Microsoft President: Activision Deal Should be Approved Because PlayStation Has More Exclusives - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 December 2022 / 9,204 Views
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith at Microsoft's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday says one reason the acquisition of Activision Blizzard should be passed is because PlayStation has 70 percent of the global market, while the Xbox has 30 percent.
This is based on the market the FTC identified as "high performance gaming consoles" that currently only consists of the PlayStation and Xbox. He added PlayStation has 286 exclusives compared to 59 for Xbox.
"The FTC's case is really based on a market that they've identified that they say has two companies and two products, Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox," said Smith (and transcribed by Bloomberg).
"If you look at the global market, Sony has 70% of that market, and we have 30%. So the first thing a judge is going to have to decide is whether the FTC lawsuit is a case that will promote competition or is it really instead of case that will protect the largest competitor from competition."
He added, "So the administrative law judge is going to have to decide whether going from 59 to 60 is such a danger to competition that he should stop this from moving forward."
The FTC last week announced it would seek to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard claiming the deal would give Microsoft the ability to suppress its competitors in gaming. The deal is not only the largest in Microsoft history, but also the largest in the video game industry as a whole.
There was a report that Microsoft offered Sony the right to add Call of Duty to its PlayStation Plus subscription service if its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is approved. This offer would be in addition to the guarantee that Microsoft will release Call of Duty games on PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam for the next 10 years.
Microsoft last week announced Microsoft has entered a 10-year commitment with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is approved.
The company offered the same deal to Valve to guarantee the series on Steam, however, Valve President Gabe Newell says he did not sign Microsoft's long-term Call of Duty commitment has he trusts their intentions.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Of course PS does, it had more studios before Xbox acquisiton spree (2018). Now Xbox has 24 1st party studios and PS 22, once Xbox new studios start churning out new games Xbox will have more exclusives, on top of the countless number of IP they have acquired. Silly argument to make, although I still think the deal will go through.
This comparison has more to do with the influence Sony has with 3rd party games. Hence why Brad said, Sony has 286 vs 59 for Xbox. Most of those exclusives are 3rd party because studios are choosing to release their games on the more popular system. 1st party are not the majority of those exclusives.
Fair enough, but I thought PS5 and series X have similar architecture? Why would they release exclusively on PS5? Also Xbox could offer to put the games day 1 on gamepass?
Shikamaru317 explains the reasons well in his post. Some developers only have the resources to release on 1 platform so most will pick the most popular. Many Asian devs are fully skipping Xbox for what could be a number of reasons.
Overall Xbox is getting better support than last gen, Game Pass has some to do with it, but it's still not close to what Sony receives.
The comparison is nothing but PR spin. Same as when they grouped PS Vita numbers into PS totals, or how they're including PS4/Xbox One numbers because 70%/30% sounds a lot better than 16%/12% for current gen. At every stage try to make Sony look bigger, and Microsoft look smaller.
It takes no account of developer headcount, studios, acquisitions, timelines, or even the size scale and territorial breakdown of those exclusives. It's cherry-picking at its finest.
It's an attempt to make you believe Microsoft need to "catch up" and even with this acquisition will be smaller, when in reality, this purchase will give them over 3 times the number of developers Sony have.
Regardless of what side you're defending, we're on a sales website that deals with numbers, we can call out obvious spin when we see it.
The FTC is the one completely leaving out the Switch because it's not a "high end gaming console." Brad is using their argument against them to show how PS dominates the market in both sales and number of exclusives. Combining last gen and current gen isn't misleading. Sony, MS, and 3rd party devx are still relying on those large userbases to generate revenue. I will agree Vita is misleading but even if we take it out Sony is still has the vast majority of console sales.
If this deal passes, tides aren't going to suddenly turn in Xbox's favor and become the market leader in consoles. Chances are this deal doesn't change who the market leader is going forward. CoD is the only franchise that has any large purchasing influence when it comes to ABK on console and it's not leaving PS if the deal passes.
I see alot of people didn't actually read the article. Alot of the comments are basically "of course Sony has more exclusives, they invested more into their 1st party alot earlier than Xbox did". That is true. However, Brad is talking about alot more than just 1st party here, he is talking about 3rd party exclusives as well. They key part is: " He added PlayStation has 286 exclusives compared to 59 for Xbox". This is an accurate statement by Brad, Sony gets more 3rd party exclusives by default, simply because they are the market leader. Indies, Japanese and other Asian devs in particular, often release Playstation exclusives or timed exclusives without Sony even needing to moneyhat exclusivity on them, simply because they are the market leader. If you only have the resources to release on one platform ever, or on one platform at launch with other platform ports later, most devs will choose the market leader for that only/first port.
In that regard, Brad is right to say that Sony holds most of the exclusive market right now, and that this acquisition would help to level the playing field. An Xbox console and a Sony console that are practically neck and neck, like we saw with 360 vs PS3, levels the playing field alot in terms of 3rd party exclusives, alot more devs would choose Xbox for their first or only platform, and many more would choose to go multiplat to start with instead of releasing an exclusive or timed exclusive.
Doubtful as long as gamepass is on Xbox they won't. Unless the game is dat one on gamepass. The whole point of gamepass is that you have acces to a lot of games so you have to buy less games. Even if Xbox sells more units than PlayStation they probably won't see XS as the dominant platform unless they get money to release it on gamepass day one or the title is free to play.
And of course these Indie exclusives (even though Xbox fans tell us Xbox is much better for Indies fans and devs alike) and Japan niche titles hold the same weight as ABK titles and Bethesda right?
No but Sony being the market leader does hold more weight and this deal makes the market place between the two of them more competitive something everyone should be wanting as like shikamaru said. Competition is great in any industry as it means consumers get better deals.
Right now it is looking like the only exclusives Xbox might get out of ABK are Crash, Spyro, and maybe Tony Hawk, at least for this gen. The final 2 years of the Sony CoD marketing deal + the 10 year deal Xbox is willing to sign will keep CoD on Playstation through 2034 at least, and Xbox may well choose to keep it multiplat after that. Overwatch 2 is already on PS5 and will likely be the only Overwatch game this generation, and even if Overwatch 3 is a late gen release I could see Xbox keeping it on PS5 since it already has a built in player base for GaaS microtransaction purchases. As for Diablo, Diablo 4 is coming to PS5, and there was a 12 year gap between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, and an 11 year gap between Diablo 3 and Diablo 4, so it stands to reason then that Diablo 5 won't release until sometime in the middle of next-gen, PS6's life, so Diablo will remain on PS the rest of this gen. Neither WoW nor the next Starcraft are likely to release on any console, and even if they do, I could see MS keeping them multiplat.
That pretty much just leaves Activision's franchises other than CoD as potential exclusives; Crash, Spyro, Tony Hawk, Prototype if Xbox decides to revive it. Activision honestly doesn't own much, they mainly published licensed superhero games in the past, and those licensing agreements have all expired. And yes, I would say that Sony's Final Fantasy hats are bigger than Crash, Spyro, or Tony Hawk in terms of sales.
I don't get the impression Microsoft was looking for any exclusives out of ABK. My impression is that they bought ZeniMax to boost exclusives, and ABK to boost their subscription services. If they make a new Spyro, for example, I'd expect it to come to Switch as well. If they made a new Tony Hawk, I'd expect it to come to PS as well. But cost full price on the other platforms, yet be included in Game Pass. That kind of thing.
Don, the problem with your thinking is you believe in its only fair if it has the same weight and not if its the same thing. Buying studios is buying studios.
Sony can go out and get a loan and buy EA and Take Two but they choose not to. Just because MS has the cash doesnt mean they cannot spend it.
Ok so let's go for the same thing. During PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 time show one big publisher Sony bought.
They brought Psygnosis.
Yes I'm sure Psygnosis was a major publisher with titles selling 20M+ yearly.
You asked the question, and I answered the question.
Psygnosis was a major publisher in the 80s and 90s. They made Lemmings which was a massive IP at the time.
Fair enough if we ignore the differences.
What games did they include in their calculation?
Current gen only or last gen, too?
Also did they include all the BC games only running on Xbox?
What is the combined revenue of all these so called exclusive games?
What is the accumulated user engagement generated by those games in regards of getting them to sign up to their services?
What is the current market share of both companies if you compare their current platforms?
In what directions are these platforms trending?
What about the growth of their services?
Whenever I see comparisons to last gen I always see big plusses on Xbox and big minusses on Playstation.
And lastly how would all of ABKs large scale service games (it is not only a +1 like the guy in the article suggests) negatively impact the market if Microsoft decides to stop playing nice and pull the switch in the near future?
These numbers are taken so out of context an are isolated in a deliberately misleading way it is not even worth talking about.
Again, we are not talking about some random studio with a handfull of small to mid-tier IPs. We are talking about the biggest independent multi platform publisher and they got to that size for a reason. This is way bigger than this constructed "59+1" situation painted in the article.
This is obvious to everyone who's reasonable.
Especially the FACT that most of Sony's exclusives are 3rd party, due to their superior position, and the Japanese bias of many Japanese studios favouring Sony.
Xbox is trying to counter that dominance and favouritism by building up their own in-house exclusives, and some 3rd party deals of their own.
BTW I'm only for this deal for the short-mid term. As soon as Xbox possibly gets too greedy and too dominant which might be bad for gamers, then I'll be against that.
Microsoft the company is the 2nd biggest company in the world. After Microsoft bought Bethesda the very first thing the board ask Phil Spencer was who are you going to purchase next? My preference right now, is Microsoft bought a lot of companies Sony bought a few companies. Let's see where we are at the end of this generation after years of Microsoft's new companies coming out with quality games. I have a feeling it's going to be pretty close at the end of this generation regardless of Actiivsion, with Xbox ending within 15-20 million of PS5's total install base. Regardless of if this deal goes through...Activision games are going to be on both Xbox and PC.
I think there's some truth to that. If the FTC argument was something like "Zenimax and MS have not yet seen fruition and approving a new bigger merger have a high likelihood to produce unforeseen juggernaut that could have to much sway on the market" I could agree to it. But instead they used mostly bullshit argument like blocking the deal to support unions despite the fact that concerned unions approve of it.
Depends how you define "biggest".
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In terms of Market cap, currently they are second place, but Market cap doesn't really tell us the "size" of a company, just what shareholders think the shares are worth.
- In terms of Revenue, they are ranked 33rd.
- In terms of Profit, they are ranked 5th.
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In terms of Employees, they are ranked 30th.
I'm hoping the deal goes through, Microsoft has been doing a lot for us PC gamers for some time now, so the benefits are there.
And why is that? Its because sony bought 2 publishers ? No, its because they know how to fucking managing their gaming studios and because they push for creative shit.
Microsoft buys ips intead of creating ips, they built 3 studios and instead of letting them do their thing they made them halo studio, gears studio and now the dead franchise that was good 25 years ago studio. This is fourth gen xbox is in the market, only one less than sony. Its your damn fault, maibe instead of buying shit you buy talent and learn how to manage it , hint... Its not with phill spencer you will achieve this.
That list doesnt include all Sony first party exclusives but 3rd partys too. Since Sony is the market leader it makes it much more easier for them to get exclusives. This deal would simply make MS more competitive something some Sony fans and Sony themselfs hate the thought of.
You love this deal not because it makes microsoft competitive but because it makes sony weaker, what you like is sony and their fans losing shit.
If this deal passes just count the number of ips microsoft bought and took from everyone f om the 2 publishers, now add to that number the ips from multiplatform studios that Microsoft bought.
It will make Sony competitive in the FPS market and actually make some games themselves instead of relying on CoD.
What?
Sony have zero competitive FPS games out because they rely on CoD money.
And microsoft is so much better lmao
Halo beat CoD Vanguard and BF 2042 so they are doing just fine. What has Sony been doing? Oh relying on 3rd party FPS deals. EA even went on to blame Halo for BFs failure.
MS buying ABK will actually benefit you as it would push Sony to start competing again in the FPS market.
Go google the average players in a day for "free to play" halo
What are you actually debating here? Vanguard and 2042 were massive flops for the IPs, Halo walked out with the Peoples Choice award that year. EA went on to blamed Halo for 2042s low sales.
You have also gone off topic to downplay a multi billion dollar IP in Halo.
Where is Sonys 1st party FPS game to compete with the big 3?
Dude you the one that bring fucking halo to the conversation.
Forget it , my mistake to even reply to you
You literally said "And microsoft is so much better" referring to the FPS market. I brought up their inhouse FPS franchise they continue to make.
The point you are missing here is Sony currently dont have an inhouse FPS game to compete with the big 3 FPS games outside of Destiny which is on Xbox.
ABK under MS will push Sony to actually do something with their retired FPS IPs or atleast create a new one. Thats my point, not looking at active Halo players which is growing again.
No i love this deal as them games will come to gamepass meaning i will be able to play them day 1 without forking over 70 bucks. I love this deal for the simple reason Nintendo gamers will get to play CoD again, I love this deal as it will be great for unions and workers. Sony gamers except for the small few hardcore who only hates this deal since it will make Xbox competitive and that scares them. The rest of Sony gamers most likely dont give a shit and maybe even see it as a plus as CoD could also be added to PS+ . And Sony fans still are losing nothing as CoD will still be on their platform.
Does it make Sony "weaker"? Sure, but not to the degree you are making it out to be. Is Sony losing exclusives? No. Is CoD leaving PS? No. Sony will be able to put CoD on PS+ for the right price. So basically, the only thing that makes Sony "weaker" is CoD releases on Game Pass and MS gets marketing rights again. None of those reasons is cause for alarm by any means.
As far as non related CoD games, Overwatch 2 is not going anywhere and there probably won't be a new one for some time. Same with Diablo 4. That leaves franchises like Spyro, Crash, Tony Hawk, and less popular titles that will have very little effect on the console market. Blizzards other large franchises don't even come to console. King will have zero effect on Sony.
So basically you are over blowing the impact this will actually have on Sony.
Its no big deal, thats why its 70 billion dolars.
Second publisher in less than 2 years.
No big deal.
Small ips nothing major.
I guess if you look at everything from the surface without knowing any details of the deal, I can see how someone could come to that conclusion. That's the difference between someone informed and not informed.
Yes, you all know everything, and everyone who is against is clueless about it. Everyone who is dealing with this and is against it is paid by sony, ftc and others know nothing and are a bunch of morons.
Who said it wasn't a big deal? Of course it is. But you and many others are exaggerating the impact it will have on Sony.
You fail to come up with any points of how this deal will significantly weaken Sony when I and many others have given plenty of examples why it won't.
What he is saying seems like some type of irony.
Well, how will it be until 2030? 2040?
Well, that is an interesting question, but it will not be easy to answer. I mean how was the gaming market in 2010 or 2000? It changed a lot since then and I assume it will change a lot going forward. Maybe both Sony and MS will be side notes in a gaming universe dominated by Apple and Tencent.
How dare Sony invest their studios and studios that have only worked with them.
Creating huge IP now renowned around the world.
Microsoft should be allowed rest on their laurels and squander the early 360 years.
Then bull rush in and take as much giant multiplatform studios as they can because they couldn't be arsed creating stuff themselves. Why shouldn't they?
I see some Sony fans keep trowing this around. But exactly how many IP's are activison currently releasing?. I mean they have put all their studios on CoD so thats one IP. Crash is pretty much done Tony hawk is pretty much done. So many other great IP's they have is pretty much done except for the odd small side game like that crash party game thats coming out. Blizzard only release Diablo but its main player base is on PC. WoW has never been on consoles. MS have said they will keep CoD multiplat just like minecraft as they would be silly not to. the biggest part of the other companys MS brought have had good working relations with MS and have released exclusive games on xbox just like Sony fans like to say about the devs Sony buy.
Yeah and these other developers are completely fine and congratulations to them that they were able to deepen their bonds with Microsoft.
But we are not talking about them currently. We are talking about the biggest independent multi plattform publisher on the market.
Who only publish like 3 games now days CoD/WoW/Diablo . And have pretty much left their other IP's to rot except for the odd side game.
I would prefer this not to go through and MS should invest that 69 billion dollars in their 23 studios.
Good for gamers now because GP is so cheap but eventually that price will go up. Then at a certain point I'm paying more to temporarily own games then I would to just wait for a sale and actually own the game. We already witnessed MS try to double the price of gold. They also tried to get rid of used games. I dont trust any of these companies well enough to allow them to have so many studios under them. They will abuse that power the minute they get the chance to.
The is nothing stopping you from buying the game even if it is on gamepass its not a one or the other kinda deal. In fact thats what i think is great about gamepass. It lets you play games right away that otherwise would of costed 60 or 70 and then if you enjoyed them buy them when they are on sale.
You're correct but once again I don't trust these companies to keep it that way. Sorry many but I've seen both Sony and MS pull or try to pull off some of the craziest things in this industry to screw over consumers. If you don't think the day will come when MS decides that the only way to play their games is through a subscription service then you just have more trust in them then I do. MS is going all in with subscription services that's what they want and they will keep pushing people into GP. We've already seen how far they are willing to go to do that but thankfully the out cry from their shady move forced them to backtrack. Eventually if GP becomes to big they wont be forced to do anything.
Atm price is too cheap for the value it provides. I wouldn't mind if they increased it from 19.95nzd to 25 or even 30nxd
Thats still an insane value. They will probably introduce a yearly subscription to create extra value. Ps5 had at least 3 to 4 first party game this year. In nz they are 100 nzd a pop
That's 400 nzd a year on just that 🤣
I wont go higher than $15 usd and even then I might cancel. I almost never buy games brand new and just wait for sales or play my backlog. I'm a PC gamer though and we constantly have sales on PC. The good thing is GP is really growing on PC so hopefully MS will be weary about raising the prices on us. They know we have so many options to purchase games. Console users on the other hand will be at the mercy of MS.
If this doesn't goes through those $69B will go back to MS cash on hand minus fee from the deal failing and would need to be reapproved in parts or in totals to reinvest into Xbox. It is more than likely thought as this investment signaled the heavy focus and renewed faith the Xbox division benefits within MS.
They will more than likely target multiple smaller a acquisition .
They could also actually try to reconvene this deal by buying all Activision Ips first for an absurd amount of money which antitrust authority could not stop because no merger then buy all Activision studios in separate transactions giving hell to regulatory bodies to try to stop them from doing so.
Probably would be way more detrimental to the competition, it's not like money magically transform into end product they would have to massively increase the number of salaried. 69B is 34.5K workers with 200K annual wage for 10 years. For them to invest that much, they would need to secure that investment by aggressively poaching talent from competition. Ironically this would likely result in longer costlier development for every other actor (Sony included) and the more Sony fights this transaction the more likely this scenario become and the more they make themselves ideal target from poaching as reprisal from MS.
They do have way more exclusives.. yet Sony cares more about CoD. Feels good to have been right for all these years in regard to the importance of exclusives.
And Some Sony fans on this site like to say how this site is Biased towards Sony. Just look at the up vote down vote ratio :-D :-D .
What a shitty excuse of an argument hahaha!
Get ur studios and devs to fcken work they haven't shown shit coz they're fcken incompetent!
The initiative needing crystal dynamics to hold their hands just to finish a fcken project...
And then u cancel platinum games scalebound and u wonder why u don't got any exclusives jayzus
Sure has been a lot of bitching and moaning from Microsoft lately.
Oh Brad, still whining. One week Sony is Blockbuster and going out of business, the next week FTC sues and waaahhh Sony has more exclusives. Boo hoo for the trillion dollar company. The desperation is getting worse. "Give peace a chance"
I am sure you dont see any desperation on Sony's part when they are the only ones crying about this deal and a few of their fans as if its the end of the world and the video game market will be ruined by the big bad MS!. I didnt see Nintendo or Sega fans acting like that when Sony entered the gaming market in the 90's with much more wealth then Sega or Nintendo could hope to have. Funny how they are the ones crying now when a bigger fish has entered the sea.
Do you have links to these gaming forums from 28 years ago in 1994? That would be fun to read. Thanks for the nonsensical and funny reply, carry on.
Question when do you think people started using the internet?. Thanks for trying to be funny carry on.
3DO company was very vocal against Sony at that time and Sega also wasn't happy when Sony undercut the price of Saturn (which was a homemade problem since Sega crammed so much expensive chips into their console instead of developing a single but more powerful silicon).
Nintendo on the other hand tried to sit it out and grin and bear it but they were furious inside.
Different scenarios between Sony entering the video games market and MS getting ABK.
I do hope they get it (ABK), but is funny when someone mentions about Sony getting Publishers like Capcom or SE, a lot of people get angry.
Ps has more exclusives is a flat out lie.
- Microsoft is not the market leader in consoles or the PC digital market.
- Microsoft has a record of allowing their content on multiple platforms.
- Microsoft game launches are not just limited to console.
- Video games are not important. The worst thing that will happen is more people buy Xbox while Playstation remains a popular platforms.
Thats a dumb take. MS doesn't even believe in exclusives which is why we see many games cross to Switch and PS.
Buying ABK they would also allow to go Multiplatform.
If MS believe in exclusives again they will have to go back to the old dinosaur model. And they won't.
Sony does have a monopoly with 3rd party devs which not many people see.
You're technically correct, Ori 1 and 2 cannot be counted as exclusives since they were released on the Switch. Well play Brad
And people accuse Jim of being a crybaby. MS have twice the teams so they should be releasing games.
Doesn't Sony have like 19 studios?
Xbox has roughly 4700 -5000 employee could not find and up to date number by that's Xbox 2019 + Zenimax 2020. PlayStation have reportedly 5000+ employees https://www.linkedin.com/company/playstation-sony
The number of teams does not mean much other than them being more divided
Xbox fans have been saying for a long time how many games MS would release with all the studios they have. This seem a very big change of tune.
Well don't mind I thought you were saying MS has now twice the studio Sony has and it looks like I'm not alone on this.
They'll also grow themselves 3x and I believe that it is the major reason they actually did this deal in the first place (Over the Ips, Cod, and Mobile dev teams).
They want to focus on GamePass heavily and they need to drastically increase the content to also heavily increase the userbase and growth rate.
If they want to be the Netflix of gaming and get users by offering them non-stop new content, they need a large number of studios and employees.
Netflix itself has more than 11k employees which is more than Xbox and Playstation combined.
Brad whining doesn't dismiss Jim's whining as well. Xbox doesn't have twice the teams. Only in the last 4 years have slightly exceed Sony when it comes to studios.
Care to give prove of Ms having more then twice the teams?.
