Why Do People View the MS Acquisition of ABK as a "Good Thing?"

[Ryuu96]

EpicRandy said:

LurkerJ said:

It's important to remember that the COD offer to SONY was limited to 3 years, this increased to 5, then to 10 and eventually to "as long as the playstation exists". A lot of these commitments were born because the acquisition was challenged and scrutinised. 

To suggest the camp that opposed the acquisition the day it was announced had no good reason or rationale to object to it is disingenuous, the EC actually shares the CMA concerns over the deal, they disagree on what they think are acceptable concessions. The EC has got further concessions from MS and the CMA seems to be in the process of doing so as well. 

It's important to remember those offerings to Sony were only a way to legally bind MS to counteract Sony's sabotage attempt with something they always knew Xbox would not do anyway as per Ryan's own words prior to any challenge and MS proposal:

“It is not an exclusivity play at all, They’re thinking bigger than that, and they have the cash to make moves like this. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with [Phil] Spencer [and] Bobby [Kotick], and I’m pretty sure we will continue to see Call of Duty on PlayStation for years to come.”

“We have some good stuff cooking. I’m not complacent, I’d rather this didn’t happen, but we’ll be OK, we’ll be more than OK.”

It's also supported by the fact no internal MS documentation/communication with ABK obtained by regulatory bodies ever mentioned that exclusivity was at play with this acquisition.

Yet I agree with you it was not disingenuous to entertain that possibility, what was disingenuous though is discarding Minecraft as a relatable example of what MS can do with the likes of CoD to push the narrative it was undoubtedly MS's plan to do so (I'm no saying you did so personally). It is also worth noting that prior to knowing the EU and CMA had an SLC over the Cloud literally nobody was speaking of the cloud market when highlighting concern over the deals.

Yup. Microsoft doesn't even need a contract to release COD on PlayStation, as you said, they were only doing it to counter Sony's sabotage attempts, there is not a single shred of evidence that Microsoft had any intention of removing COD from PlayStation despite over 1m internal documents and emails being look through by the FTC, Sony themselves said they don't believe they will remove COD, as you mentioned, Lol.

And now that Sony contract isn't currently enforced by any regulator despite Microsoft offering it because in CMA's case they decided Sony doesn't need the protection and in FTC's case they decided to fuck around. The contract still stands though, Microsoft is still offering it even though they don't have to, as long as Sony wants to sign it, but COD doesn't need a contract to release on PlayStation so maybe they won't bother signing it.

However Sony's current agreement with ABK gives ABK a higher split of the revenue, the traditional is 30% split to Sony for each digital transaction but the contract Sony has for COD is less than that, I forgot what the number is, point is Sony makes less money from COD transactions than they do from a traditional split, however IIRC the Microsoft contract is back to a traditional 30% split.

The contract that Microsoft is offering Sony is better than the deal they have right now with Activision-Blizzard in terms of revenue split, Lol.

Anyway, not enforceable yet because no regulators took it upon themselves to do that and only the EC has enforced Cloud Remedies so far. GeForce Now could be described as being done due to pressure from the FTC/CMA but again neither of them have accepted it and if they got their way, the deal would be dead and no contract, so I find it hard to give FTC/CMA credit for these contracts, the EC would have got them, the EC did get them, if the CMA/FTC run back to Microsoft after being embarrassed in court then they're just trying to save face, they don't care about the contracts.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 12 July 2023