Finally someone had the guts to post a thread about this epic battle on the forums. Just about every article on the frontpage on this subject gets around 100 comments, so it has been a shame that all this potential activity was wasted.

Poor Sony can't catch a break.

I laughed.

EA has borderline hated Nintendo since the 1990s, first when they visited Toys R Us and found the highest-selling EA PC game on a list behind pages of NES games, and then when they couldn't bully Nintendo into signing the kind of sweetheart deal they bullied Sega into in 1992. 

I mean, Nintendo did grumble a bit about Squaresoft in the beginning, but they ultimately figured out how to get it done for themselves. 

But yeah, maybe Nintendo should go to Maria Cantwell and ask to rectify that situation. NoA is based in Washington, too.

Have you ever stop to consider why does Sony even bother blocking FF and other japanese games from coming to Xbox? What exactly do they gain from it?

It almost feel like they are wasting money that they could have used into developing more 1st party games.

My two cents: Sony likely allocate an annual "moneyhatting budget" to complement their 1st/2nd party studios which are at full capacity; budget isn't the only bottleneck. Also, they're probably not paying anywhere near enough to fund a full decent game. Some of these exclusivity deals are initiated by the 3rd party publisher who may have little faith in an Xbox version selling well and think "Hey, let's see if Sony can moneyhat us and help market our game". They won't necessarily ask for much.

Finally... part of the Playstation appeal (PS1 and PS2 in particular) was "high quality 3rd party exclusives" that may no directly sell that much (especially not on Xbox to warrant PS exclusivity) but constitute the reputation and diversity of the console's game library. Their sales figures don't reflect their full benefits; they add value upon accumulation.

Most likely it's easier and cheaper to negotiate such a deal with a Japanese company as native sales for Xbox are almost non-existant and typically globally Japanese style games sell far more on PlayStation than Xbox even when simultaneously launched and even taking Xbox's lower installbase into account.

It's easy and cheap to persuade these companies to not release on Xbox and they do it with titles that are popular and will give them an advantage in the West.

They're not getting exclusive final fantasy to help them over Xbox in Japan, it's just not necessary. They're doing it for western markets and they'll get it cheaper than they would a third party western exclusive.

Sony and Microsoft both are getting too big. I don't think they have a monopoly or anything but they're really big companies that stifle competition (mostly via lobbying) any chance they get to make a profit. Both sides are being hypocritical here.

Fascinating. There are more important things in the world than how much money a US company (in this case one specifically that is arguably the biggest company to ever exist) makes in the Japanese market vs Japanese companies from the Japanese public. If UK politicians started moaning at the fact UK cars weren't making headway against Korean cars in Korea, I'd laugh at them.

Microsoft: We have no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles. *Proceeds to withhold games from rival consoles*

Microsoft Didn't Mislead EU Over ZeniMax Deal, Watchdog Says in Response to US Concerns

Microsoft didn't make any "commitments" to EU regulators not to release Xbox-exclusive content following its takeover of ZeniMax Media, the European Commission has said.

US enforcers yesterday suggested that the US tech giant had misled the regulator in 2021 and cited that as a reason to challenge its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The EU agency found that even if Microsoft were to restrict access to ZeniMax titles, it wouldn't have a significant impact on competition because rivals wouldn't be denied access to an "essential input," and other consoles would still have a "large array" of attractive content.

Microsoft Didn't Lie to the EU on ZeniMax Deal Like the FTC Said

Repeatedly throughout the Zenimax acquisition, Microsoft also stated that future exclusivity would be decided on a "case-by-case" basis.

Including in filings for the European Commission.

Microsoft said to the European Commission it “would not have the incentive to cease or limit making ZeniMax games available for purchase on rival consoles." But this can very much be taken as talking about existing titles as they've already said that future titles will be case-by-case to the European Commission.

They repeatedly said that they would not pull any existing titles from the PlayStation store as well. Such as The Elder Scrolls Online, Skyrim, Fallout 76, etc. On top of that, the CMA also knows that Redfall's PS5 version was cancelled but aren't bothered at all like the FTC are and haven't mentioned it, the CMA also dropped their Console SLC worries.

At the end of the day, the European Commission have said that Microsoft didn't mislead them, they made no assurances to not make things exclusive and their actions were deemed acceptable. They also investigated scenarios where Microsoft would make Zenimax titles exclusive at the time of investigation and deemed that it wouldn't hurt Sony/Nintendo enough.

"While Microsoft could have the technical ability to implement an exclusivity strategy with regard to ZeniMax games vis-à-vis rival consoles, the Commission considers that the combined entity will not have the ability to engage in a successful input foreclosure strategy. In this regard, as mentioned above, the Commission has carried out such analysis under both scenarios of total and partial foreclosure."

If Microsoft did lie to European Commission (which they didn't) then we would not have reports that the European Commission is very likely to approve the deal on Behavioural Remedies or that they've dropped their Console SLC concerns completely because Microsoft doesn't have incentive to make CoD exclusive. Lying to a regulator body would get you in serious shit on your next acquisition.

Best you can say is they bent words a little, a bit of lawyer speak to cover their asses on all basis, the European Commission understood it though.

The FTC is in a desperation to block the deal and so they tried to claim that Microsoft lied to the European Commission to try to improve their already incredibly weak case and reportedly the FTC rushed a suit to block to put pressure on the European Commission/CMA to not approve the deal which would explain the lie accusation as well.

I mean, the FTC is the reason that we have this thread in the first place because they invented up a new market in a desperate attempt to block the deal which is now backfiring and aiding Microsoft...So I wouldn't exactly take what the FTC are saying at face value and instead listen to what the European Commission have said.