I'd say the solution is to look at the market numbers with a more objective perspective and not only from a Sony fan perspective: to see what market share has each company and to realize that Bethesda or Activision Blizzard are a tiny portion of the whole gaming market. Even of the console gaming market. And even of PS4 and PS5.Ok so what's the solution? We should let MS buy more publishers until they finally get some marketshare away from Sony? I know this is what you want but that's not how competition works.
MS needs to be stopped. Point blank. Customers made their choice.
If you look at yearly CoD sales on PS and the MAU on PS you'll realize that over 90% of the PS players don't buy CoD. And CoD is by far the biggest 3rd party (non F2P) PS game. Meaning, the impact of losing smaller games and publishers would be even smaller.
Also, we also have to consider that in many cases to see a 3rd party acquired won't mean to lose them as multiplatform developer, because part of the reason of why MS or Sony buy people like Bungie, Minecraft, ABK etc is to get the money they make in other platforms. And also consider that MS has been slowly moving to abandon their console hardware and become a multiplatform 3rd party, somehing that pretty likely will increase once after several years having their finantially suicide gaming strategy they would decide to do something more profitable.
They may stop temporally for while, but MS, Sony, Tencent and the others will continue acquiring independently if players like it or not. And some studios and publishers will collapse. But new publishers and studios will appear and replace them. As of now, none of Tencent, Sony or MS has even a 20% of the total gaming market revenue share, so I don't see regulators stopping them. Only if as happened with cloud gaming they go to care about the potential future of some small market, as could be game subs, console VR or something like that.
As an example, seems that Sony soon will cross the worldwide 50% of console hardware market share (including Nintendo here), something that will reduce back pretty likely during Switch 2's peak sales years. If not counting Nintendo, market regulators may say Sony's becoming too dominant in the high end consoles market somewhere (remember that as now in euro there's a 80% Sony vs 20% MS and the difference pretty likely will become larger).
So they will continue acquiring, but Sony may do it indirectly using formulas as joint ventures intead of acquisitions. Let's say they create a new company participated by Kadokawa and Sony having Sony the majority of shares that includes From Software and maybe some interesting Kadokawa studio more. Or the same between Sony and Square Enix putting there one or two studios that Sony may want.
My personal opinion was that I didn't like the idea of MS acquiring ABK and I would have prefered that the acquisition would have been failed.Yuri has said multiple times Sony needs to be kept in check and they need competition. He was for the Activision acquisition because of that.
He also has been repeating that "MS monopoly" post every time good PS news comes out. Insinuating PS will be fine so MS can get more.
But knowing it was pretty likely going to happen, the posiive side I saw from it -and what I thought the regulators were going to see after looking at the market numbers- was that was going to help the underdog -MS- compete against the market leader -Sony-, so it would hopefully make the market leader react and improve because of the extra competition.
But I also think Sony is perfectly happy with their current strategy, where they are growing in all their areas (minus mobile, we still aren't seeing results there and I think it's the main 'new' thing we'll see the next CEO focus on) so I think they won't change that strategy. I also think Sony knew that the Bethesda and ABK acquisitions (something that they would have prefered to don't happen) won't really hurt them and this is why they didn't react to them.
In the same way that Sony knew that the 'day one on Gamepass' strategy is a finantial suicide and that Sony didn't need to adopt it because Sony would continue dominating MS in the consoles and console game subs markets using Sony's more successful and profitable strategy and business model. And I think it's a smart strategy on Sony's side.
I think Sony's manpower growth strategy is smarter: instead of spending dozens on billions on acquiring big brands (many of them deads or empty shells) to grow instead the manpower of all their already existing, very successful and prestigious teams. And to acquire partners who successfully worked with them for a long time to secure them, or that would help them grow in strategic areas where they need to grow and where Sony isn't particularly strong (FPS, MP, GaaS, PC, mobile, eSports, VR, cloud gaming, tv shows & movies, Asia particularly China & India) plus also acquiring creators of record breaking new AAA IPs to produce more (case of Bungie or Haven).
Maybe for the headlines Sony's strategy is less flashy because they aren't buying IPs that were very popular 15 or 20 years ago plus a handful ones that are still top today, but I think it's smarter for the long term. Teams like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Sucker Punch or Insomniac will work in more top tier games at the same time and teams like Bungie, Firewalk, Haven, Housemarque or Bluepoint will help them make more new top tier IPs.
And they will also make these IPs more important reaching more people not only in their console, but also in PC, mobile, movies and tv shows to reach markets that already are starting to be very important as is China, India or South America, while also positioning themselves as market leaders before VR or cloud gaming start to grow in a few years and become big markets (but still a minority of the total gaming market).
So yes, I think it's a joke to think that MS has a monopoly or that will have it. I think they spent almost $100B of many empty shells and dead IPs and a few very successful ones with big potential but that their studio management already did suck and had many issues, and becoming that large these issues will grow. Which combined with their suicidal finantial strategy will end in a collapse. I think first many key people will leave and second will abandon their hardware to focus on a multiplatform digital store, and selling again their own games, with GP moving out from heir main priority and removing the "day one on GP" for AAA games.
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