US Senator in Letter to Sony CEO Asks to See PlayStation Exclusivity Deals - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 May 2023 / 9,707 Views
Senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican on the US Senate, has sent an open letter (spotted by Axios) to Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida expressing concerns about PlayStation's "efforts to protect its gaming console business from competition."
"For more than 20 years, Sony has utterly dominated the gaming console market, as that market has been defined by the Federal Trade Commission," wrote Cramer. "I am concerned Sony’s dominance of that market, and its efforts to perpetuate its current position imperils an important economic development opportunity for North Dakota."
Cramer added that North Dakota has "has developed a strategy to lead the nation in computer science and cybersecurity education to organically grow the next generation of technology professionals" and is "preparing students for careers in gaming is an important component of this effort."
Cramer is asking Sony to send him "unredacted copies" of "all agreements that provide Sony with an exclusive right to distribute a game developed by an independent publisher." This refers deals with third-party publishers like with Final Fantasy XVI from Square Enix.
The list of agreements the Senator is asking for also includes "all agreements between Sony and a game publisher that prevent the publisher from distributing its games on a rival's subscription or streaming service."
The Senator is also asking for "all internal company documents describing the strategic rationale for Sony's acquisition of Bungie" and "all correspondence with any US federal or state government or regulatory agency relating to competition in the video game industry."
This letter from Cramer follows other members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, raising concerns to the Biden administration stating Sony's business practices in Japan blocking US companies from competing and could be against US-Japan trade deals.
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.
More Articles
"all internal company documents describing the strategic rationale for Sony's acquisition of Bungie"
Did he not notice MS buying 2 (or attempting to buy) entire publishers in 2 years?
I think the strategic rationale was we have to buy a shooter before Microsoft owns every shooting franchise available.
Okay, Playstation is outselling us almost everywhere in the world, we need ideas on how to make xbox more attractive.
Release games and make sure they can run at 60 fps? No.
Make sure we don't kill our most popular franchises like Halo? No.
Stop promising that every year will "be the year of xbox"? No.
Complain to the members of Congress that the Japanese console with games that Japanese people want is outselling us in Japan? Genius!
The phill spencers way
Is this even coming from MS? Seems this is just politics
Don't kid yourself. Microsoft has the ear of the federal government.
Yeah, except MS doesn't want the US government involved in gaming. This is too stupid an issue for MS to intentionally make an issue out of it.
https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1457137319652347904/photo/2
"Each of whom received $5,000 donation from Microsoft for their respective PAC in june".
What an interesting coincidence...
Why you attack these poor peopple!!!!
You still didn't tell me what the point of the image was.
I'm just going to assume you mistakenly thought that Microsoft donated $500k to her, Lol.
What policies have MS shaped for themselves. I know this gets thrown around but people just seem to make these statements without a shred of actual any proof. If MS is shaping policy then just about every corporation that do business in the US shapes policy including Sony.
And do you have any doubt all companies that use lobbies and sponsor politicians are shaping policies?
I can believe whatever I want, but it means nothing if I do not have any examples to show. I believe that all corporations fund politicians on both sides depending on which one supports their basic business. What you are suggesting is that they are actively having meetings with politicians and directing them to do something which may or may not happen but if you cannot name a policy that directly benefits just MS then its just wild speculation. If MS can do it then so can Sony, what would separate the 2. The thing is, I doubt you could find any policy enacted that you can specifically say this benefit MS compared to any of their competitors.
Politicians suck
lol!!!
MS is making $69 bi publisher acquisition and Playstation is the one being anti-competitive!? Realy!?
$69b to a company Sony dont own or have shares in..
Yet Sony are telling Devs to not release games on GP. Crazy you believe one is anti competitive and the other isnt.
You're kidding yourself if you think MS don't make similar stipulations for games they're pushing.
at the end of the day these are contracts which all parties are agreeing to. If they are ok without going a GP or PS+ release, then the contract is clearly more beneficial to them than releasing their game on the competing subscription service.
Am I kidding? or are you kidding? We are not hearing MS blocking games from going to PSN, infact quite the opposite with the Bethesda PS+ deals recently.
There is a giant difference between making games timed exclusives and manipulating devs with contract talks to boycott a platform. One is competitive and the other is Anti-competitive.
Devs aren't being manipulated.
They know what they're agreeing to.
When in a market leading position, they have alot of say. Ill be curious to see what they find.
Maybe they find something, maybe they wont. Lets see.
MS doesn't have a share or own any of the japanese companies they or the senator are complaining, but here you are defending them meddling with it even if you have 0 shred of evidence or accepting that MS have exclusive deals as well.
Yet Sony doesnt own or have shares with ABK yet here they are...
Don't argue with me, argue with the congressman doing his investigation.
Why should anyone put value in a US congressman when they won't even consider taking away the guns killing children? They waste their time on this trivial garbage instead. Have you ever posted this much about what a US Congressman said outside of video games anywhere online? I doubt it.
Im not from the US so i dont really care.
But i am not agaisnt their investigations. If they investigated Steam or MS id be all for it. If they are cheating they deserve to be caught.
I was using your own argument, so you are arguing against yourself.
The 20 year statement of PlayStation dominating Xbox isn't exactly true. Unless you are only talking outside the Americas, UK, and Oceania.
In the US, VGChartz estimates has the Xbox 360 at 43.67M units sold, while the PS3 sold 27.02M. The PS4 sold 34.95M in the US, while the Xbox One sold 29.49 million.
Yes but you know that worldwide, PlayStation has always outsold Xbox.
PS3 only pulled ahead very very late into the gen at a point it barely mattered. X360 was the dominant console of that gen. Shame they couldn't follow up on it, by giving the X360 terrible end of life support and the Xone terrible support all together.
As a tax paying citizen I am upset that my money is being used to do the dirty work of a trillion dollar behemoth.
I guess MS paid more than you =p
Probably not even paid more if we would equal the income, but definitely pays smarter.
Considering how much of the taxes CosmicSex pays is directed to that specific senator (probably some cents even though he may pay dozen of thousand of dollars in taxes per year) MS paying directly to the senator would be more even if taxes are close to zero.
20 years? Sony may have squeaked by the 360 the last year of their lifecycles, but Sony lost that generation to both the Wii and 360 for the most part.
It's amazing what a company can do when they don't entirely ignore a location for a generation.
They conveniently forget the PS3 when it helps their argument.
They are probably counting that PSP and PSVita outsold infinite to 0 the Xbox handheld on those generations =p
"For more than 20 years, Sony dominated the market" yeah no, the 360 was getting all the better versions and exclusives 17 years ago and lasted until they decided to care less
It sold more software as a result.
Took a whole gen for it, and SW it was still outsold. So even if launch aligned PS was always ahead and calendar years PS lost only once or twice, I would say that PS may have won the total HW (and well next gens), but for the most part of the relevancy of the gen PS lost to Xbox.
Square enix said it's Microsofts fault that some of their games aren't in Xbox.
Nobody forbids Sony to answer with a "we didn't pay Square for FF exclusivity deals" if they didn't.
100th comment :)
Sony should be left alone, just as MS should be. The last thing the gaming industry needs is government meddling in it.
Sony's reaction would probably be, if you really think so, sue me. Which is eventually the step you can take if you really want to do something against these deals.
Why sue when you can get politicians to do an investigation. Doesn't really make sense as the best strategy would be to go down this route and you have to do nothing but act innocent. The funny part is, Sony is the one who opened this whole BS up with their UK arguments.
Because you don't need to comply to an investigation which could result in a ruling against you. Which is what would be necessary to stop this kind of practices. Either that or new laws which Sony can lobby against.
Also there need to be legal grounds to open this kind of investigation involving company secrets, aka witch hunt against a company. As long as PlayStation isn't breaking any Japanese laws they can't demand to look inside let alone make public or pass trough private contracts. These deals aren't public to begin with.
I wouldn't go that far and say "Sony dominated the console market for more than 20 years". I mean, we still had Wii and Switch which outsold the competitors.
He did say that they dominated the market as it has been defined by the FTC, which is the high end console market where Nintendo isn't included. But even by that dumb market definition the PS3 didn't "utterly dominate" the X360, it sold just a few million units more WW and a lot less software.
Congress is really stuck on stupid on this whole thing (not that Congress isn't a bunch of raging dipshits in general). What kind of economic impact would the PlayStation's business have on North Dakota? There's pretty much nothing up there as it is.
There are real issues that Congress needs to address. Microsoft's inability to sell Xbox in Japan rank right down there with the toilet paper Cramer uses to wipe his ass in the Capitol.
So many hilarious tin foil hat theories comments here that clearly have made not even a second of their own research. Keep embarrassing yourselves.
Since you done the research post it.
Use google, I'm not doing your work for you.
You are making a claim, so it is on you to show evidence you know?
I've done my research which is why I'm laughing at the ignorance certain people are showing here. If you are actually interested in knowing what is fact or not then its on you to do your own research. I don't care what you chose to believe in or not lol.
So the very old argument of "go study", ok.
You're trying too hard. At the end of the day if you actually want facts then you can research them yourself, if not then remain ignorant to push an agenda. That's up to you. At this point this discussion is done.
A healthy competition in the gaming industry is good for the consumer. But I'm starting to think this dick-measuring contest between MS and Sony is getting ridiculous.
Wow Microsoft was the one who started the exclusivity practice during the 360 era. Why are games like Dead Rising, Infinite Undiscovery, Ace Combat 6, BioShock, Dead or Alive, Oblivion, Eternal Sonata, etc.... exclusive or timed exclusive? Geeez I wonder? In fact, Sony was quite the underdog and was on the defensive most of the time.
Now that the tables have turned, Microsoft is whinning about this practice they started by fundraising to Senators? lol....
Exclusive deals was used way before the 360. It's well known Sony use this practice from the very beginning of playstation. I don't doubt such were also used before that even.
Also MS being the source of this is just an assumption even if a plausible one. Even if it were to be fact you also assume MS mens rea by trying to tie this to an attack on Playstation first. It make way more sense as an attack on the very silly definition of high end console market the FTC is trying to leverage against the ABK deal and that Sony pushed hard for them to use.
Re-read my post again. Never claim sony started it. Timed exclusively was used albeit scarcely even during the Atari days.
But to claim Sony did not use it prior is really wrong. https://n4g.com/user/blogpost/dk286k/520109
The next generation is where timed exclusives really became a major component of a company's strategy. The Sony Playstation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64 were the first consoles designed to produce primarily 3D polygon graphics. Sony wanted games to show off the power of the Playstation, and they found several. Ridge Racer, Wipeout, Battle Arena Toshinden, and Destruction Derby were technically impressive (for the time), pick up and play games that really proved that the next generation had arrived, so Sony locked up timed exclusivity deals for those four games. Those games played a major role in PS1's early success. In later years, Sony would buy timed exclusivity for the extremely popular Resident Evil series, further cementing PS1's place as the go to game console of the era.
And by the way before you get me wrong yet again. Know that I don't view such pratice as anything bad or wrong.
Ok, if you want to make a rational agreement and respect each other's intelligence. Microsoft was the one who used it with effect and scope on Sony during the PS3 vs 360 era. With the game examples I have listed above. There is really no point in mentioning the PS1, that's almost 30 years ago.
Sony was all defensive during the PS3 era and like over 90% majority of these exclusives/timed exclusives went to the 360. Now PS4 generation is where Sony turned the game around and started doing a lot more deals than Microsoft.
Unless you want to point out something important happened in the PS2 era as well, then my point still stands. Microsoft used this bullying tactic on Sony during the PS3 era and now they are crying wolf. Using money (All Microsoft knows to do is to use money) to lobby Senators.
Sony always used this tactics, only less so in the ps3 era cause the 360 was the best selling platforms up until the very end of the gen and so it was than less expensive to MS and more to Sony to do so, but they did still use it for games like Virtua Fighter 5.
for the ps2, If you read the article I posted :
The PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation saw one of the biggest timed exclusive deals of all time. Sony purchased the rights for the Grand Theft Auto series games, starting with GTA III. GTA III and GTA: Vice City are among the best selling PS2 games of all time, and Sony's timed exclusive deals put a stranglehold on the competition. GTA: San Andreas would later be a simultaneous multi-platform release, but by that time, the console race was over.
You view this as a bully tactics, I don't. The ps1 is maybe close 30years now but it wasn't during the 7 gen were you portray MS with bullying intent to have used the same approach Sony used until then and have resumed since.
Exclusives were a thing at least since NES, possibly earlier. Nintendo rules were so draconian that you wouldn't believe it.
Even earlier than this, this practice can be found all the way back into atari days albeit it was not as prominent.
For nintendo I think their draconian practice were more related to the licensing of their cartridge technology which were binding in too many ways to devs and retailers.
From what I saw there were complications such as a company could only release X number of games per year (so some have made multiple studios "independent" to work around that) and there was also contracts that made not only game/ip exclusive but the whole company (like if company y want to launch on NES they can't launch on any other system) and on SNES it changed a little and it was more like if company wanted to launch that title on SNES and on another console the versions should be different (so you would see minor differences on multiplats like the Disney licensed games).
Exclusive are fine, contracting so devs dont make games on other platforms isnt.
Will you find any such contract to prove there is any 2nd party that Sony signed to forbidden to launch any game on xbox? Because as far as I know even the most talked case of Square Enix still have some games launching on Xbox, so there is no contract to make a dev not launch any game on another platform.
Why do you think 11 Congressmen are investigating Sony?
Lets wait and see what they find.
Because MS is crying to them is a more likely answer than after 9 gens they finally discovered companies pay for exclusivity.
You mean retaliating because Sony cried to the FTC first?
I know that Nintendo engaged in questionable/unethical particle through various video from Modern Vintage Gamer and other, but all in all my information is pretty limited on this specifically. That's why I added the line : I don't doubt such were also used before that even.
If you have a great video or article to share, please do so as I'm always interested in this kind of stuff.
To be fair I think just because am nosey I would love to see what kinda deals Sony does to get so many exclusives on there platform especially games like final fantasy remake only because at one time I remember game pass was literally offering nearly every final fantasy title on there so i thought it was to drum up interest ready for the remake to gain some moment but hay am just nosey all around 😂
Sony and Microsoft at each other throats
Constantly running around trying to upskirt each other.
Meanwhile Nintendo sitting back
Now Sony would have to disclose their internal business practices not to just the U.S senators but to a judge that already approved the subpoena against them...all that because of Jim Ryan's decision of messing with Microsoft.
Actions always have consequences.....as Sony is finding out!
They don't have to do anything along as they are not sued. They have to disclose everything to FTC. A Senator can ask for something and Sony is allowed to say no. A Senator can go to court for it though, if there is enough suspicion what Sony is doing is illegal. Which is up to the judge. Though this ruling might also affect the industry at a much larger scale and quite possibly also streaming services. I am sure Netflix exclusive contacts also say something about not releasing on Disney+.
The Senator isn't asking Sony, they are asking the Japanese government. The Japanese government always take US request seriously so who knows, how this may go down. At the end of the day, who really cares. Sony opened this door, MS took advantage of it. Sony has outplayed MS for a few generations on consoles but MS has been outplaying Sony on the whole acquisition.
MS doing shopping spree, but somewhat Sony opened a door by not liking it kkkkkkkk
Sony should have used better arguments and a better strategy. Sony poked the bear and the bear is awake, now they have to deal with it.
You are also going to claim that MS buying spree is due to everyone making fun of they not having exclusives right? Poor MS.
I have a wall of text on my opinion on MS buying spree and it has absolutly nothing to do with Sony or even consoles in general. The thing is MS doesn't care about Sony. MS buying spree is all about GP. This was how Phil focused MS back into giving damn about gaming and GP is the reason why MS is spending big money right now. While console gamers squabble over console sales, MS is quieting trying to execute their play to create a service that caters to the billion of devices out in the wild. You continue to confused slight of hand tactics MS and Sony use to deal with their competitors. Even if this is a tactic by MS to get back at Sony for the ABK acquisition, its more a distraction then anything else. You guys always work yourselves up over something that is basically nothing.
So all this talk and where did Sony opened the door for anything?
I do not know if you just do not read. Sony opened the door for this tactic. They created the high end console BS and thus allowed MS to use it against them not only in the acquisition for ABK but now on the political stage. In other word it was a strategy that not only did not work for Sony but also backfired allowing MS to throw some politicians on the case. At the end of the day who knows what might happen. Maybe the Japanese government does an investigation or they do not, really doesn't matter it all benefits MS.
I only see these as business tactics for some reason you are all in on the console war. I care nothing about the console war instead I am interested in how each business handles situations. Sony strategy was flawed from the start when they made the ABK deal about COD. I have a wall of text stating this multiple time. Sony double downed on that strategy with the High end console market leaving out Nintendo which again was another flawed tactic. MS was able to capitalize on both and here we are today. So now MS can easily use this same High End console market against any more claims by Sony if MS want to make any more purchases or even use it against Sony if Sony decides to pick up a publisher. Think about it this way, what if MS wanted to purchase a Japanese publisher, this could be a tactic they are preparing for such a move. I do not look at these moves like some gamer trying to protect the big corporation of my choice. I look at the situation to see who benefit and what is their strategy and how can they leverage a situation.
You are an old timer in VGC so you know that Nintendo themselves removed itself from the high end market and defined that as a blue ocean strategy. So nope it wasn't Sony that created this. The Twin HD consoles is something that have been in place since started of PS360/Wii gen.
Sony defined this category not MS. They used that as their arguments against MS and thus opened the door for MS to use the same arguments against them. Its funny because a lot of people were blaming MS for defining this category until they were corrected when shone that it was Sony that used this argument in the CMA SLC. No one, including Nintendo has defined this category until Sony did. So yes, it was Sony who brought this category into existence and now they have to deal with the fallout.
This category have been defined in the Wii generation. Again, you are old enough on this site to remember the moniker HD Twin.
They brought this on themselves.
How dare you. Nothing is Sonys fault. Expect dislikes.
