Activision Blizzard: Sony is Trying to Protect its 2 Decade Dominance in Video Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 March 2023 / 7,175 Views
Activision Blizzard in a statement sent to GamesIndustry claims that Sony trying to block Microsoft's acquisition of the gaming giant is doing everything it can to "protect its two-decade dominance" in the video game industry.
"The European Commission‘s mission is to protect European consumers, not the global market leader," reads the statement from Activision Blizzard. "Sony is attempting to undermine that goal, to protect its two-decade dominance in video games. We are confident regulators will find that our proposed merger will enhance competition and create greater opportunities for workers and better games for our players."
This statement follows a closed hearing that took place in Brussels in front of the European Union and national antitrust officials. Microsoft during the hearing was trying to convince the regulators to approve its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Activision Blizzard, Google, Nvidia, other interested parties, and gaming experts also attended the hearing.
Sony has been the biggest opponent to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Nvidia had also expressed concerns, however, it has since signed a 10-year partnership with Microsoft to bring Xbox games on PC to the Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
If Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal is approved it will bring games from Activision Blizzard to GeForce Now, including Call of Duty.
Microsoft today also announced it has signed a "binding 10-year legal agreement" to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo platforms if the deal is approved.
The new legally binding agreement will guarantee Call of Duty games will release on Nintendo platforms the same day as Xbox with "full feature and content parity." This is so those on Nintendo platforms "can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty."
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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To be fair... Yeah
That may be part of it. How many companies does Microsoft have to buy before they think they can fairly compete? We haven't even seen yet what getting a steady stream of exclusive Bethesda, Obsidian etc games is going to do for Xbox going forward. Is Activision enough to compete, and Microsoft is done with big acquisitions after that or are they gong to want to buy EA if they show a weakness, or Take Two if they have a scandal?
They can use the same arguments next time as well if they act quickly. They will still be behind a lot by 2024.
They're barely getting this deal through, do you really think they'd be able to get another huge dev like EA
Questions many are wondering. I mean, yeah, they’re bad at getting games released, but they really do have a ton of games in development—and that’s just of the games we know of. Their studio count far outweighs Sony’s already, before the ABK deal.
Although I think MSFT is not dumb enough to try to buy an EA or 2K, who knows, but their acquisitions will never stop otherwise. That’s become their primary strategy to beat Sony.
Until they can stomp Sony they will keep claiming they are underdog and need more publishers to be able to compete.
I mean...yeah, this is pretty much one of the reasons why they'd want to block something this big, because they feel it would act as a direct threat to their overall dominance in the market.
Sony got comfortable once they got Nintendo to stop trying for the power struggle (right around the era after the GC, when they stopped pushing power), and when MS showed up and didn't do much besides the 360, they've gotten used to having such mindshare and market power, that losing it would drive them off the deep end, and this deal shows us this in action.
But tbf, Sony also drove MS like this for years, so this really is the end result of them picking on the rich kid, a little too far.
Of course they are. This is pretty typical big business leveraging government to tamp down on competition.
Yup. Its blatantly obvious
No shit sherlock...
Well yeah, are they expecting a company to just freely give up market share to their main competitor? Sony is not arguing that their dominance should be protected, but of course MS lawyers will spin their wording to make the biggest impact possible. PR speak, business as usual.
I mean, people should keep in mind that King is a behemoth of a company that’s included in the Activision Blizzard deal and Sony has every right to be scared of that. Personally I think Micro should just get Activision, split up Blizzard so they’re independent and not acquire King.
I love to see all these PR that shows that Microsoft is on their knees :-)
And Sony and Nintendo got there by earning it!!!
And MS already bought more studios than Sony or Nintendo and at a stage that they were already quite big and recognized.
Well Sony's last hardware has been outsold by a competitor in record time and will easily outsell it by another 10+ Million units on the low end, so Nintendo has been the leader in hardware since then. In terms of Software yeah Sony has been #1 simply due to the shear amount of 3rd party support they have in addition to having a base that chooses them first for said 3rd party games.
Microsoft is trying to I guess "level" the playing field but we'll see how this goes.
The thing is Activision Blizzard dont need Microsoft do any of these things. They can sign 10 years contracts with anyone at any stage. Then treat Playstation like the enemy like they are stopping them from doing that. They just want their billion dollar payouts and then head for the hills.
They're all liars.
you mean console dominance which is a small portion of the industry.
1) Sony wasn’t the dominant brand in the 7th gen. They were more or less tied with the 360 and behind Wii, so knock off about 8 years for that.
2) Sony’s “dominance” is from their devoting to building and properly managing talented and passionate first party studios, on top of strong third party relationships. MS can do that as well, especially since they already have more studios than Sony already (including 1 publisher), but that requires time and effort, a concept that MS has always struggled with.
3) MS is worth multiple trillions of dollars, and already own multiple products that competitors like Sony have to pay them to use (GitHub, DX12, Havoc, etc). They’re far bigger than Sony or PlayStation; the fact that they “need” a $70B publisher so they can remove even more games from PS as a means to “compete” is just down right pathetic.
Maybe build some creative culture for a change, and stop thinking flaunting money to kill competition is the solution.
The thing is, I'm on both sides.
I don't like MS just buying the biggest publishers in the world as a lazy attempt to compete. I also think that Sony will be fine and should have more direct competition in the industry. I think where MS falls flat is their obsession with Activision, they could easily compete if they spend the 70bn elsewhere.
Every time I hear Kotick or ABK create a statement criticizing any and all criticism of this deal, it feels so pathetic. You can just see them shuddering at the prospect of their greed being threatened.
ActingBli$$ard doesn't care about market dominance, and in fact they have helped to create Sony dominance in a small way by give Sony exclusive features with CoD.
AB execs just want the money from this deal to make themselves even richer......so to spend that money on other unethical companies to make even more money.
But is still true what they said, and a more even console market with Sony, Nintendo & Xbox is the best thing possible, no matter what clowns in the fanbase say otherwise.
Lame excuse
Hey look, Sony is trying to avoid we getting a bunch of money so we will accuse them of not allowing us to sell out by telling the tactics that we offered them.
Konami is next
This PR BS is getting tiresome. Sony isn’t even the global market leader, Nintendo is.
They already own more studios(23) than their competitors. How many studios do they need to compete? It’s not Sony’s or Nintendo’s fault they’ve been underwhelming for at least 10 years now!!! I have a novel idea why don’t you invest that 70 billion in your existing studios!!!
Gaming is better when Sony is number 1.
Technically Nintendo is number one at the moment (console sales and 1st party sales) or Tencent (total revenue).
Sony never controlled >90% of the console market, not even in the PS1/PS2 eras, so Sony never had a monopoly.
Microsoft OTOH controls >90% of the PC market. Bad results of Microsoft's PC monopoly are widely documented.
Really? Because last time I checked, nobody uses the Microsoft Store, and Steam had the monopoly on the PC gaming storefront.
Don’t confuse operating systems with digital storefronts because that’s 2 completely different matters.
Also, compare console sales of the PS1/PS2 era with the console competition and get back to me lol
I mean, it's more like Steam/GoG are the only sane choices on the market tbf.
No one else out there on the PC front is really trying to earn it's customers in a positive manner, so I wouldn't really count that as a monopoly, more like no one cared enough to try, thus Steam got what it worked for nearly 2 decades.
I do not think you are living in the same reality than all of us... :) Microsoft is not even close to Steam or probably even Epic... Since when they have 90% of the PC Market?
Isn’ windows powering most PCs on the planet?
Yes, but that’s not related to gaming though. Valve and Epic Games don’t pay MS dividends on game sales for their storefronts. Valve is the monopoly on PC gaming lol.. Windows is just a tool. Apple had the chance in the 90s to compete with MS on PC gaming, and were pretty successful. But when Steve Jobs took over, he pulled the plug on that. Apple is now kinda sorta getting back into gaming with their latest M2 chips, but even Linux is higher than Apple in PC gaming share at this point.
He didn't said anything about gaming, he said MS does have a monopoly in PC operating system.
Windows? How is windows related to the gaming market share?
Steam is making money out of sales made on Steam... Not Microsoft...
We are talking about gaming market here lol
It’s a monopoly they have. Spin that however you want.
"Sony is Trying to Protect its 2 Decade Dominance in Video Games"
Dominance Microsoft helped maintain releasing underwhelming system after underwhelming system.
What 2 decade dominance? The PS1 & PS2 home console eras? Because besides those two, Sony has never ever won any generation, be it in home or portables. Nintendo dominated and keeps dominating every other gen ever that existed in both, besides those two.
PS4 says hi!
Depends on who you ask. Some say Switch is still 8th gen so it beat PS4. Either way Nintendo Switch is more popular than PS4 ever was in terms of hardware sales so there is a point to be made.
Ah you mean that 2nd place console that lost to Switch? Hi then xD
I guess if you completely ignore the flops that were the Game Cube and WiiU. Sony's worst selling console still doubles the sales of both of those consoles combined. Sony easily has the most revenue, profit, console sales, and game sales for the last 2 decades. Handheld sales is the only category that Nintendo has bested Sony.
Then earn it. Nothing stopped Microsoft from doing exactly what Sony did all along. No one forced them to stop making true exclusives and making bad entries in their key franchises. Was Halo Infinite's disastrous development Sony's fault? Come on now. Sony didn't buy their way to the top. They offered product that the consumer wanted. That's literally it. It just comes across like a rich kid saying it isn't fair that they can't just throw money at the industry and dominate.
Yep this. Sony has invested in and nurtured their studios, and it’s taken decades to get to where they are, today. Their first party studios really only started consistently firing on all cylinders in mid to late ps4 gen (GG with Horizon ZD, Sucker Punch with GoT, SSM with GoW 2018, etc. ).
The difference is, MSFT wasn’t truly serious about video games until several years ago when they saw the signs that showed unequivocally that gaming had nothing but heavy growth in the future. Once they saw the dollar signs, they finally cared about gaming, so they gave full support and opened their purse strings to allow an unending supply of cash to buy everything.
Sony has been serious about video games since PS1. The difference in results for game output between the two shows. One came from work and time, the other has come from pay to win. I respect and appreciate MSFT for several of their approaches to things, and the video game industry owes MSFT a lot for certain things (online gaming, indie gaming, etc.). I have no respect for their approach to and volume of acquisitions, however.
I’ve noticed a very consistent pattern on this site in regard to commentary on this deal. When someone criticizes MSFT and gives detailed reasoning and objections to the acquisition, they get a lot of downvotes, but no one ever actually gives a retort—just like aiwass’ comment above and mine below. It suggests there’s a lot of people with bias but no reasonable argument to offer. I’d be happy to be wrong, but that’s the repeated pattern I’ve seen for months.
Not sure if it's a smart move for Actibliz to make a villain out of the platform holder which most of their revenue comes from. If EA is smart they should capitalise on this to the max by releasing a new FPS series.
If the deal fails they change their tune.
If the deal goes through they probably also have to, because they need to make enough revenue and that will be hard without Playstation. COD will do fine on Switch 2, but I doubt the first entries on Switch 2 will rival the sales of PlayStation entries.
And certain regulators are showing their incompetency by believing crying jims lies.
Japan and sony has the best fans!! thank you!!! Usa and Uk. Keep Japan better then Usa! arigatou
