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Comment by NickC25 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I don't see why this deal shouldn't go ahead.

Sony has exclusives, too. MSFT already said their top Activision-published titles would also be available on PlayStation, such as Call of Duty. Sony also buys studios and forces exclusivity agreements on them, too.

Could this acquisition also put Sony in a tough spot? Sure, but that's the nature of the game they are playing (no pun intended), and don't forget, there are still a ton of incredibly popular third-party titles that are available on PlayStation, such as FIFA, Madden, Fortnite, etc... and won't be exclusive to any console in the foreseeable future.

There's nothing preventing them from making game-changing acquisitions, either. Sony could acquire EA, Nintendo, or a whole bunch of other top game companies and nobody would bat an eye.

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> I don't see why this deal shouldn't go ahead.

Because the companies are already giant behemoths abusing market power, and further consolidation will only make it worse?

Turn the question around: why should it go ahead? Will it make workers or consumers better off to have even less competition?

Yeah, it seems to me that the market benefits from having as many large third-party publishers as possible. I'd like to see Microsoft and Sony competing to make the most favourable platform for publishers and developers.

Even if the acquisition gets the go-ahead and Microsoft is able purchase Activision, I'd rather see them grow their own intellectual property and studio infrastructure. I think it'd benefit the industry, the medium, and consumers as a whole.

>I'd rather see them grow their own intellectual property and studio infrastructure

You and me both, as well as millions of other games around the world. Unfortunately, investing into the unknown (developing new IP) versus the known (popular franchises) is not something investors or the stock market really like, sadly.

> Turn the question around: why should it go ahead? Will it make workers or consumers better off to have even less competition?

Because the two corporations want it to go ahead? Seems like enough reason to me.

> MSFT already said their top Activision-published titles would also be available on PlayStation

They said for "10 years", to placate regulators at the FTC. What happens after 10 years?

There is too much money to be lost making it Xbox Exclusive, they'll probably just have delayed DLCs.

I think Xbox Live subscriptions would counter this.

Xbox Live Subscriptions generated nearly $3 Billion in Revenue in 2021 for Microsoft. For services that are provided for free to PC players (meaning the overhead is pretty small).

Supporting PC players cost Microsoft money (servers, staff, etc). Xbox Live funds itself... and is a profit center for Microsoft.

Cutting off other consoles would definitely force a portion of the console-gaming population to purchase a new Xbox - or at least factor very heavily into the decision for which console to buy.

There are very few games that have as large of a player base as COD. Many other FPS titles have tried, including Battlefield. None even come close - so it would not be easy for Sony to "just make their own" either.

Doubt it, Activision does triple that in revenue. Even assuming only 33% of that is from Playstation (which I bet it undercounting) it wouldn't make any sense to suddenly cut off 3 billion in revenue to have an exclusive when gamers could just find alternatives. Call of Duty won't always be king of the roost, so it's a bad bet if you want to maintain entrenchment. "Second-class citizen" treatment is FAR more likely and FAR more profitable.

What would be those alternatives? There is no game like COD currently - and plenty have tried and failed.

Microsoft could endure a temporary reduction in revenue, for a long term marketshare gain/dominance and eventual increased revenue.

Xbox would become known as the console that you buy if you are into FPS titles. That is powerful.

There are plenty of games like CoD, it just has cultural significance because it's widely available and an existing community. A lot of skills people have on PS will not carry over to Xbox, so they can just start playing any of the other competitors. Every video game franchise can die, and many have, it wouldn't make sense for Microsoft to make it an Xbox exclusive and risk killing it. As I keep saying, they can just make delayed DLCs on PS or even DLC exclusives. Many DLCs are already more profitable than the core game.

MSFT already said their top Activision-published titles would also be available on PlayStation

Fortunately, big companies never lie to regulators in order to get their way, then turn right around and do whatever they want, sometimes paying a meager fine and reaping billions.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft should be trusted to do what's best for the consumer. After all, there's no shortage of people on HN who will tell you with a straight face that it's the companys' obligation to do whatever it takes to make money for themselves and their shareholders. It usually comes along with some pithy statement like "Microsoft is not a charity."

Legally, this has been true in the USA for more than a century. (Which I take as evidence of bad law, not acceptable practice.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

True, but big companies can be trusted to do what's best for the company and it's stock.

While gaming is not a major profit center for Microsoft in comparison with Azure, Office, Windows, etc...if I'm on their earnings call and hear that their subscriber base for their most popular game is about to double because they opened their services to players on another platform....I'd call that a good thing.

I'd bet a lot that MSFT has already done the economics of the deal and figured that they'd come out ahead financially even if it means supporting PlayStation COD players for the next 10 years.

Having a contract for timed-exclusivity is very different from wholesale acquisition.

Even with this acquisition, assuming CoD stays on Playstation, Playstation will have a better library of exclusives than Xbox.

Right - that's partly my point - PlayStation has some awesome exclusives, and their biggest rival said "well, that's a great idea, we're going to go out and buy some exclusives, too". And here we are. It's just competition, at the end of the day.

For some reason, people just don't want Xbox to "cheat" by using Microsoft's war chest to buy IP instead of creating more of their own. Realistically though, it would be incredibly difficult for Xbox to grow their own IP library to match PlayStation without big acquisitions.

> Sony could acquire EA, Nintendo, or a whole bunch of other top game companies and nobody would bat an eye.

Pretty sure MS would.

There's exclusives and then there's EXCLUSIVES.

Sony's self created stuff is relatively small ball compared to CoD and they have not ever made such a large purchase of a major publisher as this.

If Sony ever were to try to acquire EA or other large publisher they should be under this level of scrutiny if not greater.

> Sony could acquire EA, Nintendo, or a whole bunch of other top game companies and nobody would bat an eye.

I doubt Sony could afford to acquire EA or Nintendo.

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