FTC: Xbox-exclusive Starfield is “powerful evidence” against Activision deal
FTC: Xbox-exclusive Starfield is “powerful evidence” against Activision deal
"Microsoft's actions following... acquisition of ZeniMax speak louder than... words."
The Federal Trade Commission's request for an injunction stopping that acquisition heads toward opening arguments this week, the federal regulator cites one piece of what it calls "powerful evidence" that it can't trust Microsoft's assurances. In short, as the FTC puts it, "Microsoft's actions following its 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax speak louder than Defendants' words."
I'm very happy that these agencies are blocking this acquisition. I had no faith they would.
There's nothing good about the fourth largest video game publisher (third for first parties) acquiring the sixth largest (third for third parties). We need more variety, not more consolidation.
I had zero hope this would get blocked. Still not totally sure but the FTC is definitely putting up a solid fight. I’d prefer the consoles be fighting to prove they are the better hardware and software experience, not that they can buy the most studios
It pains me to see so many people praise the acquisition ofr Microsoft to become "competitive" again.
Bro Microsoft is a trillion+ dollar company. They can spend their own fucking money making studios. If they can't, that's their problem. Letting them swallow up long time multi platform studios just to make their long running multi platform games Xbox exclusive is not the answer to that problem.
As a mainly Xbox gamer, that sucks, but understandable. Microsoft has tons of money and Xbox has bought up several studios and let them do small or not great games. I think the ZeniMax buyout sucks for PlayStation owners, but here I am waiting on playing FF and other games (which some eventually came out years later). If it's 3rd party, I don't think they (PS/Xbox) should be able to hold a game for longer than a year. StarField is an Xbox and PC release, that is the difference for me. If PS games released along side PC releases, I'd me more inclined to say it's fine. We'll see how it goes, I'm hoping that StarField will be great and M$ will notice and start investing more money and time into exclusives. Time will tell
Interesting. I'm against large companies buying up all these developers, but it seems strange that this is where they're trying to draw the line.
I don't understand how anybody could see this market consolidation as a positive! Yes, in the short term ABK games will be added to Game Pass, but once Game Pass is the only "game" in town, the price gouging monopolistic behavior will follow.
And worse is that the industry could react with further consolidation if this went through.
After Microsoft bought Bethesda, Sony reacted by buying a series of studios for itself. Yeah those studios had a historically close relationship with Sony already (besides Bungie, the most recent), but now they're officially tied together.
I'm not sure if Sony has the FU Microsoft money to buy another top ten publisher, but imagine if they could and bought out Ubisoft/EA/Square Enix and now those games would never come on Xbox again?
It's already hard enough for gamers to play anything/everything due to exclusivity and needing to buy multiple systems. If I didn't have a PC, I would be extremely annoyed at being unable to play Starfield when I played Oblivion, Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, etc on PlayStation.
Yeah, exclusives have been a part of the console business model since their inception, so it is odd that they're just starting to look into this business practice now. Still, exclusives do need to die, so better late than never, I say.
The difference is buying a massive multi platform developer and taking their future production away from the other platform.
Microsoft not publishing Gears of War or Sony not publishing Uncharted on the other platform are adding choice, because those games would have probably never existed without their investment. Microsoft buying Bethesda is taking choice away, because Bethesda was already a big publisher already making games and already had the processes for multiple platforms. They're not suddenly doing the hyper optimization Sony gets out of their funded platform exclusive developers, either. They're using the engine they already had that's already designed to support a bunch of platforms and just not supporting one for the sole purpose of that platform not having it.
Exclusives are what built the console model we have today though. Nintendo with their still loved franchises like Mario, Metroid, Zelda, etc all began as exclusives to drive NES sales. Sega, Sony, Atari, etc, they've all had exclusives. People only seem to have taken an issue with it in the last decade or so.
I don't think it's necessarily that they're drawing some kind of line on exclusives now. The issue is that Microsoft has pinky promised that if they buy Activision, that CoD at least (most likely other games as well) will NOT be Xbox exclusives. So that's why Microsoft's purchase of ZeniMax and then releasing a Xbox exclusive out of the deal shows that Microsoft's pinky promise for Activision might not be as good as it seems.
Honestly, I hope the deal gets blocked. I am a slight Microsoft fan boy (and I really loved all of the ree'ing from PlayStation fan boys when it was first announced), but I really hate all of this buying and consolidation of companies, it really needs to stop. Let companies compete with each other.
All this really does is seem to encourage the way Sony does business which is to just buy exclusivity agreements with third party studios. Both methods (buying established studios outright and buying exclusivity agreements) seem highly anticompetitive and bad for gamers overall.
If this deal does end up getting blocked, I can see MS taking their bag and money hatting any third party game that isn't locked down yet as a timed or permanent exclusive. If it's fine for Sony to do things that way, why not MS?
If we actually want to solve that problem though, the solution isn't to just stop the purchase and call it a day. And I doubt the FTC is going to lobby legislators to actually do their jobs.
This argument could be made for any console exclusive. I'm not saying I support the acquisition.