Seems increasingly likely that the MS-Activision deal will go through; with the CMA dropping it's console concerns.  

I would imagine with that, Sony will sign the deal for CoD soon.

I am curious to see how Sony follows up.

I just want it to either happen or be blocked. I want the whole ordeal and discourse to end. None of us have the whole picture so none of us should be speculating on what goes on behind closed doors. 

All I know is that even if literally every Call of Duty player migrated exclusively to Xbox and abandoned Playstation (an extreme case that absolutely is not going to happen), the balance would still be in Sony's favor. 

The entirety on my personal stance on the matter is that based on the last 20 years or so (But moreso the last decade) I don't trust Microsoft to capitalize on this, and that I personally feel they should be spending 68 billion dollars to invest in their own IP or teams, not buying  up third party publishers. I don't actively CARE what happens but I don't think they have a great history of cashing in on their potential and thus I just feel this will be a wasted opportunity. They DO need to compete but this just feels like the wrong way to do it. 

Seems increasingly likely that the MS-Activision deal will go through; with the CMA dropping it's console concerns.  

I would imagine with that, Sony will sign the deal for CoD soon.

I am curious to see how Sony follows up.

They'll probably try to expand in Asia (may even get SquareEnix) and continue buying smaller western developers and hope to level them up. They won't stand a chance in a battle of western publisher acquisitions. Even if they try, Microsoft may be able to block them by presenting the same hardware monopoly argument.

I wonder what's gonna stop Microsoft from successfully convincing regulators that they're going to need more publishers. If PS5 extends its lead this year, what's stopping MS from using the same pretext for their next big acquisition and offering more 10 year contracts?

Microsoft should be good to easily dominate Sony in 1st party software sales (counting sales on Playstation) and subscription revenues. Once the contract expire, they can choose to stay very dominant in software, or ditch Playstation to gain more hardware marketshare which would lead to an increase in 3rd party software sales, subscriptions, and brand power, but a decline in 1st party software.

I hate where this is going but if it pushes Sony to look more into Asia and forces them to find/establish their next Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Santa Monica, Polyphony Digital etc, then maybe it's not all that bad. Hopefully they'll use the next 10 years prudently!

I can't see sony being able to buy a publisher as big as square Enix without it getting blocked. Considering how dominant they are already.

I can't see sony being able to buy a publisher as big as square Enix without it getting blocked. Considering how dominant they are already.

I don't think Square Enix is that big, that it would be blocked. There are like 8% of the size of Activision.  

The bigger publishers like Take Two, Epic Games, EA would be a struggle to get through.

But I doubt Square or Capcom or Ubisoft would be.

Maybe, but the thing with Activision is that a lot of that is mobile and pc. Whereas square Enix has a lot of big series on consoles. That and Sony are currently far ahead of Microsoft in terms of marketshare. Now if marketshare changes significantly in favour of Microsoft, then maybe.

Metacritic's publisher rankings methodology is a joke:

1. They reward publishers releasing the least amount of distinct titles (as long as they're more than 5). So hypothetically speaking, if Nintendo releases 7 distinct titles scoring 90 and 10 titles scoring between 70-89, they would easily lose to Sony releasing 5 games scoring 90 and zero games scoring lower. The system would penalize the more productive publisher that is actually releasing more "must-haves" AND 10 more decent/good/great games.

2. In 2021 MS barely qualified, releasing 5 distinct titles (the bare minimum) including a port and yet easily won. Basically, the port made the difference between Microsoft not qualitfying and winning by a large margin lol.

3. They don't distinguish between ports and new releases, or big and small releases.

4. They count multiplats as "multiple products". So Psychonauts 2 (a Microsoft multiplat) scoring high would be evaluated as multiple games and inflate the publisher score. Conversely, MLB (a Sony multiplat) scoring relatively low skewed downward.

5. They disregard review count per game (as long as it's over 4 reviews). For instance: the Xbox One version of Psychonauts 2 was the highest scoring version despite actually being the worst (91 on X1. 87 on XS).

6. In 2021, Nintendo (18 distinct titles vs Sony's 10 and Microsoft's 5) ranked 14th. I'm not saying releasing more games automatically makes them the better publisher, but productivity is not a bad thing, and more in this context is not less.

7. There was a general sentiment that Sony's 2021 was one of their worst years (I don't necessarily agree)... and yet Metacritic had them at 2nd place only behind Microsoft.

Productivity should be viewed as a positive element, ports shouldn't weigh as much as new releases, and only one version of multiplats should be counted. Until those adjustments are made, I can't take those rankings seriously, let alone use them as an objective metric of quality.

As someone who wants Sony to give us more A and AA games (like Convallaria and Stellar Blade), Metacritic's publisher ranking methodology sets a bad precedent and penalizes supporting new/small studios and less popular genres. It's some "N64 is better than the PS1 because look at the average score!" level bullshit. Publishers shouldn't be rewarded for doing less.