Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard

Games
1395

You posted a link saying that they are touting games as “console exclusive”

They don’t use that language, they say “coming to xbox” The PC app is called Xbox. Their gaming environment is “xbox” wherever you play.

What I am saying is that Microsoft makes no distinction between “high performance consoles” and PC gaming in terms of their exclusives. Sony does (usually with timed PC releases)

The other huge problem I have is:

Microsoft’s ownership of Activision would provide Microsoft with the ability to
withhold or degrade Activision content through various means, including manipulating
Activision’s pricing, degrading game quality or player experience on rival offerings, changing
the terms and timing of access to Activision’s content, or withholding content from competitors
entirely.

This should say “competitor” as they have singled out Sony as the only competitor for AAA games.

They make the argument that this will hurt Microsoft’s competitors, and then spend a lot of time saying that there is only 1 competitor for Microsoft. Sony. They go to great lengths to argue that Sony is the only peer microsoft has.

They are spelling out this argument as “this will hurt Sony”

That isn’t anti-competitive, it is just competitive.

If Microsoft was not doing PC releases of their games day 1, you could make an argument they will lock COD to the xbox only, but they don’t do that. They are pushing the PC market alongside the console one, and the FTC seems to be buying that Microsoft is acting just like Sony is, and they aren’t. Sony is the only one doing true “console exclusive” games (and Nintendo)

This is why I said the complaint reads like a ResetEra forum post, because it is CLEARLY talking about one competitor only, as some sort of Sony v Microsoft situation.

1396

Sorry, reading comprehension fail. Thank you for the reminder of how percentages work!

1397

Also, you know, the headline is " Here are the Games Coming Exclusively to Xbox in 2021".

This argument applies across all the relevant markets identified (or “multiple” anyway, it’s not a fully pleaded case), not just consoles.

1398

Then why are they not mentioning Origin, Steam, Epic Game Store, as competitors then?

Like I said the FTC complaint reads like an angry ResetEra Sony fan wrote it.

Sony is the only company making games exclusive to their console. Microsoft has committed, and stuck to, having all of their published games to be available on Xbox and PC (the only exception being PC games that don’t translate to consoles, like flight sim, age of empires etc)

This is my problem with the FTC complaint, as it is solely focused on how Microsoft will hurt Sony. That is not the grounds for being anti-competitive, it is just competing with your (larger) rival.

1399

Completely unimportant tangent, but Age of Empires is coming to X-Box. No clue why or how or who it is for, but it is happening.

Please carry on.

1400

I would feel completely different about this if Microsoft was locking down exclusives to the Series X. That would suck, like how it really sucked for fans of Sony games who could not buy an ever elusive PS5.

Microsoft is, without anyone forcing them, opening up their AAA exclusive titles to a market beyond consoles was literally bad for XSX sales. Sony is not doing that, and that really stinks for consumers to be locked to a single device.

The FTC argument would be better argued if they focused more on the future aspects of this fight, that Sony does not have an xbox equivalent online store, that their streaming platform uses microsoft’s technology etc. But it doesn’t, it gets into some weird piss-fight about console exclusives instead of the real issue being that Gamepass being a monolith for game subscriptions and streaming would be a really bad thing for consumers.

It is just poorly laid out IMO. And will look hilarious in 10 years when “consoles” are gone and gaming store platforms are what we talk about.

1401

Because they’re not part of the relevant markets? The markets the FTC has chosen are high performance consoles, multi-game content library subscription services, and cloud gaming subscription services.

These are the competitors the FTC is talking about in addition to Sony’s console.

1402

So, the only relevant market is Sony then?

This is why the argument for it being anti-competitive is weak. It is hard to argue that they are being anti-competitive by competing with their only competitor.

1403

So, like Origin or Ubisoft’s offerings too? Not mentioned in the document. (edit, they are… offhand)

Again, this is why it feels weak to me. They are focusing solely on Microsoft v. Sony in the argument with the examples they are giving.

They are mentioned off-hand, but when they get to the anti-competitive argument, they focus on Sony, which makes the argument weak.

What I am saying is they get into a weird piss fight about Sony consoles vs Xbox consoles, when the real issue they need to make is that this would push Gamepass into an anti-competitive territory. They don’t focus on that. Even in the sections where they detail anti-competitive effects, they are weirdly laser-focused on consoles. The only specific argument they make is about how COD can be optimized for certain consoles

image

We get this, but it is also unfortunately redacted:

image

So, we don’t get the big picture fully here. And it also lacks mentioning that their #1 rival is also using their architecture. Maybe that could change, I would like to hear that argued more. But that is a more pressing concern in my mind than any Xbox/Sony argument.

The entire “nature of the case” section opening the document focuses too heavily on a Microsoft/Sony battle, and I feel that weakens the standing as being anti-competitive and not necessarily protecting consumers as much as protecting Sony.

1404

They are.

1405

For DaveAOE and his stream followers probably. I’m curious to see how well it works.

1406

They are wrong about EA Play. There are 3rd party titles.

1407

I mean, this is just the initial complaint. Each of the three relevant markets will get debated at length independently at trial.

1408

Fair enough. What I am saying is right now, they are making a bad argument that will be difficult to fight in court.

If they want to block this, they really need to focus on game-pass monopolizing the games subscription service market, and stop focusing on how Call of Duty won’t be on a Sony console.

Microsoft’s statement that they would agree to a 10 year deal for parity doesn’t help that argument at all, as it erodes their idea that Microsoft will lock down games.

They need to focus on the more relevant parts of the deal, which is adding content to their streaming and games download library, pushing other rivals out of the way.

I mean, they are already kind of doing that with EA play and Ubisoft+, but they are only mentioned once, almost offhand.

1409

I don’t really agree that they’re focusing on consoles to the exclusion of Game Pass/xCloud. Once you get past the pre-amble, there are three pages out of seventeen (excluding the admin stuff at the end) that are dedicated to the console market. The rest are explicitly talking about either other specific relevant markets, or all the relevant markets. Every single one of the anti-competitive effects is addressed at all three markets.

I’ll grant to a limited extent that some of the supporting evidence (to the extent not redacted) is console specific, but to a certain extent that’s because of it’s historic nature (can’t exclude things from cloud gaming competitors if they don’t exist yet).

1410

Well, this is what I was getting at. They don’t really go into detail about that market (streaming or games subscription library) in the document with examples. They definitely could, talk about Stadia closing, (another big competitor out) or other things. All of the evidence seemed really focused on Call of Duty, which seems like a bad way to present an argument, because Microsoft could just ink a deal with Sony allowing rights to the game for X years etc and bypass that.

The real meat of the anti-competitive nature of this deal, to me, personally, is in the subscription service and streaming, so I would have hoped the FTC would go into a lot more detail on that in their lawsuit, but we didn’t get much.

Making it difficult to state they are being anti-competitive when there are no competitors at all. They could go into how Xbox Game streaming has already basically monopolized the market, but we don’t see that in the document.

Stadia closing really hurts Microsoft on this front heavily, but it wasn’t mentioned at all.

1411

Huh

Guessing it is how the words get parsed, or someone is lying about it.

1412

That is uh… not a good look for the FTC.

That was a pretty large sticking point in the evidence pile, that Microsoft’s past actions should be considered.

1413

They don’t really go into detail about anything. The trial will involve full pleadings which will probably run into hundreds of pages, and the evidence will almost certainly be thousands of pages. But, again, I disagree that it’s overly focused on CoD for consoles. Most of the references to CoD are in the preamble and background, and the actual meat of the complaint is mostly talking about both consoles and services.

1414

The FTC doesn’t say it made commitments to the regulators. It says MS said it didn’t have any incentives to make Zenimax content exclusive.