9 ms·

Why Sony says it can’t trust Microsoft’s Call of Duty offer? Answer: Bethesda

92 points by redbell 4y ago

kderbyma 4y ago
Microsoft is dreadful for game creativity. Xbox has never had the creative edge...that's is why they acquired.....they are run like. cutthroats.....that is all they can do ...Sony has respect for their gamers.... Microsoft has respect for no one.
pepemon 4y ago
I'm not sure what is wrong here, taking into account that it's usual for Sony to make titles produced by their subsidiaries as exclusives for PS only (yes, e.g. God of War was released on PC too, but that was almost 4 years after the initial launch as PS4 exclusive). At least Microsoft releases games on Windows simultaneously with Xbox launch, and these Windows releases could run on Linux too (thank you Valve & Proton). Not possible with Sony stuff.
- kyrra 4y ago
  The issue is that this isn't Microsoft bootstrapping a new division that produces games exclusive for their platforms. This is a problem of Microsoft trying to buy one of the larger existing game publishers with some very popular titles and likely make many of them Microsoft platform exclusive.
  - pepemon 4y ago
    That's why I additionally pointed about Windows releases. With Microsoft exclusive, you can play the title on Xbox, Windows PC, Linux PC, Steam Deck. With Sony, it's PS only.
    - tapoxi 4y ago
      Sony's actually made an effort to get many newer games ported to PC, and Steam Deck verified.
      - pepemon 4y ago
        What kind of "newer"? I only consider Spider-Man: Miles Morales as "new enough" and it was still released over 2 years ago. When God of War: Ragnarok will be available on PC? You get Xbox titles on PC on the same day of their console release.
        tapoxi 4y ago
        Returnal which came out April 2021 and the PC version just released, technically Destiny 2: Lightfall (if that counts) was day-and-date. Sony still has an incentive to sell hardware and keep games exclusive though. Unlike Microsoft, they don't control Windows and don't have an incentive to keep Windows the gaming OS of choice. Microsoft is also trying to push their own Xbox Game Pass and get users gradually away from Steam.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    When Sony buys company to make exclusives - good. When Microsoft - bad
    - Cyph0n 4y ago
      Can you share an example of Sony buying a company at the scale of Activision and turning it exclusive? The only recent significant studio acquisitions I can think of already had a long history of making PS exclusives (e.g., Insomniac).
      - elzbardico 4y ago
        Because they don't have the kind of money to do that. But they never cared about windows and Xbox players when the game stakes were low enough for them to play the exclusive game.
        Hamuko 4y ago
        The fact that Sony, who Microsoft insists is absolutely obliterating them in the gaming space, doesn't have the money to enact these sorts of massive mega-mergers seems telling that this kind of a deal is not just a natural part of the market. Rather, Microsoft is just leverating their wealth from their other businesses to armstrong the market.
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    And why is this any different other than from some naive puritanical point of view? Developing new versions and new games will take as much money and probably more than the initial versions.
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      Because it’s anticompetitive and MS should have not been allowed to purchase such a company.
      - elzbardico 4y ago
        And what sony does is different? Just because they pay less at an early stage?
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Wow. Microsoft releases games for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Xbox? And thanks to tremendous efforts by third parties they work on other platforms? Amazing! I doubt you or most people would consider Breath of the Wild not to be Nintendo exclusive despite it being on TWO different Nintendo platforms and playable on other platforms thanks to third parties. Microsoft plays the exclusive game too no matter how much people like to pretend that they don't control Windows and benefit from keeping it the dominate PC gaming OS.
  - pepemon 4y ago
    You can't run yuzu or Cemu on PS even if you wanted too. The Sony's platform is tremendously locked. Also I mentioned Proton in my original post, you get Linux compability for the "Microsoft exclusive" game basically for free.
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      With Yuzu and Cemu you get Linux and Windows compatibility for the "Nintendo exclusive" game for free. I can't run Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 either regardless if I wanted to.
      - pepemon 4y ago
        You can't run Breath of the Wild too.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - gibspaulding 4y ago
      > Also I mentioned Proton in my original post, you get Linux compability for the "Microsoft exclusive" game basically for free. You got my hopes up:/ I just looked and I don't see a single COD game showing proton/steamdeck support on steam. Maybe there's workarounds for some of the old ones, but I don't think any recent ones with working anti cheat have anything but Windows support.
- brwck 4y ago
  I was so sure that rise of PC ownership would spell the end of consoles. I still can't believe console gaming grew and became even more entrenched the last 10 years. It would be like if blockbuster grew and became more popular with the rise of netflix.
Karellen 4y ago
Not just Bethesda: > Even if the CMA tried to enforce a so-called "behavioral remedy" to keep Call of Duty multi-platform, that move would not "address the myriad ways Microsoft could circumvent its obligations," Sony wrote. Sony also said Microsoft has a "history of non-compliance with behavioral commitments," pointing to Bethesda as well as previous broken commitments regarding Windows and Internet Explorer. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/eu-fines-microsoft-e561-million-for-not-giving-users-a-browser-choice/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/eu-fines-microso... So, why can't Sony trust Microsoft's Call of Duty offer? Answer: They're Microsoft.
- justinclift 4y ago
  Heh Heh Heh Whichever Microsoft decision maker caused the Edge icon to be forced onto all Windows users desktops (sometimes repeatedly), sure has given Sony some high profile evidence to work with.
- doikor 4y ago
  Microsoft never made any commitments (behavioural or otherwise) about Bethesda game exclusivity so how on earth did they brake any? The only commitment they made for that deal was the keep existing games supported on the platforms they already existed and to uphold any existing agreements. And they have uphold both of those. Elder scrolls online is getting all the same support on PlayStation as Xbox and both Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop released as timed PlayStation exclusives as agreed on earlier contacts.
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    >Microsoft never made any commitments (behavioural or otherwise) about Bethesda game exclusivity so how on earth did they brake any? They never made anything that would contractually bind them to do something, but they made statements that don't seem to align with their actions.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Pretty rich for Sony to complain about exclusives. I guess Sony considers Call of Duty more of a game changer than the God of War and Horizon franchises. In a perfect world, there would be no platform exclusives, especially not on consoles, unless we're talking about money-starved indie studios taking funding so they can survive as a company. The expensive consoles are all basically the same devices with some special tricks here and there. Sure, integrating games with the console OS will take some time, but most of the game isn't nearly as platform specific as these companies pretend it is. In practice, every console brand is paying developers for exclusive rights, even just for timed exclusives. From Apple to Valve, the entire industry is riddled with companies trying to make their platform have an artificial edge above the others, because the truth is that the consumer doesn't really care what hardware the games run on; "you can't have this if you buy from our competitors" is the norm. This causes silly things like Spiderman being a Playstation exclusive character in that Marvel game and absurd side effects on surrounding platforms (like that time you could make a Fortnite account on Playstation that only worked on Playstations despite the cross-platform nature of the game). For the good of the consumer, I hope the merger gets cancelled, though I don't think it'll happen. Sony doesn't get to complain, though, as it has relied on these exact shady business practices for decades now.
- yunohn 4y ago
  > From Apple to Valve, the entire industry is riddled with companies trying to make their platform have an artificial edge above the others, because the truth is that the consumer doesn't really care what hardware the games run on +100 Absolutely insane that we have mostly general purpose computing devices hindered by marketing deals and not technical infeasibility.
- tapoxi 4y ago
  Sony didn't buy an existing multi-platform game franchise and make it exclusive with though. Their most recent purchase was Bungie and Destiny remains multiplatform. Of God of War and Horizon, the first was from an internally founded studio, and the latter was purchased all the way back in 2005.
  - 4y ago
nerdjon 4y ago
I normally respect Ars a lot for their reporting, but they also conveniently ignore Minecraft that not only continues to get support on other platforms but other platforms also get any of the spinoffs. To my knowledge Microsoft never made any commitment saying that Bethesda games would always come out on other platforms. I also still think that Sony is being incredibly hypocritical here with how they are responding considering their love of making exclusive contracts. Final Fantasy being a big example right now but it seems to be a trend that Square and Sony will continue. It remains to be seen how Sony will actually handle Bungie. Ultimately the way I see it, is the Activision deal actually a good thing? I don't know, it is a lot of studios going under Microsoft. But on the flip side Sony has a very nasty tendency of getting cocky in gaming and making some very anti consumer decisions. Ex: The price of the PS3, backwards compatibility, cross play multiplayer, and others. The simple fact is we need competition in the console marketplace, without it I doubt we would have ever gotten any playstation games on PC, which they still seem reluctant to support at all.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I'm still bitter about FF leaving Nintendo after FF6.
  - nerdjon 4y ago
    I am just bitter about FF7 Remake and FF16. Every game that has exclusive content on Playstation Not because I don't have a PS5, I do. But I refuse to support those types of business decisions. Particularly when there is exclusive content. Edit: Fixing FF15 to FF16
    - rjzzleep 4y ago
      Aren't a lot of those Playstation exclusives time limited? I.e. for a year or two it's PS exclusive afterwards the company can release it for any platform they want.
      - nerdjon 4y ago
Algent 4y ago
I'm not sure why any business would trust Microsoft with anything. They have decades of history of finding loophole into any contract or just outright breaking deals. On their gaming branch they managed to repaint themselves as saint to community but the way they have been stacking major studio and distributors acquisitions is quite worrying. Once the Activision one is finished they will definitely have monopoly over several types of games (but probably not if you look at it as a whole).
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Same can be told by any big tech, including Sony.
ar9av 4y ago
Can't trust them? Bethesda had a deal with Sony to keep Deathloop as a timed PlayStation exclusive. After Microsoft bought Bethesda they honored that deal and released the game excusively on the competing platform. They never offered to release Starfield on PlayStation just like Sony never offered to release Spiderman on Xbox when they bought Insomniac.
- agloe_dreams 4y ago
  > Sony never offered to release Spiderman on Xbox when they bought Insomniac. This is an absurd angle for one comical reason: Spiderman...is Sony property. Like Sony Entertainment Corporate. They bought the rights in the 90s. That's why Spiderman only recently joined the MCU. This is Nintendo letting Valve make a Mario game..but requiring it to be on Nintendo platforms. That all checks out. Sony's fair complaint here is that Microsoft made public statements (without contracts) that they wouldn't do what they did and then did it anyways. Their angle is that MS will find ways around the COD problem by releasing new IP or spinoffs based on it.
  - doikor 4y ago
    > Sony's fair complaint here is that Microsoft made public statements (without contracts) that they wouldn't do what they did and then did it anyways. Except they never did that. What Microsoft said is that they would keep existing games supported on whatever platform they are on and honour any existing contract. They have done both.
    - agloe_dreams 4y ago
      The article above clearly quoted MS stating that it would be absurd to only release Starfield as an exclusive...and then they did. That is exactly what I said.
      - doikor 4y ago
        That was Todd Howard before the merger went through. So at the time he did not work at Microsoft. Also the paragraph after the being quoted goes. > Elsewhere in the interview, Howard admits that the parties haven't fully discussed the details of multiplatform publishing as part of the purchase deal. Also the quote was about the next elder scrolls but starfield.
AraceliHarker 4y ago
I wonder what Sony is thinking when they make these contracts with some of the game developers. Games like Genshin Impact and FF7 Remake are never going to be released on Xbox, even though they are on PC. And I have a feeling that the same thing will happen with FF16. And then there are other games that can be sold on Xbox but not on Game Pass. Sony is blocking Xbox's gaming possibilities while complaining that Microsoft is trying to take CoD away from PS. Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Maybe Sony should start by getting rid of their own contracts that keep games away from Xbox.
- dmonitor 4y ago
  Sony giving a company a ton of money to stay independent and release a PS exclusive game is absolutely different from Microsoft just buying a $70 billion company just because they can.
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    The same as Microsoft is doing. The companies Microsoft is buying sorely need a management overhaul and capital.
wdb 4y ago
If this helps to play games via streaming on my Mac. I am all for it
elzbardico 4y ago
The usual sony fanboy argument is that sony exclusives are different because Sony bootstrapped the studios. But why bootstrapping as opposed to outright buying an existing studio is different? The older versions will keep working for other platforms, Microsoft is investing in the development of new versions, it will take the same kind of money, and probably even more than developing any of the previous versions. Sony started this exclusive game shitshow. They can't complain when it is lead to their ultimate logical consequences.
- intev 4y ago
  This is a strawman argument that falls apart when you start looking at it even a little bit closer. If MS doesn't buy Activision, that continue can move along perfectly fine and be an extremely profitable company serving two platforms. They have always done this and one could say they produce a "commodity" game. MS is trying to monopolize it and Sony doesn't trust MS that they will continue to keep it a "commodity" product. They could technically honor any commitment by creating a bad "lite" game and have a really good full game only on Xbox for example. Sony pretty much developed their own IP to make it part of the PS package. They needed more reason for people to buy so they invested heavily and took risks making exclusive games. Some of them panned out and some didn't, but the ones that did help sell the PS. Why should they sell that to XBox? It's considered a feature of the PS. It's like saying since Tesla didn't sell their battery to other EV manufacturers (making it exclusive to Tesla), Toyota should be allowed to buy the largest drivetrain manufacturer in the world because they started this whole exclusive shitshow.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    > If MS doesn't buy Activision, that continue can move along perfectly fine and be an extremely profitable company serving two platforms. We actually don't know this. It's not a guarantee that an extremely profitable company doesn't want to exit the market and will exist "as is" in perpetuity. The fact that they've put themselves into a position to be bought out is its own strong signal they are considering exit strategies. Activision's own history is full of being the bucket other huge publishers (messily) exited into. (Vivendi, being a huge example, and itself carrying the combined exited weight of Sierra, Davidson, and Knowledge Associates. Blizzard being another strange example.) Companies generally have very strong "will to live" certainly, but boards get tired and investors get cranky, and sometimes companies "need" to make an exit. It's possible Activision remains a large publisher if the Microsoft buy out fails. It is also just as possible that vultures see what is left of Activision as a dead man walking and start to pick at it immediately and strip mine it for parts. (Atari, Infogrames, THQ, …) It is also just as possible that Activision will be between a rock and a hard place and forced to take the next best offered deal. (Would you be just as upset if Activision became Sony exclusive? Or if Activision became just another branch of EA?) The alternatives right now include a lot more than just the binary of "Microsoft buys Activision" and "Activision remains in its current state", especially because "Activision tries to sell to Microsoft" is a strong signal that the current state either isn't sustainable or isn't as strongly as interest to the board/investors as people might think. "Activision continues to exist as-is" is a bad reason to block the purchase. Activision may not survive either way. ("Activision may not survive either way" of course isn't a good reason to be pro-buyout, of course, either. I'd think that goes without saying, but sometimes here on HN the obvious needs to also be reminded in conversations full of polarized opinions. I'm not explicitly pro- or anti-buyout here, I'm just reminding everyone that companies sometimes die and there's no "natural state" here to argue about.) (I don't have much to add to the speculation about exclusives and will they/won't they Microsoft keeping their bargain on cross-platform initiatives. I think that debate is going to keep going in circles.)
wankle 4y ago
I wish I'd known Microsoft owned Bethesda, I wouldn't have tried out Fallout 4 this year at all. Is there any decent game Microsoft doesn't own the company of? At least No Man's Sky isn't owned by them. I dumped Minecraft after Microsoft bought them.
turbobooster 4y ago
Can't wait for Sony to go bankrupt
dm319 4y ago
Maybe we should follow the unix philosophy with companies. Do one thing, and do it well, and seek to optimise compatibility rather than building huge monolithic companies that seek engulf everything smaller.
lemoncookiechip 4y ago
As long as they keep coming to PC, I honestly don't care much, especially when the so called "exclusives" are now ending up on PC after a few years. Activision-Blizzard has been awful for years now, maybe Microsoft's own special awful will mix with theirs and somehow allow for something that isn't a predatory game or mocking their core audience with gems like "Don't you guys have phones" paraphrasing. Consoles these days are nothing but glorified mid-to-low tier PCs at a good price (usually costs the company money), that end up causing PC ports to be horrible messes as well as delay improvements in the industry due to the hardware. Not to mention, they're walled gardens.

92 points by redbell 4y ago

Microsoft is dreadful for game creativity. Xbox has never had the creative edge...that's is why they acquired.....they are run like. cutthroats.....that is all they can do ...Sony has respect for their gamers.... Microsoft has respect for no one.

pepemon 4y ago

I'm not sure what is wrong here, taking into account that it's usual for Sony to make titles produced by their subsidiaries as exclusives for PS only (yes, e.g. God of War was released on PC too, but that was almost 4 years after the initial launch as PS4 exclusive). At least Microsoft releases games on Windows simultaneously with Xbox launch, and these Windows releases could run on Linux too (thank you Valve & Proton). Not possible with Sony stuff.

kyrra 4y ago
The issue is that this isn't Microsoft bootstrapping a new division that produces games exclusive for their platforms. This is a problem of Microsoft trying to buy one of the larger existing game publishers with some very popular titles and likely make many of them Microsoft platform exclusive.
- pepemon 4y ago
  That's why I additionally pointed about Windows releases. With Microsoft exclusive, you can play the title on Xbox, Windows PC, Linux PC, Steam Deck. With Sony, it's PS only.
  - tapoxi 4y ago
    Sony's actually made an effort to get many newer games ported to PC, and Steam Deck verified.
    - pepemon 4y ago
      What kind of "newer"? I only consider Spider-Man: Miles Morales as "new enough" and it was still released over 2 years ago. When God of War: Ragnarok will be available on PC? You get Xbox titles on PC on the same day of their console release.
      - tapoxi 4y ago
        Returnal which came out April 2021 and the PC version just released, technically Destiny 2: Lightfall (if that counts) was day-and-date. Sony still has an incentive to sell hardware and keep games exclusive though. Unlike Microsoft, they don't control Windows and don't have an incentive to keep Windows the gaming OS of choice. Microsoft is also trying to push their own Xbox Game Pass and get users gradually away from Steam.
- MikusR 4y ago
  When Sony buys company to make exclusives - good. When Microsoft - bad
  - Cyph0n 4y ago
    Can you share an example of Sony buying a company at the scale of Activision and turning it exclusive? The only recent significant studio acquisitions I can think of already had a long history of making PS exclusives (e.g., Insomniac).
    - elzbardico 4y ago
      Because they don't have the kind of money to do that. But they never cared about windows and Xbox players when the game stakes were low enough for them to play the exclusive game.
      - Hamuko 4y ago
        The fact that Sony, who Microsoft insists is absolutely obliterating them in the gaming space, doesn't have the money to enact these sorts of massive mega-mergers seems telling that this kind of a deal is not just a natural part of the market. Rather, Microsoft is just leverating their wealth from their other businesses to armstrong the market.
- elzbardico 4y ago
  And why is this any different other than from some naive puritanical point of view? Developing new versions and new games will take as much money and probably more than the initial versions.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Because it’s anticompetitive and MS should have not been allowed to purchase such a company.
    - elzbardico 4y ago
      And what sony does is different? Just because they pay less at an early stage?
goosedragons 4y ago
Wow. Microsoft releases games for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Xbox? And thanks to tremendous efforts by third parties they work on other platforms? Amazing! I doubt you or most people would consider Breath of the Wild not to be Nintendo exclusive despite it being on TWO different Nintendo platforms and playable on other platforms thanks to third parties. Microsoft plays the exclusive game too no matter how much people like to pretend that they don't control Windows and benefit from keeping it the dominate PC gaming OS.
- pepemon 4y ago
  You can't run yuzu or Cemu on PS even if you wanted too. The Sony's platform is tremendously locked. Also I mentioned Proton in my original post, you get Linux compability for the "Microsoft exclusive" game basically for free.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    With Yuzu and Cemu you get Linux and Windows compatibility for the "Nintendo exclusive" game for free. I can't run Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5 on PS5 either regardless if I wanted to.
    - pepemon 4y ago
      You can't run Breath of the Wild too.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - gibspaulding 4y ago
    > Also I mentioned Proton in my original post, you get Linux compability for the "Microsoft exclusive" game basically for free. You got my hopes up:/ I just looked and I don't see a single COD game showing proton/steamdeck support on steam. Maybe there's workarounds for some of the old ones, but I don't think any recent ones with working anti cheat have anything but Windows support.
brwck 4y ago
I was so sure that rise of PC ownership would spell the end of consoles. I still can't believe console gaming grew and became even more entrenched the last 10 years. It would be like if blockbuster grew and became more popular with the rise of netflix.

Karellen 4y ago

Not just Bethesda: > Even if the CMA tried to enforce a so-called "behavioral remedy" to keep Call of Duty multi-platform, that move would not "address the myriad ways Microsoft could circumvent its obligations," Sony wrote. Sony also said Microsoft has a "history of non-compliance with behavioral commitments," pointing to Bethesda as well as previous broken commitments regarding Windows and Internet Explorer. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/eu-fines-microsoft-e561-million-for-not-giving-users-a-browser-choice/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/eu-fines-microso... So, why can't Sony trust Microsoft's Call of Duty offer? Answer: They're Microsoft.

justinclift 4y ago
Heh Heh Heh Whichever Microsoft decision maker caused the Edge icon to be forced onto all Windows users desktops (sometimes repeatedly), sure has given Sony some high profile evidence to work with.
doikor 4y ago
Microsoft never made any commitments (behavioural or otherwise) about Bethesda game exclusivity so how on earth did they brake any? The only commitment they made for that deal was the keep existing games supported on the platforms they already existed and to uphold any existing agreements. And they have uphold both of those. Elder scrolls online is getting all the same support on PlayStation as Xbox and both Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop released as timed PlayStation exclusives as agreed on earlier contacts.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >Microsoft never made any commitments (behavioural or otherwise) about Bethesda game exclusivity so how on earth did they brake any? They never made anything that would contractually bind them to do something, but they made statements that don't seem to align with their actions.

jeroenhd 4y ago

Pretty rich for Sony to complain about exclusives. I guess Sony considers Call of Duty more of a game changer than the God of War and Horizon franchises. In a perfect world, there would be no platform exclusives, especially not on consoles, unless we're talking about money-starved indie studios taking funding so they can survive as a company. The expensive consoles are all basically the same devices with some special tricks here and there. Sure, integrating games with the console OS will take some time, but most of the game isn't nearly as platform specific as these companies pretend it is. In practice, every console brand is paying developers for exclusive rights, even just for timed exclusives. From Apple to Valve, the entire industry is riddled with companies trying to make their platform have an artificial edge above the others, because the truth is that the consumer doesn't really care what hardware the games run on; "you can't have this if you buy from our competitors" is the norm. This causes silly things like Spiderman being a Playstation exclusive character in that Marvel game and absurd side effects on surrounding platforms (like that time you could make a Fortnite account on Playstation that only worked on Playstations despite the cross-platform nature of the game). For the good of the consumer, I hope the merger gets cancelled, though I don't think it'll happen. Sony doesn't get to complain, though, as it has relied on these exact shady business practices for decades now.

yunohn 4y ago
> From Apple to Valve, the entire industry is riddled with companies trying to make their platform have an artificial edge above the others, because the truth is that the consumer doesn't really care what hardware the games run on +100 Absolutely insane that we have mostly general purpose computing devices hindered by marketing deals and not technical infeasibility.
tapoxi 4y ago
Sony didn't buy an existing multi-platform game franchise and make it exclusive with though. Their most recent purchase was Bungie and Destiny remains multiplatform. Of God of War and Horizon, the first was from an internally founded studio, and the latter was purchased all the way back in 2005.
- 4y ago

nerdjon 4y ago

I normally respect Ars a lot for their reporting, but they also conveniently ignore Minecraft that not only continues to get support on other platforms but other platforms also get any of the spinoffs. To my knowledge Microsoft never made any commitment saying that Bethesda games would always come out on other platforms. I also still think that Sony is being incredibly hypocritical here with how they are responding considering their love of making exclusive contracts. Final Fantasy being a big example right now but it seems to be a trend that Square and Sony will continue. It remains to be seen how Sony will actually handle Bungie. Ultimately the way I see it, is the Activision deal actually a good thing? I don't know, it is a lot of studios going under Microsoft. But on the flip side Sony has a very nasty tendency of getting cocky in gaming and making some very anti consumer decisions. Ex: The price of the PS3, backwards compatibility, cross play multiplayer, and others. The simple fact is we need competition in the console marketplace, without it I doubt we would have ever gotten any playstation games on PC, which they still seem reluctant to support at all.

foobarian 4y ago
I'm still bitter about FF leaving Nintendo after FF6.
- nerdjon 4y ago
  I am just bitter about FF7 Remake and FF16. Every game that has exclusive content on Playstation Not because I don't have a PS5, I do. But I refuse to support those types of business decisions. Particularly when there is exclusive content. Edit: Fixing FF15 to FF16
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    Aren't a lot of those Playstation exclusives time limited? I.e. for a year or two it's PS exclusive afterwards the company can release it for any platform they want.
    - nerdjon 4y ago

Algent 4y ago

I'm not sure why any business would trust Microsoft with anything. They have decades of history of finding loophole into any contract or just outright breaking deals. On their gaming branch they managed to repaint themselves as saint to community but the way they have been stacking major studio and distributors acquisitions is quite worrying. Once the Activision one is finished they will definitely have monopoly over several types of games (but probably not if you look at it as a whole).

pjmlp 4y ago
Same can be told by any big tech, including Sony.

ar9av 4y ago

Can't trust them? Bethesda had a deal with Sony to keep Deathloop as a timed PlayStation exclusive. After Microsoft bought Bethesda they honored that deal and released the game excusively on the competing platform. They never offered to release Starfield on PlayStation just like Sony never offered to release Spiderman on Xbox when they bought Insomniac.

agloe_dreams 4y ago
> Sony never offered to release Spiderman on Xbox when they bought Insomniac. This is an absurd angle for one comical reason: Spiderman...is Sony property. Like Sony Entertainment Corporate. They bought the rights in the 90s. That's why Spiderman only recently joined the MCU. This is Nintendo letting Valve make a Mario game..but requiring it to be on Nintendo platforms. That all checks out. Sony's fair complaint here is that Microsoft made public statements (without contracts) that they wouldn't do what they did and then did it anyways. Their angle is that MS will find ways around the COD problem by releasing new IP or spinoffs based on it.
- doikor 4y ago
  > Sony's fair complaint here is that Microsoft made public statements (without contracts) that they wouldn't do what they did and then did it anyways. Except they never did that. What Microsoft said is that they would keep existing games supported on whatever platform they are on and honour any existing contract. They have done both.
  - agloe_dreams 4y ago
    The article above clearly quoted MS stating that it would be absurd to only release Starfield as an exclusive...and then they did. That is exactly what I said.
    - doikor 4y ago
      That was Todd Howard before the merger went through. So at the time he did not work at Microsoft. Also the paragraph after the being quoted goes. > Elsewhere in the interview, Howard admits that the parties haven't fully discussed the details of multiplatform publishing as part of the purchase deal. Also the quote was about the next elder scrolls but starfield.

AraceliHarker 4y ago

I wonder what Sony is thinking when they make these contracts with some of the game developers. Games like Genshin Impact and FF7 Remake are never going to be released on Xbox, even though they are on PC. And I have a feeling that the same thing will happen with FF16. And then there are other games that can be sold on Xbox but not on Game Pass. Sony is blocking Xbox's gaming possibilities while complaining that Microsoft is trying to take CoD away from PS. Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Maybe Sony should start by getting rid of their own contracts that keep games away from Xbox.

dmonitor 4y ago
Sony giving a company a ton of money to stay independent and release a PS exclusive game is absolutely different from Microsoft just buying a $70 billion company just because they can.
- elzbardico 4y ago
  The same as Microsoft is doing. The companies Microsoft is buying sorely need a management overhaul and capital.

wdb 4y ago

If this helps to play games via streaming on my Mac. I am all for it

elzbardico 4y ago

The usual sony fanboy argument is that sony exclusives are different because Sony bootstrapped the studios. But why bootstrapping as opposed to outright buying an existing studio is different? The older versions will keep working for other platforms, Microsoft is investing in the development of new versions, it will take the same kind of money, and probably even more than developing any of the previous versions. Sony started this exclusive game shitshow. They can't complain when it is lead to their ultimate logical consequences.

intev 4y ago
This is a strawman argument that falls apart when you start looking at it even a little bit closer. If MS doesn't buy Activision, that continue can move along perfectly fine and be an extremely profitable company serving two platforms. They have always done this and one could say they produce a "commodity" game. MS is trying to monopolize it and Sony doesn't trust MS that they will continue to keep it a "commodity" product. They could technically honor any commitment by creating a bad "lite" game and have a really good full game only on Xbox for example. Sony pretty much developed their own IP to make it part of the PS package. They needed more reason for people to buy so they invested heavily and took risks making exclusive games. Some of them panned out and some didn't, but the ones that did help sell the PS. Why should they sell that to XBox? It's considered a feature of the PS. It's like saying since Tesla didn't sell their battery to other EV manufacturers (making it exclusive to Tesla), Toyota should be allowed to buy the largest drivetrain manufacturer in the world because they started this whole exclusive shitshow.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > If MS doesn't buy Activision, that continue can move along perfectly fine and be an extremely profitable company serving two platforms. We actually don't know this. It's not a guarantee that an extremely profitable company doesn't want to exit the market and will exist "as is" in perpetuity. The fact that they've put themselves into a position to be bought out is its own strong signal they are considering exit strategies. Activision's own history is full of being the bucket other huge publishers (messily) exited into. (Vivendi, being a huge example, and itself carrying the combined exited weight of Sierra, Davidson, and Knowledge Associates. Blizzard being another strange example.) Companies generally have very strong "will to live" certainly, but boards get tired and investors get cranky, and sometimes companies "need" to make an exit. It's possible Activision remains a large publisher if the Microsoft buy out fails. It is also just as possible that vultures see what is left of Activision as a dead man walking and start to pick at it immediately and strip mine it for parts. (Atari, Infogrames, THQ, …) It is also just as possible that Activision will be between a rock and a hard place and forced to take the next best offered deal. (Would you be just as upset if Activision became Sony exclusive? Or if Activision became just another branch of EA?) The alternatives right now include a lot more than just the binary of "Microsoft buys Activision" and "Activision remains in its current state", especially because "Activision tries to sell to Microsoft" is a strong signal that the current state either isn't sustainable or isn't as strongly as interest to the board/investors as people might think. "Activision continues to exist as-is" is a bad reason to block the purchase. Activision may not survive either way. ("Activision may not survive either way" of course isn't a good reason to be pro-buyout, of course, either. I'd think that goes without saying, but sometimes here on HN the obvious needs to also be reminded in conversations full of polarized opinions. I'm not explicitly pro- or anti-buyout here, I'm just reminding everyone that companies sometimes die and there's no "natural state" here to argue about.) (I don't have much to add to the speculation about exclusives and will they/won't they Microsoft keeping their bargain on cross-platform initiatives. I think that debate is going to keep going in circles.)

wankle 4y ago

I wish I'd known Microsoft owned Bethesda, I wouldn't have tried out Fallout 4 this year at all. Is there any decent game Microsoft doesn't own the company of? At least No Man's Sky isn't owned by them. I dumped Minecraft after Microsoft bought them.

turbobooster 4y ago

Can't wait for Sony to go bankrupt

dm319 4y ago

Maybe we should follow the unix philosophy with companies. Do one thing, and do it well, and seek to optimise compatibility rather than building huge monolithic companies that seek engulf everything smaller.

lemoncookiechip 4y ago

As long as they keep coming to PC, I honestly don't care much, especially when the so called "exclusives" are now ending up on PC after a few years. Activision-Blizzard has been awful for years now, maybe Microsoft's own special awful will mix with theirs and somehow allow for something that isn't a predatory game or mocking their core audience with gems like "Don't you guys have phones" paraphrasing. Consoles these days are nothing but glorified mid-to-low tier PCs at a good price (usually costs the company money), that end up causing PC ports to be horrible messes as well as delay improvements in the industry due to the hardware. Not to mention, they're walled gardens.