Ms isn't a trillion dollar company for no reason you know... Some gamers are just too passionate that they don't realize they're feeding into the hype... And what I mean by that in a business standpoint is "any publicity, is good publicity!" why else do you think ms is letting this drag on for so long? Lol! Ms has the money and power to easily make this acquisition happen and there's no one that can stop it.... Sony will still be on top after all this as long as two things happen. 1. Keep making those awesome first party exclusives! 2. Get rid of that current ceo! He is seriously making the PlayStation brand look bad, desperate and way to reliant on COD... Ridiculous.
They did the same with Bethesda. They advertised it on TV. Including dev acquisition announcements at E3 i've never seen a gaming company behave this way. Then again, this type of publisher and multiplat IP acquisition is unprecedented. Between ABK, Bethesda, Obsidian, Ninja Theory, etc it's truly overwhelming. They essentially bought a sizable minority of the industry. They could've had zero studios before this buying spree and still been robust after these multiplat pub/dev acquisitions. Pretty crazy.
You among your PS friends used to mock Xbox for it´s lack of studios and first party games when Xbox used to have only 5 first party studios vs Playstation and its 13 first party studios. You people used to call Phil a liar every single time he mentioned he would invest in creation and acquisition of new studios, especially after his promotion to VP back in 2017.
Now it´s hilarious how the same people are crying over Xbox getting more studios. And don´t give me that "ohh... but Phil Spencer is buying whole publishers". So what? That´s exactly what Sony did back in the day with Psygnosis which used to be a third party publisher for every single platform in their time. The only reason is not doing it now is because they simple can´t afford it.
It was Sony the one who started this trend and now they´re going to deal with the consequences of their actions. It is what it is.
What about Embracer? Their website states they own 135 studios, 12 publishers and over 850 IP.
Nobody bats an eyelid at them gobbling up huge parts of the industry (and doing seemingly nothing with it).
MS at the very least have demonstrated in the short to medium term that the studios they've purchased recently are working on significant projects.
I've said this many times but Embracer are the ones you guys should be worried about. They've shown they don't really care at all for everything they've acquired. Their CEO has a proven record of flipping companies. Gathering all of those studios and IP to sell in one package will be very convenient for an Apple, Tencent, Amazon, Google or even MS in future. We really don't want that.
So MS can advertise COD on Xbox and bypass Sony's marketing deal? Interesting. I guess Sony never anticipated MS buying ABK so their contract doesn't cover a new owner.
I am sure Sony has a clause for that. No big company is going to sign a deal worth 100s of millions and not have that, it's almost standard. More than likely MS is breaking the contract and would have to pay Sony something.
But if am not mistaken, this is the same ad from last time. MS would be stupid to advertise COD while Sony still has marketing rights.
@Sparky77 they don’t have marketing rights to COD as whole , thats like saying Activison isn’t allowed to advertise COD. If the deal goes through they’ll only be advertising as a publisher not as a console competitor. This isn’t a advertisement for a games release but using a COD image as part of a celebration for a possible merger , big difference.
I highly doubt that the contract states anything that means publishers could advertise differently. Also, they are not yet the publisher. I doubt Sony would have an openly interpreted contract. It more than likely would be a very simple statement that Sony has exclusive advertisement rights to x IP for x amount of years.
What you actually see in this ad is not the advertisement for Call of Duty being on their platforms exactly, but advertisement for them acquiring Call of Duty and ABK. Being sneaky.
Activision retains self marketing rights. Microsoft owns Activision so will be able to market as they wish. Sony has specific COD marketing rights currently. Those rights are to specific games and not the franchise itself.
This is like a kid at the park, goes and pushes all of the kids to the ground off of the play equipment then cheers and declares himself king of the park. Congratulations, you won kid, but everyone hates you.
Push back, lying... You must be talking about Microsoft where all trailers of redfall were running at 60 frames and 3 weeks before launch it runs at 30 frames. Microsoft being Microsoft and forcing beteshda to launch a game that isn't ready... So good that they got them...
@Soulwarrior I mean with a net worth of only $110B I don’t see them spending $80B on a publisher .. so you would be right Sony never spent $80B on a publisher not because they didn’t want to , but because they simply cannot. I can most definitely point to times in history to where a studio would have been third party but Sony decided to buy them. I own all three machines so it’s no bias coming from me.
I'm not debating market caps, yes Sony cannot do that, I'm saying they haven't had to do that, whether they can or not to have the success they've had by putting out banger after banger, whereas MS have flopped for over a decade.
'I can most definitely point to times in history to where a studio would have been third party but Sony decided to buy them.'
So Sony have bought a decent amount of studios yes, many of which were already working closely with Sony for many years on Sony owned IPs, yes this is very comparable to spending 80 billion on publishers who made multiplatform IPs for decades, yet another false equivalence.
'I own all three machines so it’s no bias coming from me'
Yeah, of course, I own xyz product so I cannot possibly be biased, lol.
By cultivating first party studios organically Sony did the same thing? Or do the timed exclusivity deals that MS also does somehow equate to the acquisition of 2 dozen multiplat devs and IP?
Yet Sony acquired Bungie for a somewhat similar amount as Microsoft's Bethesda acquisition. Which company is taking games from ppl in that scenario? No Bungie games will repoortedly be exclusive while MS cuts Starfield and Redfall from PS and states all future games will essentially be exclusive to GP.
Sony had enough for a multi bil acquisition and did not pull the same sh*t as MS with Bethesda. Which studios did Sony acquire that weren't already operating essentially like a first party? Other than support teams and Bungie which neither will result in games be taken from ppl. Because MS took multiplat devs before ABK or Bethesda. Obsidian, Ninja, InXile, Compulsion.
@Soulwarrior The own XYZ argument , yeah I stated that because I have no favoritism towards no company. I don’t think one is any better than the other I just feel like they both have strengths and weaknesses. No not at all had a close relationship , but even if that’s the case. Why is it a problem when MS does it ?? Bethesda and MS had a very close relationship before the merger , but when they were bought ppl thought MS was just chasing publishers. When in fact MS were the ones who got Bethesda into the console market. Same with COD was a PC shooter at one point , and who dominates the PC OS market ?? MS
I suspect you're projecting a western mindset onto Sony, which, despite their westernization in recent memory, doesn't really seem to be at their core. It is very western to want to take things over and extract the most resources where you can at an opportune time (both multibillion dollar publisher acquisitions came about when they were in compromising positions).
I really just don't think that's where Sony at. Comparatively, it is a very eastern approach to build partnerships that are generally lucrative for the parties pushing for a deal without taking over. Sony has done some acquisitions of course. But I think their approach in general is extremely different and I think projecting a western approach onto them is incompatible.
You can argue the benefits of either or which is better. I'm just saying that I don't think Sony wants to do anything like that. I suspect they would have rushed out to buy Square or SEGA otherwise. I don't think they are outright against it, but I would say they don't want to.
A little quick much??
Prominent Xbox logo in the ad and avoiding PlayStation which has the COD marketing rights. Well played MS.
So MS can advertise COD on Xbox and bypass Sony's marketing deal? Interesting. I guess Sony never anticipated MS buying ABK so their contract doesn't cover a new owner.
This is like a kid at the park, goes and pushes all of the kids to the ground off of the play equipment then cheers and declares himself king of the park. Congratulations, you won kid, but everyone hates you.