Microsoft buys Activision-Blizzard

From what I heard Square demanded to be paid to bring FF VII Remake to Xbox and Microsoft refused.

If true it's a bit rich of a developer to look for a payment from a platform holder to port a game that would already be a year old by the time they'd be allowed to release it.

Square have released 8 games on Xbox since the launch of the Series as opposed to 34 for PlayStation in the same timeframe, this is counting cross generation games as 1 release and not per platform.

How would they have signed contacts when the deal hasn't gone through yet? They are promising to keep certain games on platforms for 10 years but they can easily renege on that when the deal goes through. They have priors on reneging on promises.

I have no doubt they'll allow CoD on PS. There could definitely be other ways MS try to make Xbox the preferred platform for it; earlier access to content, exclusive maps/guns etc. Sony have also stated that they would be less likely to share details of their consoles (particularly their next console when the time comes) to allow for development of the games because they'd be giving their competitor huge details about their specs/design.

It's the smaller franchises that will likely disappear completely from PS. Activision have a big library of franchises that have always been on PS consoles, began on PS consoles etc. Now they're likely gone from PS for good. That said, considering it's Activision, and considering MS will have to generate additional revenue from the games since they'll be free on Gamepass, I'm guessing most of the games will be monetised to sh*t.

Take Crash Bandicoot for example. Simplest f*cking franchise to make games out of, simple platformer, nothing special. The remake of Crash Team Racing ended up having battle pass and monetisation stuff added in after a month (so as to not affect reviews of the game), and now the Crash franchise is being used for a weird 4v4 multiplayer game which, again, will have battle pass and monetisation stuff. The blame for that obviously lies with Activision, but I can't see MS changing it too much either as their games need to generate additional revenue since they're Day 1 gamepass releases.

Emmm yeah and have you heard that companies breach contacts because they can simply afford it. And bear in mind, those contracts could have any number of carve outs, termination clauses or caveats.

And even if they don't breach it, they can churn out shïtty versions just to fulfil a contract. Ever play FIFA on Nintendo Switch?

And what about after ten years? Nothing stopping Microsoft saying "nah, all ours now". Don't forget, the European Union fined Microsoft half a billion euro in 2002 for abusing its near monopoly.

I wouldn't trust Microsoft as far as I could throw them. And nor would I with Sony or Nintendo in this situation. They are a corporation looking to make as much money as possible, not be best mates to everyone in the industry.

Industry consolidation of this scale is never good, in any industry, it radically undermines consumer and worker power.

Poster boys for complying with regulators? What a load of nonsense.

They were fined 60m in the last year over advertising cookies. They were fined in 2019 for improper payments that were used to bribe government officials in Hungary and other countries. Last month, they were ordered to pay a $20 million FTC fine over collecting personal information on Xbox players younger than 13 and not properly informing parents.

And listen, plenty of corporates have eaten fines for plenty of issues so Microsoft are absolutely not alone here but give me a break about them being poster boys for good behaviour and having a "good reputation".

Windows is now spamware.

Sony acquiesce.

I'd say it'll turn up on Extra as opposed to older games being on Essential considering the recent glut of Bethesda games on Extra recently.

See the restored BlOps 1 servers on 360 got over 100,000 concurrent players over the weekend.

They’ll be available to the same people they’re currently available to, for the time being at least.

CoD is a only part of it and it suits MS to keep it on PlayStation for the time being, it would diminish its value to cut a large part of its player base off pretty quickly. The other Activision games don’t seem to be under any such agreement, so I would imagine future Diablo games will be exclusive, and therefore available to less people.

It will be interesting to see the difference of performance between new CoD titles on both platforms going forward. I don’t expect MS to deliberately make the PlayStation version worse, but I would think it will make Sony less open to working with them on development.

And are other developers and publishers championing this deal? I haven’t seen any comments about it, and I don’t see how this deal helps them in any way.

Bungie has been VERY vocal about not wanting to be console exclusive; letting their players play whereever being a large part of their mantra, and explicitly called out as remaining in place after the purchase, and a focus of negotiation during the purchase. Of course Sony might be able to force them, or they may willingly go back on their word, but as it stands it would be unexpected for Bungie to lead up a console exclusive FPS COD competitor.

I'm sure Sony's deal signed with MS yesterday would also allow for COD devs to use PS dev kits.

If it doesn't it's only Sony's arrogance that will lead to the PS versions being worse.

There is no reason that an affiliate can't be trusted to make a game run on dev kits from a competitor while under NDA about specs etc.

It's like a team in Google making an Android and iOS app for an upcoming product.

These type of understandings exist in companies. I've seen it many time in telecomms, it's nothing new.