and it doesn't offer how ABK would manage to spin off "CoD" as its own one-product company. Trying to turn ABK into said one product company is how they ended up in a mess of needing to sell in the first place. CoD is an especially hard sell because it takes most of the operating expenses of the whole of ABK to operate, ie, the part that caused them financial instability. And ironically they didn't even talk about King, which is the only actual highly profitable part of the entirety of ABK, accounting for over half it's revenue with only a fraction of it's operating expenses. And then that leaves CoD as a financially infeasible remaining company to be bought by any other company....and the only ones with any interest would be other companies that want to make it exclusive and "foreclose on key content the industry" (Sony, Amazon, Google, Apple...)

Most hilarious is the suggestion to buy only Blizzard and leave ABK and King. Who would buy the tiny, barely profitable arm of mostly PC-only games and dormant IP that has been cannibalized to feed CoD?

If you couldn't already tell government types don't actually know how to make money because they're used to the mix of begging for money, and simply taking it by force, this sure highlights it.

What I would love to know is their ruling on the current status quo of CoD, since that's still what this is stuck on, where one company purchases the rights for marketing, branding, exclusive content, etc, making the product devalued to competitors. If this whole thing could lead to a carte blanche end of 3rd party platform deals, I'd call it a net win for competition even if nobody buys anybody.

@stvevan please read my comment again and then try again.

@GamingFan4Lyf

Microsoft has publicly said that it will treat the ABK acquisition with the same approach as the Mojang acquisition: IP's will be available on other platforms.

Not exactly, they said this exclusively about Call of Duty, not about the whole acquisition. They have been very careful to not put more in the table than they have to, and can make absolutely everything else exclusive to Xbox without having actually lied, although we know every PlayStation fan will insist they did lie the minute ABK publishes an Xbox console exclusive game.

@Microbius Pushsquare are the drizzling sh*ts.

I have no idea where this acquisition is going anymore.

@NEStalgia

What is the actual purpose of a document that highlights that it doesn't actually take current information into account?

Legal procedures and bureaucracy (not saying this in a negative connotation). It's part of every such procedure and helps inform the general public about the current state of a legal process, it also cements down concerns, from now on they cant simply say "oh, we just thought about another potential issue!!!", as it stands, as far as the CMA goes, this is the official and final list of issues any solution, be it the ones they suggest or ones that come during negotiations.

Divestment is listed as their preferred solution because its one of the most common solutions used during these mergers, and as they note, dont require long term monitoring. Obviously its not necessarily viable, since there is no such a thing as a "CoD team", absolutely all of ABK is involved in those projects at one level or another, its all very intertwined. This is where their 15.a clause will kick in: Divestment and/or prohibition is not feasable, or the relevant cost of any feasible structural remedy far exceeds the scale of the adverse effects of the SLC;

Also look at the document at 15.c (another reason to approach behavioral remedies):
behavioral measures will preserve substantial relevant customer benefits (RCBs) that would be largely removed by structural remedies.

In this case, a structural remedy would hinder the development of the IP, while Microsoft's suggested remedy (considered a behavioral one) of offering the game would preserve the development process, access to the game, and even expand availability to new platforms (Switch for one.)

Anyways I derailed a bit from my original point: all these things, now documented in an immutable document (disclaimer: no clue if they have legal/bureaucratic means to amend this beyond the current form,) allow for every party involved to have a much more directed negotiation starting point.

@themightyant It's not necessarily cost prohibitive. XBox themselves drive a subscription service and they offer multiple ways of compensation to publishers and developers that want to jump on board, some are all up front money, others are royalty/time share based.

MS and Sony can negotiate a royalty/time share based form that simply means a percentage of the subscription fees gathered from paying users, relative to the time they spend in that game and other games in the subscription, is owed to the publisher (in this case it would be XBox.)

Such a deal would never result in a net-loss for Sony, and would be completely viable, should they want it.

@themightyant not sure I'm following... you're saying they should give it away for free? They shouldn't be allowed to make it so expensive it's restrictive but if you say you expect to sell X, if it's in your service we expect to lose Y....pay us Y. This is just expected no?

CMA totally out of touch, reading the full article seems like they asked their children for advice!
They firstly have an issue with cloud gaming, claiming MS will have a monopoly in the future, well forgive me but what is stopping Sony from investing billions to build a global network then? And they claim you need an expensive console to access it? Clearly showing the CMA have very little understanding of what cloud gaming actually is.

Ludicrous decisions by a ludicrous quango, good luck to MS negotiating a deal with them, although I’m sure they will. I expect Ryan is flying to the UK right now to have words with them though.

@Tharsman Right, but, it took them 5 months to draft a document that effectively says nothing new at all, that should have been published 5 months ago at the start. If it takes 5 months to come up with what the STARTING point is....it implies they didn't actually know what they were even exploring when they voted to explore it.

If they were a for profit company, taking 5 months to decide "NOW we know what our project goals are!" would not fly. But in government? This is normal.

Of course this has sent the internet into a feeding frenzy on "UK drafts blocking the deal!" when the reality is "UK spends 5 months of taxpayer money drafting the document that formally announces the rules of the challenge they announced months ago which is to begin at another time."

@Snake_V5 "Because they know Sony and PlayStation is number 1, the king."

Clearly they do not, because if they did, they would be fast tracking the deal to reverse that. Their job is ensuring competition. A "#1 king" is the kind of thing their job is meant to end.

@NEStalgia example today, a UK government committee of cross party MP’s have presented a proposal for any British MP who loses their seat after 2 years, should be awarded 160,000 pounds payout in cash and a medal for their services…

That’s the type of people who tell the CMA their remit to operate.

@NEStalgia I am not in the UK, and dont know their laws beyond what I can google up, but it is very common practice for regulatory agencies to give ample time for all affected parties to communicate their concerns on these matters, analyze it all, and discard the irrelevant points or consolidate quasi-redundant ones into comprehensive ones that go a bit more to the point.

Heck, we know Jimmy was flying all over the place (again) just what, a couple weeks ago, trying to do a last effort at convincing everyone this should not go through?

This is honestly far from the "starting point". It does feel like its taken longer than 5 months, though... almost feel like 2 years now...

Edit:
Also the 5 months is not spent working exclusively on this, there are a lot of other things going on all the time and they need to work on all of them in tangent. They might hold hearings or meetings maybe once a week to move forward because other days of the week are dedicated to other ongoing discussions and procedures. It's not like anyone goes "oh! 70 billion merger! We can't do anything else for the next two months but this, everything else can just be ignored!"

Edit 2:
Just went to their website, right now the CMA has 94 open cases, confirming my point that they are working on a lot of things in parallel.

@JayJ Exclusive deals sure but actually owning? Not at all. MS outright tried to buy Nintendo but they laughed them off.

@S1ayeR74 I may know little about UK politics, but I know it was UK politicians that invented American politics....I I feel I have a sufficient grasp of their nature....

@Fenbops Dude PS, PX and NL are all the same and the mindset of its writers and readers is all the same. You aren't better on here you're all still fanboys to your plastic Corp box like PS and NL readers are to there's.

@Tharsman It should have taken no more than a few weeks to put together a document that is meant to outline the INITIAL criteria, the INITIAL challenge was meant to address. Any investigation required to assemble said document should have already concluded BEFORE the challenge was initially filed. If they spent months initially reviewing, enough to issue a challenge, but then took 5 MORE months to figure out what their challenge actually does, either the time before the filing was made was wasted, or the time after.

That's not specific to this case. That's a rebuke on the entirety of a process that has months of evaluation then a filing made, then months MORE of evaluation to figure out why the filing was made.

@NEStalgia its simply what you get when you simply cannot say "everything else is put on hold until this one thing is done." It's not that government agencies are incompetent, it's that they deal with a huge amount of workflow that affect a huge amount of people, nothing gets to be done unilaterally (so no "bob, you do this one and nothing else until its done,) plenty of hands need to be involved and discuss things, again, while working on plenty of other unrelated things.

A private company gets the luxury of assigning things to a single employee or two and telling them not to work on anything else until that is done.

@themightyant

That would assume Microsoft would be making a hundreds of millions of dollars relative loss. That isn't going to happen.

Under what criteria?
If CoD was to go into PSN Extra, and a user only plays that game from there, PlayStation might have to pay up to 70% of that user's subscription for the month to ABK, potentially every single month of the year. This is separate from all microtransactions spent on the title.

I think this is where the disconnect many have over "XBox is obviously losing money on Game Pass", something Phil Spencer has clearly stated is not so. They likely pay up front to smaller games that are skeptical of the time share model as their title being small might not secure enough played time, but larger companies will be much more likely to insist on time share as they know they will bring a lot more attention.

They can also always do an in-between, decent amount up front, and a smaller time share revenue split.

These are all examples, but Xbox has managed to make things work profitably for themselves and for third party publishers that keep coming back to even throw day one games like Plague Tale into the mix, so obviously they have a formula that is profitable for all parties involved. Maybe in the negotiation process Sony gets to learn a thing or two about how to make day one games work on their service.

Keep in mind that Epic does not pay for subscription fees, hell they have no subscription fees to finance their free game giveaways, they are practically buying the copies for their users as a marketing cost strategy to lure more users to their store.

Same is true for PSN Essential tier.

I think we did hear Microsoft pays less to have Ark on game pass than Sony paid to have it in the PSN Essential tier, because one is a temporary stay, the other one is basically a lifetime giveaway.

@WallyWest I didn’t mention the readers or fanboi’s.

@WallyWest Playstation would have never been a thing if it wasn't for Nintendo laughing off Sony's proposed partnership. It resulted in Sony aggressively buying their way into the industry with exclusivity deals and incentives, heck they were so ruthless that it effectively eliminated the Sega Saturn and put Sega in a desperate position where they eventually had to leave the hardware industry soon after the PS2 launched. Heck Nintendo was struggling to compete with Sony until they struck lightning in a bottle with the Wii and had wild success with that. Before that it was looking like Sony was going to eliminate Nintendo the same way they did Sega, and Xbox was so small that they weren't even a consideration for Sony until the 360 came along. Heck the 360 shook Sony so hard they still haven't gotten over it, it's the only real direct competition they have had. Right now Sony is just complaining about how they can no longer ruthlessly dominate an entire industry because some other company with more money came along and decided to get serious and use their own tactics against them.

@Snake_V5 Well if Sony is #1, "the king," and doing so well, why do they need regulators doing everything they can to look out for them?

@JayJ Sega doomed themselves and Sony weren't buying up entire Corps to create a monopoly. You can argue it however you want but it doesn't change the facts.

If Microsoft comes into possession of these major franchises they will mismanage and doom all of them, as they've done for every franchise they own bar Forza.

@JayJ, Nintendo didn't "laugh off" Sony's proposal, they reneged on the deal by going behind Sony's back & trying to strike a deal with Phillips. Not saying it wasn't smart of them to pull out (given that Sony would have gotten most of the profits from disc based games, which is where most of the money would be coming from in the future), but they could have went about it in a better way. It's hard to pinpoint a "bad guy" in that situation.

Sony's domination over Nintendo/Sega during the 5th & 6th gens I'd say is more down to the mistakes of the latter two moreso than dirty tricks on the part of Sony as well I'd say. Nintendo screwed themselves over by using carts on the N64 (this was the reason FFVII moved to PS, not an exclusively deal on Sony's part) & proprietary smaller capacity discs on GCN. SEGA was famously mismanaged & made many mistakes of their own accord (they PO'd retailers by suddenly changing Saturn release plans after the PS reveal, then PO'd their playerbase by unceremoniously dropping support for it years before the Dreamcast released. I believe the 32X & Mega CD attachments for the Genesis/MD were big money sinks for them as well beforehand). A large part of the PS2's success was it's use as a DVD player as well, rather than dirty tricks in the gaming space.

If Sony had outright bought Capcom, Square, Namco (etc.) when they entered the market you'd have a point (and would be similar to this deal's potential), but that's not at all what happened in the 90's.

I personally don't care whether or not this deal goes through or not (I mostly play Japanese games, & have a PC if there's any MS exclusive games I really want to play) & I'm not saying Sony is some sort of benevolent force in the industry who does no wrong, but there's no excuse for revisionist history.

@WallyWest No. You are the one blatantly trying to rewrite history here. It's well documented what happened, and your take sounds extremely biased in Sony's favor.

@RR529 Sorry but your take sounds a lot more like an attempt to defend Sony than acknowledge what actually happened.

@JayJ Though Nintendo would have never abandoned the parntership, that was near completion, had Sony's lawyers not snuck int a sleazy clause that gave them the rights to all Nintendo products published on optical disc...Though Yamauchi did a classic Yamauchi and burned all bridges as a result. If not for that we'd happily be playing on Nintendo Playstation to this day, and we'd probably have the Sega Series X right now.

Then again, a lot of Sony higher ups didn't see Xbox as a threat and intended to publish Sony software on it. It was Ken Kutaragi's tirade that prevented them from doing so and set up the adversarial relationship. The father of PS, but also the father of "six hundred ninety nine US dollars" did this. Had he not stampeded, Sony may well likely have been happily selling GoW on Xbox all along. Not all of SIE was all in on the exclusives thing. They were a software publisher, like MS before they made PS. Plenty of management still wanted to be.

I agree with @RR529 largely though. Sony dominated in the 5th and 6th gen, principally because they were the most dev friendly, and consumer friendly platform, and represented the best consumer value during that time period while Nintendo was being classic self-important Nintendo, and Sega was busy shooting themselves in both feet and flipping off their remaining partners.

Then in the position of power, Sony started emulating Nintendo.... "Out of touch, arrogant" Playstation started with PS3, but it backfired and Hirai quickly backtracked and fix their image. "Evil, anti-consumer" PS didn't really begin until mid-PS4 generation, when they had no competition, and that's where we still are. It's at that time they also became more of a "media" company and started using film/music industry nasty tactics (which is as nasty as anything this side of banking/finance) rather than acting as a gaming company.

@Tharsman That's all fine and good, but this criteria had to have been established BEFORE the initial movement. This represents filing the movement and THEN figuring out what it's about. Each time spending months figuring it out. "Things take forever because too few people are working on too many things" sounds like 343i runs government.

@themightyant PS and MS get a 30% cut of digital sales and the licensing fee. For physical, retailers get a lions share of the difference. ABK gets the rest. For Sony, putting it on Extra, vs their deal with ABK now, means losing that up-to 30% revenue from initial retail digital purchase ,and some smaller amount from loss of retail sales which was a smaller amount to begin with after wholesale pricing, but also not paying the lump sum for rights. It's a loss, but not that tremendous loss as it sounds.

The real money, as even Sony' earnings highlight, are not from retail sales of this game, it's from the mtx. Their cut would be unaffected, and potentially gain additional mtx sales by reaching a larger potential player base.

Would the whole thing represent some amount of loss for PS vs the current model? Likely. Would it be nearly as devastating on the ledger as you're proposing? No. Would post-MS CoD even have an annual retail release? Questionable. Does future MS-less ABK CoD even have annual retail releases long-term? Also questionable. It's principal competitor is Fortnite which does not.

MS should agree to COD for everyone as they said. And after the deal they should stop making COD games and bring back the Medal of Honor brand and put the exact same teams and make the exact same games just called Medal of Honor. That would be hilarious.

@Kaloudz You gave us your tea...but then mandated we had to buy it only from you, and then charged privilege tax for buying it from you...

Yep.........not much has changed

@Kaloudz UK is the best importer and distributor of tea that doesn't grow in the UK in the world

It'd be better with scones and croquet though.... I'd compromise for polo.

@WallyWest But Sony did buy there way to success though when they launched the PS1. First of all they bought a UK publisher called Psygnosis to bolster the EU & US market. Then went around funding projects left, right & centre like Ridge Racer, Tekken & Final Fantasy 7 to name but a few. It's a formula that has been successful as there still doing it today.

@Kaloudz Us English and our tea. We’re a strange breed adding milk 😜 Give me a lovely cup of tea pigs green tea any day though!

@JayJ as far as my understanding goes, @RR529 is mostly correct with minor issue: Sony did buy a huge chunk of then Squaresoft (18.6%) making sure in the process they could control what platform Squaresoft could publish games on. It was so tight of a grip that Squaresoft had to create a shell company to publish FF Crystal Chronicles on Nintendo Platforms.

Isnt it sony that had drove the priced up? hardly buy new games for my ps5 as they are so expensive. Can get multiplays half the price on my PC

@cragis0001 They didn't enter and have the nerve to think they could buy Nintendo nor did they try to buy SquareSoft, EA and so on. MS with gaming have always half arsed it and think a powerful console solves it all, they entered it but just wanted everyone else doing their work for them and they are the same now when MS key aim is to buy games not create them. This year the Xbox's biggest releases are Forza, Redfall and Starfield but two of them are only 1st party because Bethesda were bought by MS and if they weren't it would mean another bad year for Xbox with MS relying on Forza as ever as SF and Redfall would be on PS consoles as well. MS own all these studios yet all we're seeing is the same stuff or niche smaller stuff. Sony aren't perfect far from it but right from the off they never half arsed it, they took it seriously and invested in games and Devs and its led to where they are now where a new 1st party game from them is treated like a gaming event.

I love my Series S and play most days and last week i bought every Splinter Cell game as i really wanted to replay them and that's something i can't do on PS due how awful Sony are with letting you play older games so yeah i support Xbox as it offers a lot of great stuff over PS but MS? They're scum and up there with Google, Apple, Disney and Tencent, they are not a nice company and i just laugh at how much Xbox fanboys bend over for them.

@BrilliantBill Disney bought Fox, Marvel AND Lucas arts. I’m still baffled how that one was allowed.

Glad that they're not rolling over and letting a large company merge with another for once. I didn't see any advantages to gamers or developers by letting this deal go through and further consolidating an already successful and profitable market.

@PhileasFragg This deal almost certainly go through. The Disney/Fox merger was slightly larger (dollar wise) and also got similar findings on their reports, still went through at the end.

They are a bunch of clueless clowns.

@WallyWest I agree it is pretty arrogant but it would had have served the same purpose as Sony buying Psygnosis did 😐. But you don't complain at that!!! I'm glad they were laughed out the building to be fair. You mention Microsoft's first party line up. Let's look at Sony's first party 2023 lineup then. We have a VR Horizon, and an Expansion to another title in the series by a studio Sony purchased. Spiderman 2 an IP they paid to use, by a studio they purchased 🤣🤣. Sony has half arsed it. It was called the PS3 era. I'm glad you have fun on your Series S I do. Deep down all tech companies are scum but your doing the same for Sony. I can see the FTC hearing in August being extremely ugly, Epic Vs Apple ugly. I expect some shady practices from Sony to be exposed which hopefully breaks the camels back when it comes to acquisitions & may hold exclusive deals more to scrutiny which is a win for all consumers.