After an interesting first two days, when the Federal Trade Commission tried to grill Phil Spencer and other representatives of Microsoft in court, the third day was calmer in the courtroom, and the pre-made video with the head of PlayStation, Jim Ryan, was the most interesting.
Ryan confirmed that he is against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. He also confirmed that he told Activision’s Bobby Kotick that he was not interested in a new deal for Call of Duty, but just wanted to block the merger.
“I told him I thought the acquisition was anti-competitive and that I hoped the regulators would do their job and block it,” Ryan confirmed in the video. On the other hand, he doesn’t see everything Microsoft does as anti-competitive. Although he does not like the exclusivity of u Starfield a Redfallbut in principle has nothing against it and does not consider this action to be anti-competitive.
In other words, he does not consider game exclusivity to be anti-competitive. If it did, it would be going against itself, as Sony also has its exclusivities, plus it pays other publishers and developers for timed console exclusivity. Even with the recent Bethesda games: Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo. Spencer claimed in court last week that They bought Bethesda out of concern that Starfield wouldn’t be another such exclusive.
Source: Bethesda AMD with FSR technology participates in the optimization of the PC and Xbox versions of Starfield
XBOX GAME PASS DEGRADES THE VALUE OF GAMES
So what is Sony all about? It’s probably not even Call of Duty, because the management of the Japanese company is convinced that Call of Duty will continue to be released on PlayStation consoles. Moreover, Phil Spencer himself stated this in court while under oath. What do we know for sure? Sony hates Xbox Game Pass, and according to Ryen, other publishers and developers don’t like it either. Ryan made the announcement at a meeting with Fidelity investors in February 2022, where he also talked about the importance of first-party content in fending off competition from Game Pass.
“One of the reasons we invest heavily in the development and publishing of our titles is that they give us an edge against pressure on the historical business model,” Ryan claims. According to him, publishers don’t like Game Pass because destructively affects the value of games. This is supposed to be a very common opinion among publishers. This is also why Sony never talked to Activision about the conditions under which new versions of Call of Duty could be in the PlayStation Plus subscription. In addition, Kotick himself made it known that subscriptions were not the way to go for Activision, even before Microsoft’s intention to acquire them.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been several instances where creators have spoken negatively about Microsoft’s subscription. They can be summarized as follows developers and publishers find Game Pass both awesome and terrifying. It can turn out positively, but also negatively. Sometimes a subscription game can reach a larger number of players. On the other hand, it contributes to content overload and it can be difficult for players to fall in love with a game and enjoy it because subscriptions bring a lot of choice.
“A lot of people try the game and don’t invest in it,” says Dino Patti, co-founder of Jumpship Studios (which released the sci-fi adventure game Somerville last year), noting that players who play the game via subscription usually have to engage the first 10 minutes. If those first minutes aren’t amazing, the player turns off the game and goes to try another one. Still, he thinks Game Pass is great, but personally prefers the old model.
SONY BEWARE, THE FUTURE OF THE CLOUD, EXPECTATIONS FROM BUNGIA
If Microsoft releases some Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax/Bethesda games on the PlayStation, developers will have to do without dev kits for a while when transitioning to a new generation. Development versions of the consoles will be sent by Sony to studios owned by Microsoft only after some time. Sony did the same with Mojang. This is why Minecraft Legends only came out on PS5 in the PS4 version.
At Sony, they are afraid that the used technologies will not be misused by Microsoft. Even a confidentiality agreement between game developers is not a guarantee for Sony in such a case.
Cloud technology is set to become significant for gaming between 2025 and 2035. Ryan didn’t want to give a more specific date because no one can predict exactly when cloud gaming will play a bigger role, he says.
Source: Bohemia Interactive Microsoft considered buying Sega, 505 Games and large Czech studios
Ryan expects a lot from Bungie. He believes that Bungie will give Sony much more than Activision would. As we know, Sony bought the creators of Destiny for $3.6 billion because of their live service experience. PlayStation intends to bet more on this segment in the future, although it will continue to create single-player story games.
Ryan does not see Nintendo as a direct competitor to PlayStation. He also doesn’t think Call of Duty will be successful on Nintendo because standard Nintendo fans are completely different, they like Mario and Zelda not Call of Duty.
Ryan also believes that interest in Xbox Series X and S is high. Just like the PlayStation 5, the new Xbox line also struggled with a shortage of units. According to the head of Sony, the Xbox brand is strong in the United States. He cited shooters as the main reason.
“Most of their games, a lot of their games, have an element of shooting. And many of their games contain elements of online multiplayer, both of which genres tend to be more popular in the United States than outside of it.” Jim Ryan explained.
Today, it will be the turn of the statements of the CEOs of Microsoft and Activision.
2023-06-28 10:39:21
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