this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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News about the merger being approved was being discussed on Beehaw and everyone was dogpiling on Microsoft saying they're the devil for buying Activision Blizzard.
When I pointed out that Sony are also not innocent, as they regularly pay publishers to block release of games on Xbox, my comment was deleted.
At this stage Xbox is the underdog when compared to PlayStation and need a deal like this to not fall out of the market which would be a bad thing for everyone because it would mean less competition.
Of course it would be much better if no company was allowed to make exclusivity deals with publishers.
What Microsoft needed was to not fuck up for an entire generation with their first party output. The buying spree they’ve been on is to make up for their own incompetence. I won’t defend Sony buying so many timed exclusives but that’s not nearly the same as buying two publishers to make their content exclusive.
Microsoft is a billion dollar company, how are the the underdog when the have more than enough money to, oh I don't know, make sure they don't fuck-up their first party titles?
In the console market they are the underdog because their console has significantly less sales both in terms of units and game sales
How does that make it fine for Microsoft to buy two of the largest/ most prominent publishers in the industry and make their games exclusive? If their console and game sales are low maybe they should make games people want to play? Maybe they could have done to their first party titles what Sony did to theirs? Maybe they shouldn't have tried to force drm, kinect, TV, and always online onto their customers and charge more than the competition on top of that? Maybe they shouldn't market their console as the world most powerful console and then have no games to show off it's capabilities?
Like I already said earlier, it would be better if no company was allowed to pay games publishers to block out publishing on their competitor consoles but Sony have already been using this dirty tactic for years.
MS said they are buying Activision Blizzard so Sony cannot block games from being released on their platform once again.
So to directly answer your question it is "ok" because it is a defence strategy to prevent Sony blocking them out of games. It is no worse than what Sony already do and at this point if they don't use strategies like this then their platform risks fading into obscurity leaving Sony with a monopoly which is bad for consumers.
Why comment if you didn't read the article? Also if you read the article in its entirety you would know why your take received a negative reaction. I don't agree with deleting comments btw.