Surely lawmakers and regulating agencies won’t allow Microsoft to restrict access to Call of Duty, an essential service needed in every household, similar to water or heating.
Do we really need to keep going on the absurd thread of anti trust lawsuits due to owning certain specific gaming IP?
Does Microsoft have a controlling interest in the majority of the gaming industry after this? Sony no longer has any exclusives that even compare to what Microsoft has now? Is that really what the Sony fanboys want to try and argue? That Microsoft controls all the games and there’s no longer any reason to buy a PS5, and Sony is effectively shut out of the industry?
I mean, that’s obviously not the case, but is that even what you want to try and argue?
They were already looking at updating their views on anti-trust, by sheer coincidence this dropped yesterday
Sure, but my point is there’s nothing in antitrust law or its history of application that says, “This applies only to serious business, like coal and steel. Fluffy, fun industries like entertainment are exempt!”
You are almost surely correct for this merger.
But I can imagine some circumstances where it might be … Like if Sony were to try to buy a major US player in the industry, like EA. Or if Facebook were involved (which might be why they passed.) Facebook has achieved the remarkable feat of being a company both Republicans and Democrats want to dunk on.
There’s clearly scenarios that antitrust laws apply to the gaming space because they apply to all commercial spaces.
For instance, if Sony and MS agreed to lock new releases at a $60 for 6 months on both platforms that would be an obvious case. If MS wanted to buy the Playstation division off Sony there would be concerns (although given Nintendo and Steam/Epic I have no idea how that would go).
But this is just a ‘I don’t like it so it must be illegal’ line of logic.
It’s not that entertainment is exempt, it’s that antitrust issues are considered at a broader level than specific IP. When the US courts decided movie studios couldn’t own the theaters, it was about the industry as a whole, not a specific film not being widely distributed. Regulators don’t see “games produced by a given publisher are only available on that publisher’s platform” as a problem on its own, as evidenced by the industry working like that for decades.
Termination provisions pay $3B to Activision if the merger doesn’t go through, so they must be extremely confident it will. It isn’t unheard-of for large mergers to be blocked and the money paid, but it’s extremely rare.
We are in violent agreement. What I’m saying is that there’s no reason to look at COD in isolation: people should be instead looking at the size/clout of Activision Blizzard and Microsoft as a whole in relation to the relevant industry.
Yeah I was going to post something just like this. There’s also a relatively new anti-capitalism streak going around that just hates any big business stuff.
Both of these can be true. MS gets a nice catalog to bolster Game Pass and also makes Sony’s offering less attractive meaning more entertainment dollars will flow Microsoft’s way. Microsoft has a bunch of other profitable divisions to fall back on while Sony relies on gaming as their main money maker. Softening demand or sales - especially given one of their big money makers won’t be there anymore! - would be much worse for Sony than MS.
Sure, Bobby. Rock Band did Guitar Hero better and the latest entry GH Live being a microtransaction hellscape makes me glad it flopped.
People liked DJ Hero, didn’t they? I mean, not enough to keep it alive as a franchise, but certainly wasn’t a “crappy alternative”
Yeah, DJ Hero got good reviews and the audience was generally pleased with it. It just happened to come as the saturation was beginning.
DJ Hero (and its sequel, to a lesser extent) is pure rhythm game magic, and I’ll die on that hill if I have to.
I really wish I’d gotten DJ Hero. It seems exactly my kind of game. But by the time I got around to looking for it in the bargain bins, it had disappeared.
(Edit: Heh, it’s really cheap on Ebay now. But I’ve disconnected my Xbox 360. I don’t think this peripheral will work with Xbox One or Series X).
Yeah, what killed the market was total saturation over several years, which Activision was a big part of. At the time I wondered if Kotick felt like the entire genre was only going to live for a few years so he was determined to suck as much money from it as possible before it died.
That’s one of the things I’m curious to see about Activision in the coming years, will they back off the annual release thing? Will they let their internal development teams work on something other than Call of Duty for a while? There’s some great teams there, imagine what they could do if they had a little room to develop their own ideas. It’s a best case scenario for sure, but I’m hopeful we might see something cool and new out of these guys.
Totally agreed. I think in the case of Skylanders, you had the same issue really. It’s not that the competition was “crappy” it’s that there were so many of them and they were all expensive as heck and that includes the multiple Skylanders versions.
Do all those 360-era plastic guitars still work on an Xbone/Series console?
Only if you buy a special legacy adapter thing. Something I own but can’t find. It sells for a thousand bucks on ebay.
Edit: Oh hey, the price is down to only $350 right now on Amazon. I bought the version I can’t find for $20.