Hacker News Reader

Comment by madrox | Hacker News Reader

FTC is blocking this on grounds that Microsoft would acquire a lot of franchises they could turn into platform exclusives. I'm curious what the FTC thinks of Sony then, and the number of studios they've acquired over the years to churn out exclusive titles. Sony has Spiderman, for crying out loud. Arguably Sony has been more consumer hostile than Microsoft has with anti-consumer pricing and resistance to cross-platform play. From where I sit, Microsoft has to acquire Activision to stay competitive.

View on HN

While I’m no Sony fan, I do think they tend to have a stronger history of fostering new intellectual property rather than acquiring it if you compare them to Microsoft.

Or, I can think of Ratchet and Clank, Last of Us, or anything Japan Studio makes off the top of my head. When I think of Microsoft’s IP, such as Halo, Gears of War, or Age of Empires*, things feel more acquisition-oriented.

Personally, I’d like to see Microsoft imitate Sony in that fashion of bringing new IP up where they can.

While I don't disagree, companies don't get points if their monopolies are home grown vs acquired. Xbox arguably doesn't have the same level of compelling exclusives that Playstation does. The FTC saying this will harm competition feels disingenuous.

Am I missing something? Does the FTC have any authority over Sony, a Japanese company? Isn’t comparing these two companies in terms of US government regulation kind of pointless?

Sony has a US based company, also anyone that tries to do business in the US is going to be subject to regulation of the US. Same story for EU.

There is a difference between exclusive titles and acquiring studios. Sony's Spider-man game was not developed by an acquired studio (they were acquired afterwards).

Xbox could compete with exclusive games without acquiring studios to stay competitive with Sony's exclusive games, but how can Sony compete with a 69 billion dollar acquisition?

I fail to see how the means of acquiring exclusivity matters if the outcome is the same. Would this feel different if Microsoft slowly acquired exclusivity of these franchises over 20 years instead of in a single day?

The difference isn't the means, the difference is the scale. Microsoft acquiring exclusivity for all of a big publisher's titles is different than a single or even a few titles.

Would what be the same? Would it still be bad and I believe the FTC should block it? Yes. But there's also a lot more variables than just once sentence hypothetical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com