Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win
From the article, quoting Judge Corley:
… the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED.
So how long until Microsoft restricts all Activision or Blizzard games to being only on Xbox or PC?
im still waiting to play spider-man and god of war
Apples and oranges. Those were created as Playstation exclusives, not an existing property potentially made exclusive years after the fact. Decades later, Mario games are still almost entirely Nintendo-only. That’s the comparison for God of War, not Call of Duty.
It’s still an example of why some prefer Microsoft, since Sony and Nintendo are still very much in the business of pushing people towards using proprietary hardware. Even Linux and Mac users benefit from a game coming out to PC versus console only or a delayed PC release despite no native port with improvements in proton and Mac’s Game Porting tool.
Just as there are those who dislike Microsoft for its proprietary software and patterns of abuse of market dominance.
Yep agree there. It is however much easier to get Microsoft made software to get running on Linux or MacOS than to do the same for console games. There you are for the most part stuck to using that specific hardware for a decade, and then should emulation happen wait even longer for more expensive and powerful hardware to be able to run it to satisfaction.
It’s pretty much the ideal corporate controlled product to really trap people in it for as long as possible.
I’m okay with console games. Many others are as well. The experience is cleaner and generally safer. I have a mobile phone, tablet, laptop and desktop but the number of games I play on them combined is approximately zero.
I trend more towards open hardware options without being forced to get specific hardware, so tend to see it from more the perspective of the impact on that area than I guess more normal gaming centric view where expectations of console ownership is normalized.
Those two games are both on PC
Yes after much delay and future sequels not an absolute guarantee either.
https://insider-gaming.com/sony-ceo-jim-ryan-says-ps5-exclusives-wont-launch-on-pc-day-one/
Their hardware is the priority and main focus over an open hardware platform, so while I love that Sony has started releasing exclusives even if it is 3-4 years later it wouldn’t shock me if they ceased future plans either.
I understand your point but its odd that you picked 2 games that aren’t PlayStation exclusives lol. Theyre on pc
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I’m pretty convinced that King is a huge part of this for them. People are so focused on the console side of things because of console war nonsense.
Even when Microsoft specifically said as much people chose to ignore it.
Microsoft want to build a mobile game ecosystem. King gets them a huge start to that plan.
At least 10 years, likely never. Just like how Minecraft is still multiplatform on every device under the sun, COD/Diablo/etc will be too because that’s what their strength is - huge userbases.
I think they might go the other way and use it as leverage to push Sony to release cross platform games
Sony already does though, just on PC.
Only a handful of games and only after they are several years old. But not the whole franchise, so unless you have a PlayStation or had one in the past and played the other games in the franchise, you may be missing too much story to understand what’s going on.
Other than Spider-Man, it really feels like Sony coming out with games on PC is just to get you to buy a PlayStation to finish the franchise. Almost like a demo.
I appreciate what Sony has done, and I had a ton of fun playing Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man, but as much as I want to play Uncharted, people tell me that I just can’t start from the end of that series. And I don’t really feel motivated to get God of War knowing they may wait 5+ years to put Valhalla on PC.
Yeah, Sony still is very much focused on pushing people to proprietary hardware. I’m glad they changed in some aspects as they saw the lost market potential of letting Microsoft dominate in the PC area. But, it is telling that if Sony bought a studio my first worry would be about games no longer being released day 1 on PC whereas that worry doesn’t exist for Microsoft. So Sony has improvements to make.
Destiny is the only game Sony has bought of note ever, and it’s not going exclusive, nor is Bungies next game. Sony buys talent, not game libraries.
Not to mention their PC titles have all been pretty bad ports.
At least they seem to be committed to fixing them. But yeah, with the reputation they have made for themselves, I definitely wouldn’t get any of their games at launch without reading lots of reviews. I did pick up Spider-Man at launch because the reviews seemed good, and I thought it was pretty damn solid of a port at launch. I wanted to get TLOU at launch, as I have never been able to play that game. But apparently it was a complete dumpster fire. I guess it has already improved a lot, but I already moved on to other games. I’ll get it when it goes on sale.