EU Regulators Ask Developers If They Think Microsoft Will Block Access to Activision Blizzard Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 21 December 2022 / 4,696 Views
The European Commission, the European Union (EU) regulators, have asked video game developers and distributors if they think Microsoft will block access to games from Activision Blizzard if the acquisition is approved, according to a report from Reuters who saw an EU document.
The regulators sent out a 91 page questionnaire earlier this month, which is believed to have been sent to console providers, publishers, developers, distributors, and providers of PS operating systems, according to a person familiar with the matter.
"Please specify which partial exclusivity strategy or strategies you believe Microsoft would have the ability to deploy with respect to Activision Blizzard's console games after Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard," the questionnaire asked.
The questionnaire asked if strategies by Microsoft would include lowering the quality or interoperability of Activision Blizzard games available on competing consoles or provide extra content only on Xbox.
Another option is raising the wholesale price of Activision Blizzard games on competing consoles and making them available on competing consoles at a later date than on Xbox.
Video game companies were also asked if they thought some Activision Blizzard gaming content and features would be made exclusive to Xbox consoles and no longer available on competing consoles.
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 earlier this month 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.
Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has so far been approved in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia unconditionally.
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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Jeez they’re really making a fuss about this. Meanwhile Disney could purchase everything while no-one apparently was looking.
All of them but Sony will say "no"
I actually think this is a clever approach by the EU, and it may benefit the purchase as non-Sony industry participants seem generally in favour of the deal (perhaps hoping their company gets bought out at a premium too!).
This really was amusing for while now. I even noticed some comments saying “they are tired of this” . Even I am tired now. It’s no longer amusing .The next article better say acquisitions completed or failed” . Be done with it
You know, I almost wanna ask if they will say these same questions for LITERALLY EVERYONE, going forward that buys out anything and anyone, but let's be honest, they won't.
This has stopped being a comedy show. This is bad comedy.
Maybe everyone that is the size of ABK, they didn't question Bethesda or Bungie deals nearly as much. So if MS go and buy a small Indie dev regulators won't be battering them with questions.
I mean, if they are going to go this far, they may as well be fair and do this for virtually any other purchase, because this only makes EU regulators and the FTC look like concern trolls at this point.
This is why we thought this was comedy at first, because this is the sort of crap you see concern trolls pulling on the net, but turns out they are being deadly serious, but also acting stupid about it at the same time.
Like if they are really going beyond what they would normally do, they surely should do this at all times, and not just for MS alone, I mean we have Tencent and Embracer, two stupidly massive holdings companies, and then there is Apple, Google, etc, all massive corps with plenty of reach and money under their belts (doesn't mean they can pull off things successfully, I'm just on about money/reach here).
Both Bungie and Bethesda deal gone through regulators, but they didn't saw a risk to customer so they didn't go as deep as this one (the size of the purchase is completely different), but sure I wouldn't mind if the regulators looked deeper for all purchases.
I mean, they are (trying to) buy the company so like whats the big deal? Console makers sometimes buy companies and yeah that means that company makes their games for that system now. I feel like this is all just cuz Sony is worried Xbox will start to actually be able to compete with Playstation if these deal goes through. If the games only start appearing on Xbox that'll mean sales will be lower which would make Activision Blizzard think twice about making this deal, but they did make the deal so clearly they themselves are okay with that possibility.
And Microsoft has even offered that CoD 10 year deal to anyone which they certainly didn't have to (outside of trying to win regulators over). How about govt step out of video games and just let the companies compete geez. Like its gonna be pretty ridiculous if regulators are like well okay you can own this company but you can't do anything related to them that will benefit your platform over competitors lol
The market share of the gaming market is divided into:
Mobile: 50%
Console: 28%
PC: 22%
The console market (28%) is still split between:
Previous Generation (Playstation 4, Switch, XBox One)
Playstation: 117,030,000 (46.20%)
Nintendo: 85,000,000 (33.56%)
XBox: 51,280,000 (20.24%)
Current Generation (Playstation 5, Switch, XBox series X/S)
Playstation: 28,260,000 (34.58%)
Nintendo: 33,200,000 (40.63%)
XBox: 20,260,000 (20.24%)
Total (Playstation 4 and 5, Switch, XBox One and X/S series)
Playstation: 145,290,000 (43.37%)
Nintendo: 118,200,000 (35.28%)
XBox: 71,540,000 (21.35%)
However, Sony questioned the regulatory bodies saying that the Switch is not a competing hardware with the Playstation and the XBox, so:
Previous Generation (Playstation 4, XBox One)
Playstation: 117,030,000 (69.53%)
XBox: 51,280,000 (30.47%)
Current Generation (Playstation 5, XBox series X/S)
Playstation: 28,260,000 (58.24%)
Xbox: 20,260,000 (41.46%)
Total (Playstation 4 and 5, XBox One and X/S series)
Playstation: 145,290,000 (67.01%)
XBox: 71,540,000 (32.99%)
THIS PROVES THAT WHAT SONY ARGUED JUST MADE HER SITUATION WORSE, AND THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF MICROSOFT IS CORRECT IN HIS STATEMENT.
The market share for the three consoles would be:
Previous Generation (Playstation 4, Switch, XBox One)
Playstation: 46.20% 28% = 12.94%
Nintendo: 33.56% 28% = 9.40%
XBox: 20.24% 28% = 5.67%
Current Generation (Playstation 5, Switch, XBox series X/S)
Playstation: 34.58% 28% = 9.68%
Nintendo: 40.63% 28% = 11.38%
XBox: 20.24% 28% = 6.94%
Total (Playstation 4 and 5, Switch, XBox One and X/S series)
Playstation: 43.37% 28% = 12.14%
Nintendo: 35.28% 28% = 9.88%
XBox: 21.35% * 28% = 5.98%
if anything MS wants thier games on everything under the sun so lol no.
The EU always upsets Americans, keep it up.
Imagine thinking spending $70 billion dollars, doesn't entitle that company to not make most games "exclusive".
Xbox "exclusivity" will mean much more widespread availability compared to any other major game company or media company......yet there are clowns trying to paint exclusives as a great deal breaker, including the FTC/CMA.
Imagine expending 70B to get games that you were already getting .....
Don, it's a business. They dont lose if the profits increase.
Who doesn't lose, microsoft or the people playing?
Id feel more sorry for the employees at ABK. Knowing Sony stopped what would have benefited the brand, aswell as securing Koticts exit.
Gotta laugh at MSFT for this - if its blocked they lose, if it goes through the conditions imposed will likely mean they'll be prevented from any future purchase of any size nor block Sony from the games - so they lose.
If they lose, they are $70b richer
The mental gymnastics it takes to make this a "lose lose situation" is really something.
if they lose, they will have 70b to make exclusivity deals, including for call of duty. what happens if they buy exclusivity for every AAA game on the market for the next 5 years?
Have they asked Bethesda?
Microsoft owns them.
Exactly, before the purchase they were Multiplat, after purchase ES6 and Starfield got changed to exclusive. So that is already showing they are likely to block access to other platforms (the only reason they are promising different is to get the deal approved not because they wouldn't ever block by their own decision).
The difference is that that they have never promised multiplatform releases for Bethesda, they promised things would be decided on a case by case basis. So far all games that were already on other platforms including their 2 GaaS games have remained multiplat, while 2 upcoming games have been confirmed to be exclusive, we don't know what will happen with the rest yet.
Meanwhile with ABK, Xbox is willing to sign 10 year contracts to make CoD fully multiplat (which is 12 for Sony as they still have 2 years on an existing deal which Xbox will honor), while Diablo and Overwatch are coming to PS5 and neither series is likely to get a new game for the remainder of this gen probably into the middle of next gen. So really the only exclusives Xbox may get out of this on the short term are from Activision's IP's other than CoD, Spyro, Crash, Tony Hawk, Prototype, etc. and even then they may choose to go the multiplat route.
There is also the fact that Minecraft remaining multiplat (even on spinoff side games) shows that with franchises of sufficient size, such as CoD, that they would rather get more money from a multiplat release rather than more hardware sales from exclusivity.
per case basis here would mean then that new titles are exclusive.... that doesn't seem very much per case (even more when both titles were already under development for PS5).
The only commitment MS done is regarding to CoD (and that only after resistance, at first they hadn't promised nothing, just said there would be no reason to remove content from other platform as they had done with Bethesda, say what you will but that is the core of FCC case) so asking about other titles it is very likely that MS would block them unless forbidden to do it.
ES and SF are very big franchises as well, sure not the size of Minecraft (not even CoD is), but if you want to use CoD to Minecraft as standard for Multiplat them all other games would be exclusive since they are smaller and would already be answering EU regulators question with MS is likely to block other titles.
They dont need contracts. Valve didnt sign the 10years but said they trust MS direction.
No where ever have i seen companies signing contracts after buying studios to allow Competitors access. The Industry is really looking after the so called market leader here.
Case by case basis means what they already stated will stay multiplat; legacy titles and games with prior obligations. So far they have held up to this with games like; Deathloop, Tokyo Ghostwire, Quake Remaster, Fallout 76 The Pitt, and more.
MS never made any kind of promise to keep a certain franchise multiplat with Bethesda as they have with CoD and Minecraft. Your comparison between the Zenimax purchase and this doesn't hold up and if you tried to bring this argument to a court of law, nobody would take it seriously.
So they should ask Mojang too right?
Sure
They never said elder scrolls was going to to only be on xbox. They only specified starfield as only being on xbox.
True, TES 6 exclusivity is not confirmed yet, but it has been heavily implied by both Bethesda and Xbox. One of the documents Xbox released to regulators listed Minecraft and CoD as 2 franchises large enough that releasing them as exclusives doesn't make sense because you miss out on too many sales and therefore too much revenue, but also listed Elder Scrolls as mid tier in size and said that exclusivity does make sense on mid size series. Meanwhile Phil teased Elder Scrolls exclusivity back in 2021, while Todd Howard recently said that releasing only on Xbox and PC allows them to better focus optimization efforts on those platforms, and also said that exclusivity just makes sense for them because they started on consoles with Xbox exclusivity on Morrowind.
It is sad that MS doesn't release sales numbers anymore. Because I'm pretty sure that ES5 had a significant portion of its sales on PS platforms, and with ES6 releasing in GP day one I could see the amount of sales on Xbox being quite lower than the total sales of ES5 (also not sure how they call 30M mid tier, that would basically make all the titles MS ever release besides Minecraft mini-tier).
They're releasing them on a PC (on multiple store fronts) so they're not exclusives. Not to mention that MS would love to release them on PS5 and Switch (mostly streaming) ... as a subscription (gamepass), but both Sony and Nintendo keep refusing this offer. It's not about accessibility, it's about monetisation.
Have they asked Sony how many games they block from other platforms?
Starfield was either going to be exclusive to Xbox or PS. Sony appoached Bethesda for a Starfield deal before the MS acquisition.
Is Sony buying ABK for the regulators to ask that?
They were trying to lock Starfield to PS... why is that ok, but if MS buy the actual studio, Sony want them to share the content. Come on.
I can't see the issue though with new titles. Aslong as established multiplats remain so
And thats what MS have promised and are doing.
Except for all new entries of Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake all new entries will not be on PlayStation. So hatting FF7 remake and mainline FF titles is more than justified right
Existing games not future releases. Its really not that hard to understand.
