Aren’t most of those cases Sony funding the development of a game? I.E. If it does well, great, Sony has a new IP. If it bombs, then it’s Sony’s money down the drain.

I can only see it benefiting the market since certain games might not have gotten made otherwise - e.g. Demon Souls; which spawn quite a number of spin offs, together they practically form their own genre.

If Microsoft buys Activision, wouldn't they then be funding Activision's development? The major difference here appears to be looking at a deal in foresight vs. hindsight.

Let me put it this way:

Sony funds developers = PlayStation gets “extra” games that otherwise wouldn’t exist. No one else is affected.

Microsoft buys Activision = long running Activision franchises (eventually) become MS exclusive. Xbox gain nothing but everyone else lose out on franchises they used to enjoy.

Different steps to achieve the same outcome (buying a game company). Why should I, as a consumer, give a shit on the “how”?

Not quite the same outcome.

One brings into existence games that probably wouldn’t have been made otherwise - and the investor takes the risk of the game bombing.

The other is primarily to deny the competition access to long running popular franchises - and is practically risk free since those franchises are almost guaranteed to print money.

There's a difference between "X company pays a developer for one game, now" and "X company has purchased the developer outright so all future games will be available only on this platform."

Wait until I tell you how the developers who made The Last of Us came to work at Sony.

There is also a difference between buying one singular developer and buying a top 10 (top 5?) publisher and all its developers.

If I find a single article that talks about this, is it sufficient for you to accept that people did talk about it?

People certainly talked about it, but nobody decried the exclusivity of Persona 5 as an anticompetitive move by Atlus or Sony. It's just how they do business - Sony licenses and funds exclusive titles for their platform, and nobody really bats an eye.

Microsoft has decided turnabout is fair play, and people are acting like it's a Console War-crime. Why? Nintendo has spurned AAA devs since the Wii era and they're doing just fine. I take no side in the console war, but Sony can't be a fair-weather friend to platform exclusivity.

Sony has created or acquihired many of its first party studios that develop original IP specifically for PlayStation. Or they just fund third-party studios to create new exclusive games. You could argue that, if not for Sony, many of those games wouldn't even exist. In recent times, from what I can recall, the only large studio that Sony acquired was Bungie. Which is tiny compared to Bethesda or Activision, and continues to support and release (Marathon) new games on Xbox and Windows.

Now compare this to what Microsoft is doing. They mostly failed to create good first party games on their own (apart from a few gems), and are now resorting to buying up not just individual game studios but whole publishers in order to make their games exclusives to their own platforms.

What Sony is doing is creating real value to players. What Microsoft is doing is primarily meant to create value for shareholders. As a gamer, I strongly prefer the former.

I’m going to have to strongly disagree with the idea that Microsoft isn’t creating real value to players.

Gamepass is literally the best deal for someone playing video games, full stop. The price may get jacked up in the future but right now it is stupid good.

Also you’re really not being honest about the historical aspect of Sony and first party games. You said as much but I don’t see why you’re giving Sony a pass for snapping up a stable of developers for first party games over time but knocking Microsoft for being late to the party and close the gap. It’s the same thing for the same result.

Whichever you prefer is fine. Most of Sony’s first party stuff is very different to the Microsoft stuff.

Sony has engaged in anticompetitive practices a lot in recent history. They tried really hard to prevent cross platform play, going so far as to both lie about it and also throw a “think of the children” in there. They also are the platform that wants money to support cross platform play.

I'm not arguing that Sony are saints and Microsoft is the devil. I agree that Gamepass is awesome value and forced Sony to improve their PS+ offerings (competition is awesome!). However, there's a stark difference between Sony buying and investing in game studios after a long partnership (like in the case of Naughty Dog or Insomniac Games), which allows those studios to create bigger and more ambitious games, and Microsoft snapping up multiple large, well funded and profitable, game publishing companies. All I'm really trying to say is that the former deploys capital to fund new games in order to gain market share by competing on quality of the product (which is clearly working for Sony), whereas the latter is deploying capital to just snap up market share directly...

Left to their own devices, Activision/Blizzard would have just died. If your goal is games continuing to get made regardless of the platform they appear on, I'd argue the Microsoft acquisition is a net win for Blizzard fans.

So you are fine when Microsoft would fund the next games of Activision-Blizzard and demand exclusivity for Xbox platform after Sony's exclusivity contracts end like for CoD next year?

It's much more than a year. Microsoft pledged full Call of Duty availability on rival platforms for at least 10 years[1]. Sony refused to sign, Nintendo signed it[2].

1: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/5/23494886/microsoft-sony-1...

2: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/02/microsoft-signs-10-ye...

I was talking https://www.gamespot.com/articles/playstations-call-of-duty-...

“Sony has created or acquihired many of its first party studios” so you admit Sony is acquiring studios too—why is it only bad when Xbox does it?

Size of the involved companies matters

Let’s entertain the idea and pretend they “eliminated” Sony with this acquisition and, against all odds, all those Sony gamers jumped ship and moved over.

Well, I guess that would make Microsoft quite the monopoly then, right? Oh darn, everyone seems to have forgotten about Nintendo who sells more consoles than Sony and Microsoft. Oops, everyone also forgot about Steam with hundreds of millions of users who is also releasing consoles. Last, but certainly not least, Amazon just entered the streaming game space and, based the CMA’s recent definition (https://www.vgchartz.com/article/457194/eu-official-cma-over...), that’s 200m new streaming game subscribers.

At the end of the day this acquisition will suck for Sony gamers just like it sucked when Sony acquired developers and made their games Sony exclusives. This won’t make Microsoft a monopoly in any quantifiable metric, so I see no way the acquisition gets stopped by any logical judge.

If you disagree and think this can make Microsoft a monopoly then show me the numbers because I see 0 paths forward for Microsoft to do that without acquiring or eliminating Sony, Nintendo, Steam and Amazon. I know Microsoft has deep pockets but they are not that deep.

A Sony video game console monopoly will not create value to players.

Without Microsoft making drastic moves like this, the XBox won’t survive much longer. Nintendo has effectively become a different market segment, and I just don’t see any other company ever bringing a serious competitor to market any time soon if Microsoft is forced to exit.

Is the Persona series even remotely close to Call of Duty or Diablo levels of success? This doesn't seem like a great comparison.

Not even close. I was just grabbing for a popular PS exclusives and figured Persona was a decent choice.

You could replace my comment with any of the more popular PS exclusives like TLOU, Nathan Drake or Tsushima and I think it would still hold up.

Those are all published by Sony, though. Are you saying that console makers simply shouldn’t work on games at all?

IMO there’s a huge difference between negotiating exclusivity for a handful of popular games you publish, and spending 2/3 of your competitor’s entire market cap to acquire the giant studios making a significant amount of the most successful game franchises on the market.