The children in the comments will believe that this is an actual "fight" between their favorite companies. Phil and Jim Ryan both have no idea what their lawyers wrote to the Brazilian regulatory authority. The lawyers are saying the things that they are supposed to say for their clients. Having said that it is a marketing win for MS because you can't complain about these deals in public without sounding whiny.....not unless your competitor literally gives you the opening. Sony basically saying that COD on Game Pass is anti-competitive and shouldn't be allowed WHILE ALSO paying devs to keep things out of Game Pass already is just a bad look.
@esqueejy: This is not a statement of their actual view of the merger , because as you say if they switched roles then MS would be saying what PS is saying and vice versa. This is about what "view" benefits their business the most as it should be. As far as grossly anti-competitive that's up for debate , personally with Embracer being well over twice the size as any publisher anywhere , and with MS being in 3rd in console sales , it would be very hard to convince me that this one deal somehow is a danger to the industry . Especially given that the biggest games in the industry Fortnite and Roblox were literally developed as a "response" to PUBG and Minecraft. So perhaps Sony develops the next CoD.
This is completely normal. Brazil asks competitors their opinions on the merger. The lawyers form a response that skews in favor of whatever business they represent. Sony is going to say this isn't great...because it isn't great for them. Microsoft is gonna say nobody even needs an Activision game so they can downplay the importance. All of this is just lawyers doing their jobs for their client. None of it can be taken as an admission of anything or some revelation of how the company actually feels. Its arguing with the umpire....it probably doesnt influence anything. But you gotta do it or you are not doing your job.
Down 11% in hardware and down 7% in revenue and 6% in services , and its still like their second best quarter 4 ever. So you are down from an all time high. But I have no doubt the "warriors" will be here as soon as they are done with Twitter.
The most interesting part of this for me is that Playstation has the marketing rights to COD but that deal has been in place for many years. The deal stipulates that certain content and features will come to Playstation first and the commercials are branded Playstation but given how long this deal has been in place I am not sure if it would mention Subscription Service explicitly as something ABK can not do. MS would never have paid the premium in the past to even consider it anyway because ABK would have wanted a ridiculous amount for COD on GamePass. If somehow MS lawyers can find a way to put Modern Warfare 2022 on GamePass this year it would go a long way to solving Microsoft's first party problems this year.
Getting most of these on Game Pass is awesome. I am excited for many of these. I am hoping the ABK deal closes before Diablo 4 releases and I can get that one on GP too.
Man gamers these days are whiny. People judging the gunplay , before knowing how it actually handles or how the perks /stats affect it. People judging the character models of a game with 1000 planets. People judging the 1000 planet before landing on one. I need that ban ability across platforms Phil Spencer was talking about, but I need it for Twitter and Forums.
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