Microsoft can now go ahead and close its giant deal.
This is a loss for consumers. Massive consolidation, lack of competition. Get ready for them to pull games from PlayStation as soon as they are contractually allowed to. Get ready for everything to be on Game Pass and possibly not on Steam. Worst case: they disable purchasing some games on Game Pass so you always need a subscription.
- They (both Microsoft and ActiBlizz) pulled games from Steam before, and they’re both back on Steam well ahead of this deal. I don’t see why that would change.
- We’ve now seen through court documents and transcripts what many of us suspected in that many of these games and studios that Microsoft purchased for exclusivity were Sony targets for exclusivity as well, so if we had to pick one, the company trailing in the market sounds like the better one to get them as exclusives.
- I can only see this as better for competition than Sony running away with the high-end console market, because then there’s realistically only one console to buy.
- All that said about the above, fuck exclusivity in general.
I see a lot of people using argument #2 and it’s really short-sighted to treat acquisition the same as exclusivity deals. However much I don’t like either, acquisitions are clearly worse. If you had to pick one, why would you wouldn’t just leave it as case-by-case exclusivity deals?
Say, SquareEnix and Atlus are fully capable of releasing games for other consoles even with all the exclusives they release for Playstation. And nothing stopped Microsoft from waving a wad of cash their way to change their minds.
There is absolutely no way such a large acquisition will be better for competition. The publishers become unable to make their own platform decisions, no matter what benefits there are. You are losing sight of the market as a whole and the independence of studios by focusing exclusively on who gets the #1 console crown.
so if we had to pick one,
Did we, though? Or maybe FTC could prevent further consolidation that will eventually result (and is already) in anticompetitive practices?
I can only see this as better for competition than Sony running away with the high-end console market, because then there’s realistically only one console to buy.
So now your choices will be: 1) pick the console that has more of your favorite games, or 2) now you have to buy BOTH consoles.
Fucking brilliant.
If you felt like you had to buy both consoles, that means the market got more competitive.
Microsoft creates demand for their system largely by buying up publishers and turning all their future games exclusive, that would otherwise have been multiplatform.
Sony and Nintendo create demand for their system largely by making great games in house, that otherwise never would have existed.
So yes you’re right but one is much shittier than the other.
The games made in house are functionally identical to buying a studio that already existed. It’s a game that can’t be played anywhere else for arbitrary business reasons. I’d consider Sony’s shittier, because I have to wait two years for a PC port, and Nintendo’s shittier still because those games will never legally leave their platform.
This can’t be any worse than the pile of shit blizzard became, and Activision had always been.
If they are truly a pile of shit, then they should fail. MS just wants 2 things: 1) big name games to drive purchase of their console, 2) that sweeeeet MTX money from CoD and King.
Maybe MS will make starcraft 3. That’s the dream.
Warcraft 4 would be nice, too.
