Here's my counter to the idea COD being foreclosed on PlayStation would not harm Sony and can just compete by making an alternative: can't that same argument apply to Microsoft?
Yes, regulators allow Sony make acquisitions and 3rd party exclusivity deals because like MS, Sony doesn't have any monopoly, and such acquisitions and 3rd party deals -at least the ones done until now- don't affect competition.
MS telling the platforms with cloud gaming that they could get CoD but receiving 0% instead of the 30% is an unfair tactic that affects competition, so shouldn't be allowed by regulators. But other than that, same applies for both.
What's the notion behind thinking Sony can make their own COD competitor from the ground-up, but Microsoft "has" to buy COD to be competitive?
Sony and MS are free to make their own COD or whatever, both from the ground-up or to acquiring it, as long as they don't secure a monopoly or apply unfair/abusive tactics that block or highly difficult competition.
In gaming and its submarkets the market share is spread across many companies and the major players have small market shares, so there aren't monopolies (meaning someone is basically 100% market share that on top of that blocks others from competing with them).
Is that an implication of opinion that Microsoft lacks the ability to successfully make a COD alternative, while Sony has the capability?
In terms of capability, I think out of the two MS is the only one who has the money to buy a CoD, and Sony is the one with the talent to achieve a CoD competitor built from scratch (thanks to the acquisition of Bungie, Firewalk and Haven).
I mean, I think Sony is capable of building a shooter with the same qualilty and sales in PS and PC that CoD has. But I think Sony doesn't have the manpower to keep releasing a new game of that series every year.
Because while that can be argued as true based on the 1P releases from both companies comparatively over the past decade, I would also say that implication works even worst against Microsoft.
If we look at the 1P releases of the last decade, Sony released a shit ton more than MS and have been a shit ton more successful in terms of sales, reviews and awards.
If we add 3rd party exclusives, the difference becomes even way bigger: Sony every year had way more 3rd party exclusives and way more successful than the MS ones.
So I think that allowing MS to get CoD would help MS reduce that distance, fostering competition between Sony and MS.
If they can't make a COD alternative and make it successful, how do people expect them to manage COD itself and ensure it continues to be financially successful?
I think MS is awful managing teams and this issue grows as they keep acquiring more teams.
Activision Blizzard King is also known to have big management issues looking at these controversies and all the key staff that left. I think that under MS this shiftfest would become bigger to the point it can cause the collapse of the MS gaming division.
MS would put CoD on GP day one, which is nonsensical financially. On top of that they could remove it from PS, which also would be nonsensical financially. It is so dumb that the UK market regulator saw that it would damage MS so badly that they don't think it's a concern for them in the console side.
I would say, you have to know how to make some genuinely successful (critically & commercially) marquee AAA games yourself if you're going to buy one of the biggest AAA franchises on the market and attempt managing it.
MS has made or bought very successful stuff, and Sony too.
I would take it a step further: I'm more confident that RedFall would have released in a better state if Zenimax weren't acquired, vs. what has actually released under Microsoft.
I think Redfall should have been cancelled, or heavily improved in early stages of development to address structural quality issue. That would be what any normal publisher would have done.
The thing is, MS was desperate for big 1st party release so they are ok with releasing any shit they can ship. I assume they also were maybe too optimistic and didn't expect that it was going to be that bad and that was going to be better received both by media and the players.
Upper management incompetence can manifest a number of ways; maybe if the buck really stopped with Pete Hines, Arkane Austin would've gotten more time and resources specifically to complete the game so that it launched in a better state. Zenimax would've also felt more pressure to ensure the quality was higher at release because as an independent publisher they would need to rely on RedFall revenue a lot more than being under Microsoft. If the game really was scrapped in some iteration upon MS buying Zenimax and the scope changed as a result, we would have seen a different, better game released.
In this case this release it's the fault of many people: the dev team, Arkane Austin studio management, Arkane management, Zenimax/Bethesda management (Pete Hines as head of publishing), Matt Booty (as head of MGS) and Phil Spencer (as CEO of MS game division).
I think all of them have been incompetent because they should have said "no" at some point and should have asked to improve it and not releasing it on this state, delaying it as much as needed or killing it if they saw it was impossible to improve it to a decent enough state (I don't know, to achieve at least maybe a green Metacritic, >75).
And I do think these issues regarding quality have weight with regulators in deciding things, not just the money itself,
They are market regulators, they don't look at quality or talent. They only make sure that there aren't monopolies and that companies compete with fair conditions that don't prevent/grossly affect competition. They are there to protect the fair competition.
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didn’t they just redirect m&a funds to console production and first prty studio invest. Also some of it might be going to 3rd prty deals.
