The flip side is going to be the case for things like Marathon, and stuff that Bungie puts out.
Absolutely, I don’t see MS giving Xbox Series 721 devkits to Sony-owned studios.
They probably aren’t gonna bitch that Sony developed games may run better on Sony hardware either though.
Was not expecting to get exclusivity news on unreleased games, but here we are.
I mean… duh. Of course that happened. Same as it would happen with Call of Duty and every other Activision/Blizzard game over time if the deal goes through. It’s always just a matter of time.
This was interesting. Kotick has been getting higher revenue share from Xbox.
Also they had an email from Jim Ryan saying he’s pretty sure they won’t lose Call of Duty even if the merger goes through.
Also NYT is reporting that Xbox lawyers have said if the judge grants the delay the FTC is requesting, they’ll stop trying to get the merger done, since it’s not worth being stuck in limbo, they want to get the deal done by July or not at all.
So done by July or eat the $3B fee?
“Bigger revenue share” sure is one way of phrasing “a smaller license fee”.
Apparently Phil Spencer will appear in court today. As will a pre-recorded Jim Ryan. This thing is really moving along.
I predict the PI will not be granted and MS will close over the CMA before the July deadline. Hope I’m right.
You think MS will abandon the UK?
Yeah, they have a team of lawyers looking into it. I don’t know if they have to completely abandon the UK though. I think they’ll work something out.
Microxit?
Xboxit?
Gatesxit?
I suppose the UK could agree that if Xbox and Game Pass completely leave their country, Microsoft could remain. I don’t know if that’s likely, but maybe.
Microshitshow
What does this even mean? It’s illegal for them to complete the merger (not to mention in violation of the merger agreement) until and unless they win an appeal, and the CMA then reverses its position in a new assessment, which will definitely not happen before July.
It does seem spectacularly unlikely.
Wingress!
Microsoft’s Xbox chief has revealed one of the key reasons behind the acquisition of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax: potential Starfield PlayStation exclusivity. Speaking at the FTC v. Microsoft hearing today, Phil Spencer revealed that Sony regularly pays competitors to “skip our platform” and Microsoft felt it needed to own Bethesda to compete.
“When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire… to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox,” said Spencer. “So the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business.”
But console exclusives are fine when Sony does it.