Sony Responds to Activision Blizzard Buyout, Expects Games to Still Come to PS5, PS4

Oh yeah, I absolutely expect MS to honor existing agreements. Question is what those agreements are and how long they last.

Sony doesn't have contracts with Activision until the end of time. Just like with Bethesda, there'll come a time when they're Xbox exclusive.

Didn't Sony renewed their COD contract back in 2020 when the new generation arrived? I'm pretty sure that Modern Warfare 2019 was the last game of that 2015- contract. But Warzone, Cold War and Vanguard still had marketing from Sony.

Sony seems to feel a sense of crisis.

This would only relate to games currently in development and for which Sony have some type of (I presume) exclusivity deal or other marketing contract. Beyond that I fully expect games to be exclusive.

Will be interesting to see how long these contracts run for. Might give Sony a bit of breathing room to soften the blow a bit. Call of Duty won't be the most popular online shooter forever.

Sony just warned themselves.
Better get a replacement for COD soon, bcuz eventually it's bye bye.

What's in those contracts is the main question. This might also be viewed as Sony engaging in some public relations manoeuvring. Limiting the harm by hinting that Microsoft is required to retain COD multiplatform while making future plans, hence preventing customers from buying Xbox instead of PS during this period of 'confusion.' PS appears to have had a marketing arrangement with COD for quite some time, however I doubt it was originally for more than 5 years.

I know Call of Duty has a lot of fans and is a very popular game, I respect that. But aside from Sekiro, I really don't think we're losing much if Microsoft doesn't honor those agreements (and as others say, the contracts won't last forever).

Maybe this'll push PlayStation to make proper FPS shooters again. Bring back Resistance and Killzone and promote them to replace Call of Duty. I'd love a multiplayer-focused Killzone!

edit: wording

Well that's hardly a response it is wishful thinking. When those contracts have passed what then Sony?

You'll have to do better than that if you don't want to lose customers. Less talk, more action.

@lolwhatno I expect there to be a lot of legal wrangling on this going forward. If Sony & Nintendo launch any kind of anti-competition cases against the takeover, expect it to rumble on for a long time.

Only thing I'll miss from Activision Blizzard is Diablo 4 but given the expected release date, I expect that will still release multi-platform.
Seems sad that Crash and Spyro weren't returned to Sony, given their existence before an XBox was a thing, but business is business, I guess.

"We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform."

I wouldn't worry about MS honouring existing contracts, but I wouldn't be so sure about the second part of that statement.

@Aexurion A new Killzone could be great

@lolwhatno For sure, if MS was in breach of agreements, that would be court time - it would still mean CoD not coming to PlayStation though and being tied in a legal battle isn't very nice, so that's definitely not the ideal outcome for Sony.

@XOF From own Sekiro so no need to worry about that.

It’s just Call of Duty bunch IPs they haven’t done something with but Microsoft might. And Spyro and Crash.

I can live with that, after years buying cod annually. I stopped couple years ago after getting bored them. Not played one since. Curious to see what the studios made up of ex cod, halo,destiny , Mass effect etc devs will come up with. Might bring life back into FPS for me as right now non interest me.

@XOF
We won't even lose Sekiro since it is not an Activison IP.
But yeah, Sony should make or comission a new game to replace CoD just in case things goes south.

@XOF as we know Call of Duty is a huge system seller; it's not my cup of tea, but from the standpoint of a 'casual' gamer, it's huge and will make massive ripples in console sales once it becomes exclusive. I hope Sony can make a good first-person shooter, but none have been successfully established. IPs do exist, and they can be developed, but it will take time. In the meantime, MS owns nearly every major FPS IP, including Doom, Wolfenstein, and others. It's not all doom and gloom, however; a significant portion of gamers play COD exclusively, these players will migrate to Xbox. Microsoft has realized that value by acquiring Activision for $68 billion rather than bringing COD to game pass day one and keeping it Multiplatform.

Sony’s real response will come in time. But you can be sure they are having emergency meetings right now - their stock has dropped by $20 billion in market value!

People want to downplay this by saying that Sony is ahead and so forth, but things could be drastically different in a few years time. And good businesses, like Sony, know they have to continually adapt to the market to stay competitive.

I think the console wars just got interesting. Although, I’m not sure in a good way. Haha

We all know these game will be exclusive eventually. Really, Sony needs to prepare for such event by organising teams to develop games that are similar and can compete. Call of duty was not always the FPS war top dog, I can remember the days when Medal of honour was king and COD was competing. Better get adapting Sony, as soon enough all those COD fanboys will be over on team green.

Hope Sony starts making plans for a new shooter of their own. Would love a new Killzone and Resistance (if it goes back to Fall of Man multiplayer). A new ip for a fresh start with gameplay that is closer to CoD would be awesome too.

MS stuck to the Bethesda contracts, so why wouldn't they stick to the Activision ones?

Sony didn't show this concern with Bethesda. So this makes me think they are much more concerned about the loss of Activision, and are trying to signal to MS and the PS/COD fanbase that the games should stay on PS.

Killzone, Resistance, Titanfall 3, Socom. Sony have the IP to do it and they have the talent too. Its just the "doing it" bit they struggle with. Also marketing needs to be bang on. Remeber, COD is an established name. I mean, look, its a rehash every year and still sells millions. Thats the name doing that. Same with FIFA.

Call of Duty is a system seller, and I think people don’t realise how much it has impacted generations.

In the Xbox 360 vs PS3 era, CoD was better on Xbox with exclusives and content coming a month before Sony. It helped the Xbox win the first half of that generation.

In the PS4 vs Xbox One era: CoD was better on PlayStation, with Sony having marketing rights and exclusives items available only on PlayStation.

Now, CoD didn’t win any generation. There were missteps by Xbox last gen which really helped PlayStation win, plus their exclusives were off the charts. But CoD certainly has an influence. I know several gamers who only play CoD and FIFA. They are loyal to those games more than their consoles.

Important note: Call of Duty does not have to be exclusive to affect sales.

Xbox could simply have exclusive maps, items or release 1 or 3 months earlier and it will massively affect hardware sales.

Uncle Phil is just biding his time before f****** PlayStation players by making these games exclusive.

F*** Phil Spencer.

@Aexurion They already have Firewalk (ex-Bungie), and Deviation Games (ex-Treyarch) making FPS games for them. Plus you have Guerilla who are rumoured to working on another shooter.

Spoke to some COD-loving friends of mine and Gamepass is kinda meaningless to those who own PS4 and/or PS5s as they already forked out their hard-earned money on these consoles not expecting this Activision thing to happen.

Looks like COD will have to keep coming out on all platforms due to antitrust laws, xbox would basically lock competition in the market in their favour which is not allowed. So it will likey stay on ps4 & ps5 but with day one releases and contet via game pass. I dont play the series so am not fussed but for those worried, if the deal goes through, they wont legally be able to reeact the Bethesda situation again.

@LieutenantFatman Check Twitch streams and YouTube. Its not been the most popular shooter for years. Its been decliing since Ghosts. There number of people watching the streams anymore are practically dead. Something like this should have been done 10 years ago.

Bring back Socom!

Yes, Socom 1 & 2 were great. The time is now, bring back Socom.

I fully expect 2022 and 2023 call of duty to remain on PlayStation with their timed DLC exclusivity

after that i just think warzone will remain on PlayStation

This is why being dependent on third party games is dangerous. Look at Sega in the 90s. Because of Nintendo's contracts, Sega pretty much had to make most of the games themselves.

Sony are just gonna have to get working on games like Resistance and Killzone, or make new IPs.

Microsoft will find some loop hole to avoid those agreements, it's just the type of company they are.

But by the sounds of things il be playing overwatch 2 on playstation 5 so all is good

Same goes for diablo 4

Remember when Activision was reassuring us that COD will save Vita? Well they killed it with that crap! Killzone: Mercenary was so much better. But yeah PS5 will need some new killer FPS. Maybe strike a deal with Valve and get HL3

@XOF resistance or killzone would be great as who wants to pay COD 2040!

one step at a time..sony needs to show that HFW is a must have game and show the power of the ps5..i guess we'll find out soon..mixed reviews will paint a very bleak picture.

@UltimateOtaku91 I would not say D4 and OW2 are a given as as far as I understand Sony does not have a contract (exclusivity or others) regarding those games. So Microsoft can still agree with Activision to put them only on Xbox/PC. There were deals of exclusivity on both deadloop and ghostwire though.
P.s: I am not saying it is likely that it will happen like that though, just a possibility.

@Balta666 well its going to take over a year for the deal to be finalised so what ever games they release by then would be multiplatform, and overwatch 2 got delayed from last year to this year so hopefully it's still coming this year.
Also unlike elder scrolls 6 and starfield I believe they already announced the platforms for overwatch 2 so would be a bit wrong to take that back.

Also if worst come to worst they have already announce that all new pvp maps, modes and heroes are coming to overwatch 1 as well, as both the games will be cross play

@themightyant depends on activisions demand for the sale as well, they could of requested themselves that all current ip's stay multiplatform and all new ones come to xbox as exclusive.

Look at mojang with Minecraft, yeah it was already multiplatform when they bought them but nothing was stopping them releasing dungeons on playstation and nintendo consoles, so why did they?

I say bring back M.A.G. with its 256 player (or even more?) massive battles!

A sequel with some tweaks and more vehicles than the first game would have a lot of potential - especially now that Battlefield seems to have ruined whatever it had left of its reputation.

@Shepherd_Tallon yh i think we have a similar thoughts. Multiplat still, but Day One releases on game pass and free/discounted maps via Ultimate subscription (as theyve done with Gears 5 & Halo Infinite) and also timed exclusive dlc (as we ve seen Sony do during PS4). That would still give Xbox a competive edge within legal means, plus they reap profit from sales on all platforms, but PS players would still get franchise access.

Its so sad to see a game franchise like call of duty be the centre of attention in all of this, sad state of what gaming has turned to. I miss the PlayStation 1 and 2 days where it was ruled by amazing single player games, now we mostly get half baked multilayer games riddled with microtransactions, battle passes and soon to be NFT's, even gamepass is becoming more and more multiplayer game focused and the more subscription based services become popular the more multiplayer games will be released as they thrive off them.

It will get to a point where a single player game is a rare sight, so glad we have Nintendo if that ever happens

MS will simply make Xbox the lead platform for CoD going forward, with Sony probably getting only a PS4 version (PS5 BC only) that has major bugs / performance issues that won't get addressed. Therefore attempting to push people to their platform.

Or am I being too cynical.
Personally I'd love it if Sony made a new IP FPS and it was a cracker.

Sony had the contract in 2015 and extended it in 2020 the Contract is for a 5 year cycle just like before.. Sooo for the next 3 years they Have to put Call of duty on PS let lone anything thinking its going to be Exclusive to xbox anyways ur lying to urself

@XOF. Sekiro is not a Activision game.from software made it.word up son

Best case scenario, yearly COD stays multiplatform but they release some special COD that is Xbox-PC only. Not that i'm intrigued to spend $70 each year to a rushed product that follows the exact same formula

@crazykcarter

I don't think Microsoft leveled the playing field. Prior to the Bethesda acquisition, they grew their first party to be slightly bigger than Sony's as far as number of studios. After the Bethesda acquisition, they had more studios, but no net gain of games as the games were already coming to Xbox. What they did was remove games (and revenue) from Sony. We haven't even seen the effects of this yet, but we will eventually.

This Activision deal will hurt PlayStation even more than the loss of Bethesda because it involves a franchise many orders of magnitude bigger than anything Bethesda has and further removes first person shooters, including the most popular one, from PlayStation. Even if Sony were to bring back Killzone and Resistance by releasing a new entry every few years at the expense of other franchises (if they don't expand studios), Microsoft has Halo, Overwatch, Wolfenstein, Quake, Doom, and three studios pumping out a new Call of Duty game every year.

Call of Duty is the #1 selling game every year and sells most on PlayStation when people have the choice. That will be a huge loss for PlayStation and, unfortunately, will affect their ability to compete. There are plenty of other popular Activision-Blizzard games as well that will inevitably not be on PlayStation. Each game that doesn't sell on PlayStation means less money for PlayStation to fight back with, as far as a company worth over a hundred billion dollars can compete with a company worth over two trillion dollars, that is.

Hear me out.

Killzone: Resistance

Profit.

@Sentinator number 1 and number 3 on the NPD chart. Twitch means nothing.

@crazykcarter "Ps gamers used to boast better exclusive content, now they can't"

sales =/= quality

Sony still has by far the better exclusives

@naruball playstation created their own new IP's with devs that were either small to medium in size and became massive hits.

Microsoft spent billions to buy the best devs and games to get exclusives, look at the last 25 years and see how much sony have spent on studios compared to Microsoft.

Sony have spent a fraction compered to Microsoft and have done absolutely amazing and have been a bigger success and are a credit to gaming along with nintendo whereas Microsoft have came into the gaming industry with heavy wallets and have no creative talent of their own.

Sony will end up fine without activision once all these deals have subsided

Interesting at work this morning spoke with a couple of PS5 COD gang.
Jokingly said what you going to do in 2023 when COD is only on Xbox console and PC etc.
Which without any hesitations, they replied buy an Xbox console.
Shows the dedicated COD players which they are on console, will just switch as COD is what matters to them.
That doesn’t mean they get rid of their PS5.
But interesting how they jumped in spit second to play COD on console that may have it as an exclusive.
Tells me one thing with and COD and also FIFA it’s not about Sony or Microsoft, if it becomes exclusive to one console that’s where they go.

I wonder if Sony will rethink the plans on psvr2 to focus on development of games to ps5 instead

@Balta666 i think psvr2 will be a big factor in their plans still. Apart from the exclusive they produce its the 1 stand out difference that they offer us as consumers. Maybe they will market it harder.

@TeapotBuddha If there's one thing Sony doesn't lack, it's the ability and resources to market a game.

The problem is where does it end? What will MS buy next? Capcom? SquareEnix? Ubisoft? Sega? All of the above?

A games industry fully controlled by Microsoft is not a good thing and even Xbox fanboys should be worried. When competition ceases to exist because there isn't enough games to go around MS can make the rules however they want.
Know what that means? Charge you whatever they damn well like for access, because, what other choice do you have? And don't think they won't, XBLG double price anyone? Yeah they backtracked, but why would they have to without competition?

And that's the optimum word there, choice? That thing that Xbox fans loved to throw around last generation.

Remember when Phil said 'exclusives are bad?' remember when he said 'when we all play, we all win? (Inclusion)' remember when he was hell bent on cross play?
Funny how what he is doing is the opposite of all of that. A lot of gamers have short memories it seems.
This is plain and simple anti-consumer and anti-competitive and it's certainly an unfair market. And yet it's being praised and Xbox fanboys are calling for more acquisitions?

What would they say if this was Sony? We all know so why is it ok when it's Microsoft? To exclude two major platforms despite Phil's crap line of being 'inclusive'. What a load of b***ocks.

@GADG3Tx87 Agreed. A lot of Xbox fans seem to think GamePass will keep this level of pricing, for this amount of content forever.

It does seem like MS is happy to continue burning billions in the medium-term, but once they reach what they consider is a critical mass, price increases will be regular and sharp.

After the contract is up it will become Xbox exclusive. I don't mind it as much as I did with the Bethesda games, but this is just a bad situation for all. People applauding this move are only thinking short term.

@GADG3Tx87 xbox only fanboys have always been the same, sulk when sony have a timed exclusive but gloat when xbox buy massive studios, yet with all their money xbox have never came out on top in a generation.

Even after buying Bethesda it was playstation who was in front and even Nintendo were outselling them with hardware and software. So now they have resorted to buying a studio knowing full well it sells a game that's a hit on playstation (call of duty) and a playstation icon in crash bandicoot just to get one over on sony.

This is the beginning of the downfall to the gaming industry and single player games and will only get worse from here on.

Like you said who's next? Xbox obviously study what sells best on playstation before they buy studios so I'd wager either square enix or capcom next

@naruball There are no games going on. I don't care what the NPD says, you can watch the streamers struggle finding matches. Its been abandonned in updates even.

The game is a failure. It matches players by skill, the developers have left it and aren't updating it.

@Alan_cartridge_ I agree on COD being a system seller, and since not everyone can build a gaming PC (too damn expensive), I'm guessing COD as an exclusive will be a big reason for migrating to a Microsoft ecosystem for casual players.

On the other hand, I think PlayStation will be alarmed. We all know how much they care about single-player games and I wouldn't have it any other way. I really hope that The Last of Us Factions 2 being a dedicated online game from a major PlayStation studio ends up being successful and pave the path for better online experience within the Playstation family.

@B-I-G-DEVIL
@CielloArc
@playstation1995
And a big thanks to y'all for letting me know Sekiro's not an Activision IP. I always thought they own the IP since they published it.

I remember back in 2019, close to the game's release, I read an article where someone from Fromsoftware had said the game was supposed to be named "Sekiro" but then Acti demanded that they add "Shadows Die Twice" for clarification or whatever. Lived on with the misconception that they owned the IP since they made decisions like that.

We all know what will happen to COD when there are no playstation versions... right, IT WILL DIE! Why? Because just 10% of the console players have a xbox AND the game will be on gamepass... wont happen.

you know when Sony got spider man or announced a wolverine game for ps ? Was that to share with other systems ? No it was to get ppl on Thiers it's just that they couldn't afford to buy out marvel and Disney got in there first , it's business and gd business for them it's not all against Sony and let's face it they pretty gd at buying stuff for themselves that they can afford ( like pc conversion studios ? Even though a few years back most ppl were saying ps exclusives will never be on pc blah blah ) and to be honest it makes gd business sense for Sony to push games out to pc even though most of you don't like it and feel it's a betrayal and this activison deal wasn't about getting at Sony this was acti begging company's to buy them out and and Microsoft as said the future is the metaverse and acti /micro will play a big part in that .... Just like Sony didn't have the future sight to invest in cloud computing that's why they have to rent from Microsoft now , so what if a big game like cod ( which myself I don't like the multiplayer part ) will appear on Xbox get a Xbox/pc/soon TV streaming stick /app/tablet/phone it's it like ppl haven't got choices to do that just like ppl went out and got a ps for Spiderman, it's not the end of the world

@XOF ign has already reported that sekiro is IP owned by fromsoftware, not Activision

The good news is that Sony have time to work out a response. This deal has been announced, but has to go through all sorts legal hurdles before its finalised and MS takes control, and even once that happens they'll honour existing deals.

Sony will still get the 2022 CoD and can possibly secure the 2023 one too, which will give them up to 2024 to develop a competitor.

Ghost of Tsushima managed to be a better Assassin's Creed game than Assassins Creed. I expect Sony have the talent to create a superior CoD.

As responses go to massive, industry changing news, this is pretty wishy-washy.

Better get started on reviving Resistance, Killzone and SOCOM and for platformers we still have Jak, Sly and Ratchet. I would love to see Sony pump money back into those franchises as a reaction to this news.

@TeapotBuddha Agreed. From what I'm hearing, Firewalk, Deviation Games, Guerilla and Firesprite are all making PS5 exclusive FPSs, so Sony look to be well-stocked in this area going forward. Hopefully they turn out great, Sony have a great track record.

@Futureshark Not cynical at all. That's a real possibility. Look at Psychonauts 2. That didn't get a PS5 version and some other games didn't. Making it so that the Xbox version is the definitive one. It is what it is. At least Playstation players will at least have the game even if it's not the best version. I know that's an f'ed up way of "accepting" it.

@UltimateOtaku91 doesn’t Sony have a stake in Square Enix or a share or something?

Also I don’t think they could buy a Japanese developer but I am not sure at all. I hope it doesn’t happen. But if MS does manage to do that, then soon Nintendo will notice and do things seriously probably. Buying some company like Bethesda or Activision won’t hurt Nintendo. Heck buying EA won’t hurt Nintendo. But if Capcom and SE do get bought by MS or ANY Japanese developer bought by MS, then Nintendo will notice and take action and do something.

Obviously any contractual agreements before this purchase should be upheld and MS has shown with Deathloop that it will do just that. Beyond that, once the acquisition is finalized MS doesn't have any obligation to give Sony a damn thing when it comes to Activision IPs.

Sony just make SOCOM problem solved

exactly Activision was offered to Facebook and Amazon first and they wernt interested

@ORO_ERICIUS LOL, COD will die ?? OK

@UltimateOtaku91

personally i hate either Sony or Microsoft buying timed exclusivity its a disgusting practice

@ThorsHammer Microsoft is an America company they don't care about that and wil get away with it too

@Gamer83 they could after all BUISNESS is BUISNESS Microsoft only cares about gamepass they would rather put GP ON PS, Nintendo all problems solved in future it wil happen

Will you all please stop it now. Everybody knows it’s bad for the gaming industry if Microsoft keeps buying all triple A publishers. But that’s a given and no PlayStation won’t buy one themselves. They can’t, they don’t have the money. Sony has a market value of 160 billion dollar. Microsoft has a 2k+ billion dollar market value. Sony can never match that and they don’t need to. At one point the market regulator’s will jump in. Probably already now because of CoD. CoD is probably to big to make it an Microsoft exclusive. I wouldn’t be surprised that trade regulation will forbid Microsoft buying Activition without the guarantee that CoD stays on multiple platforms. To avoid unfair methods of competition by Microsoft and before anyone screams Sony would have done the same. No they wouldn’t and they never have. Yes they buy other developers etc. but never on the scale Microsoft has. Also because Sony is a to small to play in the big league. Playstation doesn’t need to be number one to be a healthy gaming company. As long as they do their thing they will be fine.

@thefourfoldroot 2024 is probably the final year, If im not mistaken, they got a deal from 2015 to 2019 and renew It in 2020, speculating that the deals will be the same length of time the last CoD that we're sure to come out on PS5 will be released in 2024.

Sony, who has gone out of its way to ensure that franchises don't come to Xbox (Street Fighter, Spider-Man, FF etc). Sony who has ensured that the Playstation gets 'more' content in Multi-platform releases (Marvels Avengers, CoD, Destiny etc) now expects that MS's $70bn deal will have little/no impact long term?? WTF

This deal is about Game Pass and getting people to Subscribe. That '$7.5bn' Bethesda deal hasn't really had the 'growth' they expected because those Studio's have so far had to honour contracts and Xbox's most critically acclaimed games (Psychonauts and Deathloop) both came to PS5.

I still see people looking at MSFT, FH5 & Halo as the 'reason' to join Xbox and people doing 'maths' cheaper to buy than Subscribe to GP for 1 or 2 exclusives they may want - forgetting all the 'hundreds' of other games it allows. MS want 5 or 6 exclusives a year at least that everyone wants to play to get them to Subscribe and once subscribed, the astounding value and the next months great line up coming will keep them subscribed.

Its not about console sales - although people will buy the console for Game Pass rather than for Halo or Forza or Starfield. Its not about 'game' sales either as they are 'free' on Game Pass. Its about Subscriber numbers, player engagement and player/subscriber retention now and they aren't going to do that by releasing their games on Playstation.

The 'last' CoD to release under contractual Obligations will probably end up becoming 'F2P' as a Live Service MP with Seasons/updates - maybe integrated into Warzone to keep the active 'online' CoD community happy and to honour what MS have stated about 'supporting' those communities on other platforms.

If Treyarch wants to make a standalone 'zombies' game, without the creative restraint of having to be 'tied' into CoD, they will and it WILL be exclusive to Game Pass. If High Moon want to revisit their Darkwatch IP, they can and that will be on GP Exclusively. If Infinity Ward want to try something 'new', a third person action adventure story having been stuck with FPS military based games, they can. Sledgehammer may have a 'new' IP idea, Beenox could do a Mario Kart/Smash Bros/party game with Banjo, Crash, Conker, Spyro etc as well as use Characters from Halo, Doom, Wolfenstein, CoD, Hexen, Quake, Deathloop, Perfect Dark, Skyrim, Redfall, Fable, Gears of War etc Exclusive to Game Pass.

There are NO guarantees that 'CoD' will remain an 'Annual' release with many studio's tied up in crunching out 'new' games. I also think that the F2P model stops the 'need' to release 'new' games every year and frees up the studio's to work on what they want. I also don't think releasing a 'new' CoD in the traditional sense (Campaign & MP) exclusively on Game Pass makes sense as you split the Community between those on Game Pass platforms and those still on PS5 on the 'older' game. I can see CoD games being 'exclusive' - maybe a new FPS military campaign that 'benefits' from having the CoD name to get people to Subscribe, but equally could be a 'spin-off' - like Halo has an RTS (Wars) and top down shooter (Spartan Assault/warrior), Forza has the Arcade racer (Horizon), Gears had a turn based strategy game (Tactics) so CoD may have an RTS/tactical spin off game, maybe an arcade on rails shooter (like Operation Wolf) or top down twin stick game. Point is those will be Exclusive and won't 'split' the online community.

@BadPlayerOne Of course they wouldn't...wait they buy licences like Spiderman /wolverine among others forcing ppl to buy Thier consoles to play em that's the same it's just Microsoft could afford the company ..if they could afford it yes they would have no two ways about it , it makes business sense and anyone who disagrees should never run a big company

@BAMozzy yep and game pass is available on most things ,getting a much wider audience then just console,I admire their forward thinking ,Sony has started to see things diffrent like releasing games to pc (gow done brillant for em ) and investing big in mobile but it's late in the game, don't get me wrong they will still make money but not as much if they jumped in it a few years back

we'll see. that might just be sony PR wanting to keep ps5 sales rolling and not scare people off. but regardless if that is true or not, why would microsoft want to forfeit a 100m+ install base? that would amount to a few billion dollars in cod sales over this console cycle. i would say the success of cod is largely the result of playstation sales so it is hard to deny that revenue stream. as for blizzard content, that is not coming to playstation but is it really a big loss? they release no more than 2 games every 10 years and the current state of the studio is a disaster to put it nicely.

Of course they'll fulfill the contracts. That doesn't provide us much more than we already assumed. At least Sony's not oblivious on damage control.

One scenario I posed on a PXB conversation is the idea, though, that part of this buyout might include dismantling the CoD factory as it's been known. It's no secret that most of the studios being forced to make CoD didn't want to, and that's part of the toxic environment that needs to be fixed at Acti. Profitable as CoD is, I'm sure MS didn't spend $70b just to have 5 studios cranking out CoD that don't want to be cranking out CoD in the first place. They just acquired thousands of skilled devs already in working, successful studios, across multiple studios, that can hit the ground day 1, and 2+ family friendly mascot IPs they needed (ironically, one created by Naughty Dog....) and they could benefit more from dismantling the annual CoD factory, freeing those studios to work on more varied IP that they'd rather be working on, and shifting CoD more like Halo Infinite, an F2P GaaS that spans a generation. That would shrink the value of CoD, but could bolster the value of Game Pass significantly, and changes the narrative about "exclusives" that have typically favored Sony. It also leaves these marketing contracts in limbo, if there's less CoD to sell, there's less to fulfill on the Sony side, but Sony would still market the F2P game.

It's definitely not a clear-cut future how this all pans out, either for MS or Sony. Either way it'll cause trouble for Sony, but they can't even know in exactly what shape that trouble will arrive so far.

@lolwhatno You can get out of any legal contract like that, usually, by paying a steep penalty fine. Cost-benefit. If breaching the contract is worth more than the penalty price, you breech away.

But it's also a bad faith action, and MS has been pretty good faith with their transactions. I do expect they'll fulfill contracts without a fuss. The question is what's the contract and how long does it last?

After all the contracts have been and expired the only thing left will be warzone which will be the only remnants of COD on PlayStation.

People who think they will make it multiple after announced and unannounced deals are kidding themselves. You don't spend that kinda cash for sony to take 30℅ on every purchase when they can add it on GP for the continual subscription.

With that statement, it has rattled Sony no doubt as I would think this would have been part of their plans in some form for their new sub-service.

I'm surprised Sony said anything about it. What is there to say that can invoke confidence when Microsoft is looking at buying so many large third party publishers? Sony can't compete with $77 billion over the course of two acquisitions in as many years. That's a ridiculous amount of money.

What is Sony gonna do? Unless asleep at the wheel Sony has known about, or suspected, past, present, and future MS purchases long before we have read about it here. With that Sony should have contingency plans to counter what MS does or may do.

Hopefully Sony has some good plans.

@PlayStationGamer3919 absolutely. or better yet, reboot MAG. sony was doing battle royale before battle royale existed with MAG's 256 player count back in 2010! it was ahead of its time to be sure.

lol only on xbox and game pass when this all goes through. thats what's gona happen crazy stuff. play elder Scrolls only on xbox soon as the whole thing settles. they can take it up with phil . changing the whole face of gaming soon itll be £20 amonth for gamepass!
xbox is gonna keep buying up the future is game pass subscriptions.
10 games a year this big buy will be all xbox exclusives. if sony dont get their act together playstation whats that?

@Mad001 microsoft spent about $100b over the past few years and still doesn't have an answer to sony's 1st party games. that says it all, doesn't it? the majority of studios under microsoft simply cannot match the quality and brand recognition of sony's lineup and never will. nintendo is also in a league of its own so i would say microsoft will forever be envious of its competition. xbox is still in last place with its IP haha. microsoft is not in the industry to create art or meaningful experiences that will stand the test of time, nor does it care about the innovation of gaming as a medium — all it cares about is its spreadsheets. you cannot say that about sony and nintendo as they both got into the industry to not only make money, but to push the medium forward in their own unique way. xbox is the junkfood of the gaming industry haha.

@Mad001 if they charged £20 a month most ppl would still pay it ,I would

Here's my maths with all the company's they buy there will b big AAA exclusives say for example one every 3 months that's £60 every 3 months I pay Instead of £60 to £70 each game if I buy it outright and then not just the AAA exclusives game pass has had some big games on game pass without them being microsoft owned like back for blood,this month hitman trilogy /death's door /spelunky 2 /mass effect trilogy ( with ea play that's also with game pass ultimate ) /outer wilds. And who knows what coming next month ????

You have to admit that is gd value and even Sony know it or the future coming sparticus wouldn't exist ,they wouldn't need it

Sony is gonna partner with squarenix and fromsoft, to counter the actiblizz. Not an acquisition, but a team up, with sony at the helm...

..or not. Who knows, not i.

@Kienda It fell 13% yesterday and already today risen 6% .Before the news they were in all time high. They are fine.

@PhhhCough i think you are right. there are 6 key japanense publishers available for sony to partner with (or maybe one day purchase): capcom, s-e, sega, bandai namco, tecmo-koei and Kadokawa Corporation (who owns fromsoftware). konami is useless in its current form, but sony could purchase its valuable IP if konami is so inclined sell. micrososft would have a difficult time striking a deal with these publishers being a western company who does not understand japanese culture. some of the leaders at those studios are likely old fashioned and loyal to japan as well and would much rather team up with sony. microsoft has done a piss poor job developing partnerships with japanese companies with the exception of tecmo koei back in the day and to a lesser extent sega so i think there is a reasonable chance sony will close a deal with a few of the remaining independent japanese publishers — that is, if they can beat nintendo to the punch! ultimately, what i really want to see is sony partner with nintendo though

@Martsmall Sony Fanboys can't yet see the 'bigger' picture. Its not about losing a 'small' sector of the gaming market by cutting out PS, its about stopping that 'small' sector having these multi-platform deals that are ONLY on Playstation.

MS's ultimate aim is to have 'every' Game Pass game playable on 'EVERY' piece of Hardware they can (inc Nintendo/Sony consoles). Its NOT MS that's stopping a 'form' of Game Pass on PS, its Sony. To do that, they 'need' a robust Cloud service so that Hardware not built for those games can at least 'stream' them. That's iOS/Android phones/tablets, CPU/GPU weak PC/Laptop/old gen Consoles and ideally, platforms like PS/Switch too where 'Native' ports are never releasing. Starfield probably could be ported to PS5 so not 'hardware' limited but as no 'native' support, streaming support would work.

As I said, PS fanboys haven't seen the 'bigger' picture. Because of 'Cloud' gaming, games like 'Starfield' can be played on a 'mobile' phone, on an OG XB1 - platforms it would never get released so losing 10m PS sales is 'nothing'. They can gain MILLIONS more and, those PS gamers can 'subscribe' on their Mobile/PC to play if buying an Xbox is 'too much' for them.

MS are saying its about gaming for 'everyone' not just those 'rich' or 'lucky' enough to get a PS5. Yes those butt hurt fanboys won't get to play on their 'preferred' platform, but the rest of the world, even butt hurt PS owners, already have a device in their home to play without having to go out and buy an Xbox. They can use their Android/iOS phone and PS controller (nothing Microsoft owned) to play.

Its not about the select 'few' PS console only gamers, its about 'EVERY' gamer around the world, regardless of budget/hardware (the cost of a GP subscription can be as low as £1 a month and a max of £11 a month, £21 a month over 2yrs gets you a Series S to keep and 2yrs of GPU (which includes 2yrs of Gold, Games with Gold, EA Play etc) so don't need to spend at least £350 on a console and £70 per game you want to play only to see Sony release a more 'premium' version for less on PC later...

MS said they weren't competing with Sony but with Google, Amazon etc. To do that, they need big exclusives day and date on Game Pass, Every month at least 1 big new release to get people to subscribe and stay subscribed. Deals like MLB, Outriders, R6 etc don't benefit the 'Xbox' Console non-subscribers as they have to buy just like Playstation gamers. MS didn't negotiate for the 'Console', these were to benefit 'Game Pass' and encourage Xbox non-subscribers to subscribe.

This is about having 30+ great studio's, all working on great games they can put into Game Pass to get people subscribed and stay subscribed. Its not about 'keeping' these from Sony,but about making them more accessible to everyone on at least 1 device you already have. How many PS owners have a mobile and/or laptop/PC? Most likely have internet as gaming would be 'rough' without it- all those broken games that need patches.

I bet EVERY PS gamer has access to a device that supports Game Pass so MS hasn't stopped you from 'playing' - they have, with their 'cloud' service, significantly improved the 'reach'. Lose 10m PS sales, gain 50m more subs because millions more can now play on phones, last gen hardware, tablets/laptops etc - hardware these games would NOT release on

@Porco lol no a fan then? im not into fighting over platforms , just i see what their doing, i enjoy gaming i dont care what its on xbox , playstation or nintendo. its how i unwind after a weeks work i play more old games on the series x , star wars knights of the old Republic at the mo and gears of war, on the ps5 its either watchdogs or Yakuza 3 , the switch still mucking about with samus in metroid dread , or skyrim with mods on the pc recently got cyberpunk on good old games its improved a lot since my last play through on series x.
have a good one

It's possible Sony has contracts for Call of Duty for the next ten years. No one knows.

@Martsmall i really hope sony lets us play our discs from ps1 and 2 on the ps5 ps3 hopefully be downloadable instead of steaming. yes gamepass is good value nice to know when starfield comes out i can try it before i buy it.

@PhhhCough And then MS buys Sega, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Ubisoft or EA to ensure those games come to 'EVERY' platform rather than just the '1'

@ORO_ERICIUS

You must not know any non-traditional gamers.

I don’t like calling them casuals because they still sink a ton of hours into gaming. Just instead of a wide variety of titles they shove all that time into one game franchise.

I break gamers down into 3 different main classes.

Traditional: Gamers who primarily grew up from the 8-bit era up through the early parts of the 360/PS3 era. There’s a bunch of us left and the consoles we came up on dictate our buying preferences. We buy a wide variety of games and are strongly attached to single player experiences over multiplayer. We used to be the kings of the industry. Today we are diminishing.

True Casuals: Gamers who were brought into gaming by the Wii and Nintendo DS. Focused on short, sweet experiences. Moved from console to mobile. They dominate mobile gaming.

New Age Multiplayers: this crowd is the crowd many developers chase. They typically only play one franchise or one live service game. They came up during the later half of the 360/PS3 and early Xbone/PS4 era when online multiplayer really took off thanks to the expansion of broadband. They are used to micro transactions and are very “meta” oriented. They play what’s popular and then specialize in that one game. They are willing to pour money into games through micro transactions because they don’t really have to spend money on anything else. As a rule they are younger gamers.

There is a fourth class. The sports gamer. They overlap with the New Age multiplayers in terms of habits but age wise they are closer to the traditional gamer. They’ve been with the industry since Tecmo Bowl. Used to be a lot of overlap with traditional gamers but now they relate more to the New Age Multiplayers.

@BAMozzy

I agree with this.

Good post.

@Martsmall everybody is buying licenses and make them exclusives. That’s a given and normal business practice in any kind of business. That is not even comparable with what Microsoft just did. And it’s all speculative what Sony would have done if they had the money. Only because Microsoft is a bully doesn’t mean all the other companies are the same. There is a difference when you try to be the leading gaming company in the gaming industry or if you try to takeover the whole industry like Microsoft is attempting. Sony is a predator for sure, but Microsoft is an apex predator that will destroy any kind of competition. That is the way they have been doing business since they were founded.

@dasd2 They had to say something for investors to hear. I don't think they are very worried though. Sony Entertainment is not a company whose survival depends on market domination. They still be around even with a smaller market share.

Just give me D4 and ill be happy

@UltimateOtaku91 "Even after buying Bethesda it was playstation who was in front and even Nintendo were outselling them with hardware and software. So now they have resorted to buying a studio knowing full well it sells a game that's a hit on playstation (call of duty) and a playstation icon in crash bandicoot just to get one over on sony."

Bobby and the board were looking to sell because the heat of the sexual harrasment allegations was getting too hot for them. They wanted to sell to others (I'd assume for highly valuable stock options) but the big players didn't bite. Leaving MS as the only viable buyer.

None of what you said, happened. You are trying to rewrite the truth here to overly villianise MS in this scenario.

@BAMozzy yep , it's not so much to buy a game pass sub to play on whatever device u own ,even if it's a few months if there isn't much on there some ppl like but let's be honest most ppl will try it and stick with it cause it is amazing
Took me a while to read ur post as it's as long as a list of games on gamepass lol
Totally agree look how long it took Sony to finally let ea on ps

For those who believe that cloud gaming is popular and Microsoft is going to reach everyone on every piece of hardware through GamePass cloud subscription, here's some analysis:

In 2021 whole cloud gaming market is estimated to have generated $1.5B revenue.
In 5 years time this number is projected to reach $3-6B by various estimates.
In 10 years time it is projected to grow further, but is still expected to lag existing platforms.

In short, cloud streaming will earn less money than native port. This trend is expected to continue for at least 10 years.

@Richnj he stated that he wasn't keen on selling to Microsoft at the beginning meaning Microsoft must of shown interest to begin with. Facebook pulled out due to the sum as well as EA not being rich enough. The truth is that Microsoft still jumped at the chance knowing full well what they was taking from Sony, it wasn't an after thought or impulse decision

@Mad001 hopefully they do but we shall c is the best anyone can do at the mo , it would save on alot of waste ppl would buy em off eBay and saves money as you wouldn't have to buy the games again digitally

@BAMozzy One thing you said is important to highlight and a lot of people on hardcore Nintendo and PS fansites miss it, is about internet. PS5 and XSX are monstrous bandwidth hogs. Absolutely monstrous. Even if you're a physical collector patches alone will bring your internet to a halt. Sqeenix' has the monstrous Avengers (130GB+ and growing on XSX, haven't checked PS5.)

People often talk here and on NL about streaming not working well for some people, and that's definitely true. But anyone that doesn't have internet that's good for streaming really doesn't have internet that's good enough for patches on a PS5. This was a different argument when PS4 launched, games were still on disc, patches were 1GB tops, and Gaikai (Now) was getting laughed off the stage. Insufficient bandwith really, at this point, locks you out of console gaming, full stop, not just streaming. Nintendo is still suitable until their next upgrade probably. After that, mobile is probably it, if you don't have great internet.

Pushing for 4k and the like, ironically, accelerated the rise of streaming, as the internet barrier stopped mattering as a differentiator. You can get by with worse internet for streaming than console ownership now, as long as the latency isn't high.

@TheRedComet so what gamer am I?

I play pretty much all Rpg's and jrpg's
I play sonys exclusives apart from uncharted
I play all of Nintendo's exclusives
I play games like overwatch and apex legends
I play rocket league
I play fifa on occasions
Last year I played halo infinite and forza horizon 5

To me there's just casual and hardcore

Casual doesn't mean they have to only play cod or fifa, casual means they play 3-4 games a year or use teh console more for media and only spend a couple hours a week gaming

@NEStalgia

I can download patches fine. I have the bandwidth for it.

I don’t have low enough latency to stream games, however. It’ll boot and run, but the input lag is horrendous.

Plus you’re forgetting something else. A patch is a passive download. I can do something else while it downloads. There’s nothing I can do to improve my latency issues.

Funny enough I can play multiplayer games online just fine. But my speeds just aren’t fast enough to compensate for the input latency in streamed titles.

@UltimateOtaku91 Right, but you make out like MS targeted Acti because of their standing, and somehow snatched up this otherwise free agent, they didn't.

None of these companies are altruistic entities. They are capitalist entities. The very same goes for Sony. You honestly expected MS to turn to Activision and go "Hey look, we know you want to sell, and that we have the money, but that wouldn't be fair to Sony?"

They saw an opportunity to acquire a massive money making organisation with some of their covid profit and they took it.

@UltimateOtaku91

You play a large variety of games. You would be classified as traditional. I play Fortnite in addition to a bunch of single player games from a variety of genres. But the most important thing that makes you a traditional gamer is that you aren’t dominated by Meta. You spread your time around a bunch of different games.

If you solely played Rocket League and sunk all of your time into it, you would be classified as a New Age Multiplayer.

Call of Duty is not a casual game, which was my point. It’s a series dominated by New Age Multiplayers. Most of whom are try hards. I got back in COD with Black Ops Cold War. Or I tried. I realized I could never compete because I not only have a 50 hour per week job, but also because I play a wide assortment of single player games.

Like right now I’m putting a lot of time into Shin Megami Tensei V. Great game by the way. I recommend it 1000%.

@BAMozzy
Shame streaming is so inferior then I guess.
And streaming a game and downloading a patch if a game requires are completely different standards of internet. It doesn’t matter if a patch hitches.

@TheRedComet That doesn't sound right. What type of internet service is it, and what are your pings like? No internet service that isn't a nightmare for 50Gb+ patches should have latency that bad unless it's satellite or Wimax something? And I assume you're wired, and you're not just seeing local wifi latency issues, or something?

@UltimateOtaku91 It's unlikely they bought it to "take it from Sony" (though of course they'll use that happenstance as effectively as they can) and a lot more likely they bought it because it was available, they could grow their IP pool, and most importantly pick up thousands of skilled, experienced, in-place developers in multiple fully functional studios as a turnkey solution. They were already "leasing" Crystal Dynamics from Square-Enix to work on Perfect-Dark. They had no money restrictions, but still had staffing limitations for what they're trying to do. That was a good opportunity to spend some money and solve staffing limitations as a package deal.

I think a lot of people are really missing the point of how long, slow, difficult, and problematic it is to build a studio and staff it with skilled, experienced devs in an industry with insane turnover, AND assemble them with an efficient, productive process that reliably works. 343 is a mess partially because of that problem, and Sony takes ages to grow studios because of that problem. It's a slow task and you cant buy your way to success, a lot depends on luck, and it fails more often than it succeeds. Above hurting Sony, above owning CoD and WoW, it's almost an absolute sure bet that the biggest thing Microsoft was looking at when they jumped at this was a chance to massively grow their studio capability in a single purchase without risk, time, or trial and error. They sign the line, and they get numerous huge studios fully staffed, with some of the top people in the business, all working like a well oiled machine right out of the gate. That is what they paid 45% over market for, because for them, it's worth that and more. For any publisher that could afford it it's worth that and more.

But that's also what makes it a minefield for Sony. It's not just losing CoD maybe. It's a vampiric effect. They lose CoD so that the CoD studios can now go on to crank out even more exclusives for their competitor under a new umbrella of established IPs. AND it monumentally grows Microsoft's PC dominance with several of the biggest PC-exclusive games, just as Sony is moving into that space. And while Sony was probably counting on Microsoft taking another generation or two to grow out their studios to the point they're threatening, they've now done it in a single transaction at the start of a gen. The studios are the big story, for both MS and for Sony. CoD is only the glancing but more visible blow.

Honestly in all he years of both praising and cursing "Micro$shaft" I can't actually recall any time, even the Windows95 era they were half as abusive to their customers as Nintendo is....Nintendo fans really have the least position to call out Microsoft on anything as a customer (as a business engaged with them there's a different story)

@NEStalgia

I’m on a fixed wireless solution that uses LTE over ATT’s network. It’s 350 gigs per month. Speeds are around 20mbps on peak hours, up to 65 mbps off peak hours. I run my PS5 directly to my modem. My Switch is hardwired to my router. I use wifi solely for my phone and laptop. I have a separate service with its own router and modem with unlimited bandwidth (but as a consequence has terrible speeds) for streaming video directly to my televisions. Both use over the air LTE, though. Through two different carriers.

I tried PS Now, and the input latency was horrible. But I’m also a very picky person when it comes to latency. I can’t play DBZ FighterZ online for example; my main internet solution typically causes the game to drop four frames. But Street Fighter V, unless I get paired with someone on the other side of the country, plays pretty well with only two frames dropped.

Stuff like Fortnite and Call of Duty play fine. Not competition level mind you, but good. My ping is higher than I would like, about 75ms. But it’s perfectly playable.

In summation, I have to be choosy with what I do with it. I buy most single player games on PS5 disc to save bandwidth. I avoid live service games with constant updates. I avoid broken games that require huge patches just to be playable. I plan out my data usage. And nothing has auto update turned on. I download everything manually to control my data usage.

But the truth is that I really depend on my secondary ISP to keep my bandwidth usage on my primary net service within reason. All streaming video for my smart TVs go through that secondary service.

Where I live (rural southern United States) there are no options for fiber or cable. And speeds are hit or miss with each possible ISP. So I had to get creative. I have two ISPs. Yeah I pay a lot every month but it’s worth it. One has limited bandwidth but has good speeds. The other offered me unlimited bandwidth (thanks to owning an LLC and using a business account) but the speeds are terrible. Good enough for sub HD streaming video, though.

@TheRedComet Ooooohhhhh...yeah...I've been there....that's dreadful and will never get better. What's more surprising is you have bandwidth for downloads with that setup. And that you can play multiplayer games at all. I had to use VPNs to try to do that because they installed carrier-grade NATs on the towers which would just give you a closed NAT and you couldn't connect to any p2p game. The whole thing was a depressing nightmare. I'm amazed it's improved in terms of having a bit-bucket big enough for games ate all, though.

When I was stuck with that I was stuck basically Nintendo-only due to the sizes. I had my PS4, but used it less and less as patches got bigger and bigger. It was actually because I finally got better internet that I splurged on the X1X and got back into XB to begin with!

When I tried Now with that it was a slideshow. But, then, it was the early years of Now.

The way I approach games changed, overwhelmingly once that internet limitation was removed, that's for sure. It's amazing how much the internet divide plays into our choices and habits for everything with this. Although, in the PS5 era, "games on discs" sound like rare unicorns. I "had it good" in the early PS4 years when many games were still on disc with small patches.

Cellular based and satellite based internet is that one gray area where streaming will be spotty at best for a good long time. Though I think there's going to be a push to make streaming work there much more than a push to make big downloads work there, and it'll hit a time where it's much friendlier to stream over cellular than it is to own a console. Not too far away now. There's just too much market for it. And even Verizon's E3 show last year was weird....but generally hinting toward that kind of focus.

TBH I abhor living in the densely populated areas and would love to just turn it all away and live in the rural south if I could....but I know I'd basically have to give up gaming or go all-Nintendo & mobile if I did, as the price.

@NEStalgia

Another thing. The patches on next games usually aren’t that bad on single player, non-live service titles.

It’s only broken titles, multiplayer, and live service where patches are really bad. I tend to keep to one multiplayer game at a time and I avoid live service single player games (like Valhalla) like the plague.

@NEStalgia

I kind of lucked out. With my primary service I was one of the last customers who got in before they shut down membership applications. They are in the middle of expanding towers since most of the towers now are pretty maxed out.

It’s gotten better. Back in the PS3 era my only option was to jailbreak my old iPhone 4 and tether it to it with a VPN. Talk about awful. I used it solely to download PS1 classics.

Most games play ok. Some are worse than others. Smash is unplayable thanks to lag but I blame Nintendo for that more than my internet. It didn’t play worth a ***** when I was living in a small city and had cable that pulled down 300mbps constantly.

I think I’m willing to put up with it because I’ve always had crappy internet options. I remember the days of playing StarCraft on dialup.

It wasn’t until I moved a few years ago that I got to experience what modern internet is truly like.

But then another job change. Decided to come back to the home town. Granddad gifted me a few acres of land; couldn’t say no to the offer.

If Sony do have a contract in place with Activision then I think that will be honoured by MS like the others but I think it all depends on the length of contract. If MS does plan on making COD exclusive and say the contact carries on until 2025 or longer then MS might feel that paying out of the contract would be better although it wouldn't be a good move for PR. If Sony did renegotiate a deal with Activision then I would expect that to be a 5yrs+ but you never know. I guess it's all a waiting game for now. Does anyone feel like this is a good thing that MS are buying out big publishers and making thier games MS exclusives??

@TheRedComet That's all a stroll down a long memory lane I forgot how horrid it was. Yep, Starcraft over dialup. Quake over dialup. And all the mess of the 4G stuff. I had Clearwire/Clear for a while when they were around. It was actually really good. Latency was unimaginably bad though. The LTE push sidelined Wimax for the worst, but Wimax's failing was the latency. It was otherwise much better than LTE though. I had a Sprint brick that couldn't keep a connection. I had an "unlmited" plan that really meant "don't use more than 300GB" which was hard as a gamer back in the PS4 era let alone PS5. I went to play Splatoon the day the carrier NAT went up and suddenly I could connect to nothing, and spent a week and a half buying probably $400 in things to try to figure out how to get it going before finding something that intermittently worked. Finally got fiber, and just went nuts, bought X1X (debated between that and PC again) to be my digital console. And ended up liking digital enough that I went all digital after that.

But for a few acres in the middle of nowhere? I think I could probably give up gaming as I knew it and go back in time.... there's always Candy Crush........

Welp, looks like what I expected happened from Sony. I still think it's extremely unlikely that Sony ends up making a big purchase for itself.

That said, I do think there is a higher than expected chance that the Activision deal gets blocked IF (and this is a very conditional if) the merger gets overseen by the FTC. If the merger gets overseen by the DOJ (where there is probably a conflict of interest), then it's very likely the deal will go through with minimal alteration.

Even though I am definitely a Sony fanboy, the following statement isn't fanboyism as there is plenty of documentation on it: Microsoft, of all the big tech industries, currently has a privileged position in Washington when it comes to mergers & acquisitions. Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon get heavily scrutinized while Microsoft largely gets left alone. This is largely because Washington doesn't want to have a repeat of what happened in the 1990s with Microsoft.

If the FTC chooses to block the deal, it would come at the cost of Washington burning bridges with Microsoft.

Im sure they'll honor it, but when its over thats it.

This may "buy" Sony time. Let's see and hope this time will be put to good use by the company.

@XOF
Resistance and Killzone remasters and/or new games I'd buy in a heartbeat, but it's not going to happen, they've had ample opportunity throughout the PS4's lifecycle but haven't taken it.
And what about Motorstorm, another golden and somewhat unique franchise ignored.
If Sony crumble because of this they have no one but themselves to blame.

I think it's time to start thinking about getting Gamepass on PlayStation. Seems inevitable if Micro$oft keeps buying everything.

Funny how this is coming from the company that paid Square to keep FF7R as far from xbox as they could, lmao the desperation.

@JustX I agree, I'm actually replaying through Killzone: Shadow Fall as we speak, and while it isn't the best game out there, it surprisingly holds up after all these years. I love Horizon (obviously) and don't wish to lose an opportunity to get a new game in the series but if I could really do with another Killzone.

Hell, they could even divide their teams and have one work on Killzone anyway, Sony has the resources and the funds! Same with Resistance.

@UltimateOtaku91

I keep seeing people - repeatedly - worry or pontificate about Microsoft buying Capcom or SquareEnix.

As far as I understand, Microsoft purchasing a Japanese publisher is next to impossible, if not outright impossible. Reason being, Microsoft is an American company and those are Japanese companies. Historically, they will not sell to an American company under any circumstances. So don't worry too much about Capcom, Konami, Kojima Productions, or SquareEnix to name a few.

Second thing: Sony lost 20 billion dollars today. The SEC is a bit of a joke here in the US but they've been under a lot of political pressure recently to actually start doing their jobs and start regulating mergers (something they've failed to do properly for a long, long time). Sony lost a fair chunk of change, and I see a large possibility of an ugly, protracted legal battle over this if CoD goes exclusive. Not sure what the SEC would decide, but the deal is far from done right now.

Lastly: With the Zenimax Media and Activision-Blizzard purchases, any future acquisitions by Microsoft of a big publisher will become more difficult from a regulatory standpoint. With each purchase, the regulatory bar gets pushed higher and higher due to Microsoft owning an increasingly large market share - the case they are a monopoly grows with each purchase.

All this to say, don't worry too much just yet. The SEC does sometimes smack down mergers, believe it or not. The SEC is trying to look tough and flex its muscles right now, so it's possible the acquisition doesn't materialize (in which case MSFT still has to pay Activision 3bn for wasting their time). Even if the Activision deal goes through - it probably will - Microsoft kind of "blew their load" on this deal, so to speak, and future big acquisitions of this magnitude are most likely off the table.

Microsoft spent 68bn on CoD, WoW, Diablo, and Candy Crush - all pretty questionable IPs in my humble opinion. Personally, I'm glad they didn't spend that money sweeping up potentially dozens of smaller devs that actually make decent products.

@tomic20 I wish I could lose $20 billion and be “fine”.

I’m not saying they’re doomed, but they will not be sitting around feeling fine like us fans who are looking on form the outside without any risks. Instead they will be making sure they secure their company and working harder than before. If not they’re being foolish.

"Sony expects Activision games to hit PlayStation 5 and PS4 beyond the closure of the deal at some point next year."

Where do you get that from? You are assuming with that statement.

Microsoft will certainly honor the existing agreements.
They make so much money from other sources (their existing library of games and services, productivity software, Windows etc), they don't truly care about minor earnings, like the ones obtained by blocking existing games on Xbox to force the PS players to buy the console or access to Game Pass. Just look at how much they invested in this acquisition...
For the future games however, only time will tell.
But my guess is they will use 6-12 months Timed exclusivity on Xbox and/or PC, and then give the green light to the other platforms too, PS, Nintendo etc.

@Shinnok789 I can't see any timed exclusiveness. Especially considering it is essentially a yearly released game. It will either be day one on PS or it won't come at all.

That being said Sony makes a ton of money off the game on PS. And a large percentage of COD players that is almost all they play (just like Fornite gamers, or FIFA). And Sony likes money and wants to keep those gamers (who are mostly casuals with no box loyalty) from jumping ship and taking that money with them. So I can see Sony working out a deal with MS. Where PS gets COD and in return they give Xbox something (or two somethings).

Instead of any timed exclusivity, where MS will make COD enticing to get people to adopt the Xbox ecosystem and in turn incentivize GP adoption (the true goal here) is by giving GP subscribers perks (maps, early access, etc). That alone will drive COD gamers in mass to GP. No different than how Sony got a lot of games to move from Xbox to PS when they did something similar after retraining the market rights to the game last gen.

@UnlimitedSevens Foreigners not able to buy Japanese companies is a fallacy. There were regulations after WWII that were put in place that made it almost impossible to buy a company and that was there to keep Japan from being taking over financially by outside force after the war. However most of those regulations have long been removed.

There are some industries that have a higher protection lid. But those same industries have a higher scrutiny from buyers in almost every country (including US). And gaming studios are not one of those. Any more then it would be if Sony wanted to buy Activision. That increased scrutiny or lack of actually not allowing is for industries that deal with things like chip manufacturing and the like. Security-related industries. Industries that deal with infrastructure or defense. And today it is mainly aimed at China's attempt to invest in Japanese companies and transfer technology and not Western companies investing. In fact, today around 30% of Japanese companies (small to large) have foreign owners.

@lolwhatno Yep, pretty much Though a company's reputation has value, so the reliable companies do tend to uphold contracts.

I'm assuming the contract is about marketing rights and the exclusive modes and bonuses ps pays for. It's probably good for about 2 years after the buyout if it's another 5 year one. But .. There's always maneuvering. Like, could the contract have terms that require a payoff if no cod is made in a given year ...ms could pay it off and still be honoring the letter of the contract, etc.

And ms already said they intend for the studios to make classic ip games, which implies they intend to ease up on the amount of cod releases. It'll be interesting to see what really happens on the app ps side. It's kind of funny that between death loop, ghost wire and now cod, Sony spends a lot marketing Microsoft games these days 😂.

You might see COD still marketed by Sony while being owned by Ms.
That’s going to be interesting (is the established diplomatic formula for trolling lol)

@ImGumbyDammit

Okay, I take your point Japanese companies are not off the table from a regulatory or legal standpoint. But I still contend - historically - it doesn't happen for other reasons, due primarily to the differing business culture in Japan versus the West (at least in the world of electronic entertainment).

My back-up for this is mostly anecdotal, based on two factors:

1.) I can't think of any western company that has successfully bought a Japanese developer;

And

2.) Several stories have come to light of attempts made to buy Japanese devs by Western companies, only to be rejected. There's a famous story which comes to mind of Microsoft meeting with Nintendo in 1999 to discuss an aquisition; according to the story, Nintendo execs literally laughed them out of the room at the suggestion.

The business culture in the US and Japan are really different and game dev mergers have never crossed the Pacific as far as I know. Doesn't mean it couldn't or won't happen someday though, for sure.

Honest question: do you know of any example - ever - of a western dev/publisher buying a Japanese one? I'm actually not asking this rhetorically, I'm legitimately curious if it has ever happened.

@Kienda microsoft has lost 300 billion of it's value the last month. These numbers mean nothing. Stocks go up and down. It's a game people play.

@GADG3Tx87 read that bloomberg article, it's a far cry from being blocked. It's an absurd amount of money and IP, but it's U.S and MS, i'm sure the lawyers will talk their way to approval.

Probably a good time for thq Nordic to dust off the timesplitters IP. Might be a good fps to reclaim nostalgia and fan base.