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Xbox Microsoft defend Activision-Blizzard buyout by saying the company don’t make any “must have” games

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“Specifically, with respect to Activision Blizzard video games, there is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that could give rise to a foreclosure concern,” read Microsoft’s response to the New Zealand Commerce Commission, published in a report from June. That means that Microsoft don’t consider their future ownership of Activision Blizzard’s franchises such as Call Of Duty to cause issues that would prevent their rivals – among whom they identify Valve in the PC space – from competing against them.
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Source

I mean...

Okay, jokes apart, I think this is a pretty misleading argument. Even without looking at the massive elephant in the room that is Call of Duty, Activision still does hold several valuable IP that are especially relevant from an antitrust perspective, from Overwatch/World of Warcraft to Candy Crush. Among the brands more core players may care about, Diablo is massive. Not sure this is the argument I would necessarily go with.
 
I think they can make this work. As long as the competition has a shooter, they don't need Call of Duty for their business.

Relatedly, the title, while humorous, is super misleading. They're arguing Call of Duty isn't a must-have for PlayStation, not for players. The latter line of argument would be absurd
 
They are basically saying that by them having COD or Candy Crush even if they had them as exclusive titles they don’t limit any other company in competing with them because they can either make their own shooter/puzzle mobile game or even if they don’t (or fail at making them) these two aren’t necessary for a platform success an example of this being Steam and Nintendo lacking CoD for years and both are still highly successful.

pd: I still believe that these type of acquisition promote an unhealthy industry but CoD being too important isn’t a reason imo to stop it, and to be fair sadly there isn’t anything that can be done to stop it at least with current law.
 
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They bought IPs that used to have must-have games in them but through countless examples of catastrophic mismanagement currently not so much so much so technically correct
 
Well, they don't have any must have games... so... I don't know... maybe we'll buy them for seventy billion dollars.
 
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In my point of view, Sony has been “forcing” this kind of behavior for years… locking 3rd party games with exclusivity or timed exclusivity…
FF7R, SF6, Persona, DQ, just to name a few.

When suddenly Microsoft can do that, Sony starts to “get all scared” and complaining…

Supposedly what sets PS apart is the high quality exclusives, not Call of Duty.

I talk as someone that doesn’t like SIE as a company for its practices during VG history, stepped away eventually and bought an Xbox, and this last generation got burned with the lack of games and JRPGS on Xbox and ended up buying a PS4 and now a PS5
 
CloudLuma said:
In my point of view, Sony has been “forcing” this kind of behavior for years… locking 3rd party games with exclusivity or timed exclusivity…
FF7R, SF6, Persona, DQ, just to name a few.
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Persona , DQ and almost all JRPG/JP games exclusives are not the result of any type of deals just the nature of the market. Only big cases of Sony exclusive deals for JP games are the FF franchise and SF5 (which they funded, no Sony = No SF5).
 
Blue Monty said:
Persona , DQ and almost all JRPG/JP games exclusives are not the result of any type of deals just the nature of the market. Only big cases of Sony exclusive deals for JP games are the FF franchise and SF5 (which they funded, no Sony = No SF5).
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I know Sony moneyhatted SF5, and therein ensured exclusivity, but I can't imagine that if they hadn't, we just never would've received a Street Fighter 5. It's Street Fighter, it's not, like, Bayonetta.
 
Rooster said:
I know Sony moneyhatted SF5, and therein ensured exclusivity, but I can't imagine that if they hadn't, we just never would've received a Street Fighter 5. It's Street Fighter, it's not, like, Bayonetta.
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Would probably have taken a lot longer, Capcom was struggling at the time so they needed external help to make SF5 viable. Probably would end up happening once their finances recovered but it helped them push SFV early on the ps4 lifespan
 
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I mean, how would you really define “must have”? Theoretically anyone else can make a military shooter. Hell Nintendo doesn’t even need a military shooter to be successful.
 
meatbag said:
I mean, how would you really define “must have”? Theoretically anyone else can make a military shooter. Hell Nintendo doesn’t even need a military shooter to be successful.
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this is exactly the point they're making too

battlefield exists and would be multiplat no matter how this pans out, ubisoft has no small number of military shooters, and it's not like there isn't a healthy indie FPS scene. in a hypothetical future where microsoft did lock down all of actibliz's titles as exclusive to xbox, they wouldn't have singular control over any genre. that's not to say these titles wouldn't be cultural events but there's nothing that would force people into microsoft's ecosystem in the same way minecraft would basically be the only game of its kind.
 
You know what. I agree with this statement!

I may or may not be joking.
 
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CloudLuma said:
In my point of view, Sony has been “forcing” this kind of behavior for years… locking 3rd party games with exclusivity or timed exclusivity…
FF7R, SF6, Persona, DQ, just to name a few.

When suddenly Microsoft can do that, Sony starts to “get all scared” and complaining…

Supposedly what sets PS apart is the high quality exclusives, not Call of Duty.

I talk as someone that doesn’t like SIE as a company for its practices during VG history, stepped away eventually and bought an Xbox, and this last generation got burned with the lack of games and JRPGS on Xbox and ended up buying a PS4 and now a PS5
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The last Sony exclusive mainline Dragon Quest was probably on PS2.
 
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COD isn't a 'must have' title when Battlefield, Apex Legends etc exist. This is the only title they are talking about really, the rest of the IP in Activisions library all have competitors that are more successful or higher quality.
 
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The whole thing is a farce. Call of Duty could lose relevance at any moment. Successors to Battlefield, Apex or something new entirely, perhaps even developed by Bungie, could take the world by storm. It’s ridiculous to act like the IP has no equal and that it’s a constant.

Also, I’m personally only torn about buying a PS5 with any urgency because of Final Fantasy being locked down entirely. Any game can be the reason a person buys a console.
 
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They are right. Especially when discussing this on a Nintendo board, which has proved you don’t need CoD or Candy Crush to compete, let alone Valve. If major gaming platform holders can do just fine without CoD for long periods of time, it can’t be a ‘must have’ even if it’s hugely important to a major competitor at this moment.

The ‘must have’ nature of CoD is understandable from Sony’s perspective, which is why they argued as such, but any impact on Sony’s ability to maintain its hugely successful position in the market isn’t a concern for the commission. The ability to compete through uniqueness of the property is the requirement, not a reduced ability to do so (whether long term or temporarily) through the loss of a major piece of third party support. There’s nothing stopping Sony making more FPS games, or anything particularly unique about CoD (compared to its own genre competitors) outside of its mass appeal. There was also nothing stopping Activision cutting off access to CoD to any platform holder at any point other than raw impact on their own profits.

I don’t much care for continued industry consolidation but I don’t think anyone really has a case to stop this happening based on ‘all platform holders need access to Call of Duty due to the unique property of its popularity/success/financial value.’ They obviously don’t, it’s just that some have been relying on it a lot more than others.
 
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CloudLuma said:
In my point of view, Sony has been “forcing” this kind of behavior for years… locking 3rd party games with exclusivity or timed exclusivity…
FF7R, SF6, Persona, DQ, just to name a few.

When suddenly Microsoft can do that, Sony starts to “get all scared” and complaining…

Supposedly what sets PS apart is the high quality exclusives, not Call of Duty.

I talk as someone that doesn’t like SIE as a company for its practices during VG history, stepped away eventually and bought an Xbox, and this last generation got burned with the lack of games and JRPGS on Xbox and ended up buying a PS4 and now a PS5
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This, they should just have said that because Sony keeps money hatting third parties they had to resort to this.
 
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While this is obviously from a "Please let this go through" angle. They aren't necessarily wrong. There's really nothing in the ActiBlizz Catalog Genre-wise that someone else couldn't do per se. We have had Cod Clones, Diablo Clones, and more throughout time after all.
 
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Blue Monty said:
Persona , DQ and almost all JRPG/JP games exclusives are not the result of any type of deals just the nature of the market. Only big cases of Sony exclusive deals for JP games are the FF franchise and SF5 (which they funded, no Sony = No SF5).
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Nature of the market? The tide was in favor of Switch, and DQ11 on 3DS even edging out the PS4 version in Japan should have been a wake up call. Outside of 7 and 8, Nintendo has always been a proponent of DQ.

DQ 11 was announced first for Switch (when it was still NX), and why it was not the lead platform from the start was mind boggling, especially developing the 3DS version first? Seems nearsighted to me TBH.

Same deal with Persona 5. Hell, eliminate Persona 5. 4 Golden being released for Steam and not on Switch until future unnonced as of yet date still seemed absurd to me. Especially when a reallly late port does not sell as well - duh - and then they can turn around and say "well, the market has spoken".
 
Hermii said:
This isn't going to go through, is it?
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it 100% is going thru

Lord Azrael said:
Are they though? Personally I don't care about any Activision Blizzard games, but some of their franchises are pretty monumental
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i don't care about actibliz games either, but even tho cod is massive it not being on PS won't make them uncompetitive. not that that's a concern anyway, since the games will remain multiplatform. having cod is not a requirement to compete in the console market, which is pretty much what they're saying.
 
I am still no fan of a mega publisher absorbing another mega publisher.
So I don't care how they justify it. I wish it wouldn't get through.

I don't trust Microsoft with fixing Activision Blizzards culture problems either and I have the fear that it could set back the fight started by devs enormously
 
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Soul Skater said:
They bought IPs that used to have must-have games in them but through countless examples of catastrophic mismanagement currently not so much so much so technically correct
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lmao came to say this

Activision drove everything into the ground, even COD (their final hit remaining) is on a downward spiral
 
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Where is the lie. And I say that as someone who loved WoW and played until I dropped it sometime during end game on Wrath of Lich King. And I love their older IP pre WoW (and Diablo 4 to an extent). But CoD? There are plenty of shooters in the market. Whether they do as well or not seems irrelevant when they are not the only game in town.
 
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Blue Monty said:
Persona , DQ and almost all JRPG/JP games exclusives are not the result of any type of deals just the nature of the market. Only big cases of Sony exclusive deals for JP games are the FF franchise and SF5 (which they funded, no Sony = No SF5).
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The 'nature of the market' is the result of decades of various backroom dealings between Sony and Japanese third parties. They were absolutely throwing unprecedented amounts of money around when they entered the industry and bankrolled several massive projects/marketing campaigns in the process, most notably FF7 which shifted the JRPG market in their favor overnight. The dominant position they gained with the PS1 then allowed them to spend less to maintain those relationships and/or keep third parties focused on their platforms.

As seen with Nagoshi before his demotion and departure from Sega, they still wine and dine decision-makers on the regular, and FF16 and 7 Rebirth's exclusivity shows that they're still willing to spend big just to prevent a major IP from branching out to other platforms.
 
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mazi said:
i don't care about actibliz games either, but even tho cod is massive it not being on PS won't make them uncompetitive. not that that's a concern anyway, since the games will remain multiplatform. having cod is not a requirement to compete in the console market, which is pretty much what they're saying.
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It wouldn't hurt PlayStation too much, in fact it will make Microsoft more competitive if anything, but it would make the industry even harder for other players to enter. Which is part of what antitrust is about right? Though I guess if the biggest games stay multiplatform then it's a moot point
 
Lord Azrael said:
It wouldn't hurt PlayStation too much, in fact it will make Microsoft more competitive if anything, but it would make the industry even harder for other players to enter. Which is part of what antitrust is about right? Though I guess if the biggest games stay multiplatform then it's a moot point
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Partly. The other factors to look for are:
  • Squeezing out the competition (specifically other FPS)
  • Monopoly (gathering them under one roof)
  • Denial (not allowing the game on certain devices or even making them cheaper)
As it currently stands though they are not necessarily making it harder for other players to enter. More & more devs are still popping up on mobile & PC, perhaps later on console. Where it gets difficult is higher end budgets but that’s a problem not uniquely from MST buying ABK.
 
Blue Monty said:
Persona , DQ and almost all JRPG/JP games exclusives are not the result of any type of deals just the nature of the market. Only big cases of Sony exclusive deals for JP games are the FF franchise and SF5 (which they funded, no Sony = No SF5).
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You are assuming this. We have no idea if Sony is paying for these, because these deals usually require the company not disclose it.
 
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Uh eeerrr.....nhrrmm....

Microsoft! Hey guys! My name is Crusters, and I am the CEO of Sock Puppet studios, and I can assure you we have made absolutely no must have games whatsoever. We're even better than that, to date from the companies founding to now (approximately 15 seconds) we haven't released any games period!

How's a cool 200 mil sound for this steal eh?
 
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I mean the Switch is living proof that Call of Duty is not a must-have title for a platform's success
 
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Nice framing when you bought two of the biggest publishers that have the highest selling IPs every season. This will, of course, go through because judges have no clue.
 
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