Anyone know where to send a letter? I might want to send them a few words
FWIW, I wouldn't have a lot to say against the acquisition in itself, but I definitely think MS need to hold off on future acquisitions until they produce meaningful results with Zenimax, ABK and the 2018 acquisitions both in market scores and "attributable revenue" for a few years. If they can do that for say five years, and want to look into another publisher, then it should be okay. Otherwise in the meantime they can only buy developers with a market cap less than converted USD $500 million, and limited to three such gaming acquisitions during the five-year period.
Honestly think those are very fair terms, although it wouldn't absolve the
other worry I have: if the ABK deal's approved it could open the floodgates for other giant tech companies and investment groups (Apple, Tencent, Sazzy Group etc.) to go after other games publishers and simply point to MS's ABK deal being approved to get regulators to approve their own acquisitions, which could lead to a huge destabilization of the 3P developer & publisher market adversely affecting platform holders such as Sony, Nintendo, and even Microsoft.
Which is why I'd feel other concessions would have to be imposed on the ABK deal even in addition to the stuff above I would personally suggest are in there, in order to set limits and conditions for other companies in a way that's clear & fair to what they can try doing with gaming acquisitions of their own.
Neither of those games are first party... Sony doesn't own From Software, and they didn't own Insomniac at time of release.
They co-funded both games and provided technical support, not to mention Insomniac have a history overwhelmingly on PlayStation platforms near-exclusively and From Software has a large stable of PlayStation exclusives as well (King's Field 1-4, interactive fiction games for PSP, Demon's Souls etc.), of their own volition (i.e not because Sony bought those games away from other platforms).
So ILP using those as examples is laughable at best.
Yeah both MS and Sony will typically refer to games they publish or fund/moneyhat as first party. Most of these in the past would be considered second party but that term seems to have vanished.
It makes sense. Before they acquired Playground, didn’t everyone consider Horizon to be first party?
I did, and yeah it's weird how "second-party" just vanished, like the mid-tier market at retail after halfway through 7th gen. Used to refer to Rare as 2nd Party as a kid but I didn't know Nintendo "only" owned 51% of their shares; I just called them 2nd-party because they weren't Nintendo but made games exclusively for Nintendo anyway.
But yes, Playground's relationship with Microsoft is a lot like Insomniac's with Sony, Rare with Nintendo (before being sold), or Lobotomy Software with Sega: practically exclusive or 1P-adjacent by association, even if they weren't wholly owned by a platform holder at the time.
You are veeeery very wrong.
So Crackdown 3 wasn't first party? Sackboy Adventures? Returnal? What about Metroid Dread? Ratchet & Clank? Resistance?
A console manufacturer can fund external studios to develop games based on IPs they (will) own. Games would still be first party (or second party to differentiate with games built inhouse).
In case of Spider-Man, Marvel asked Sony to make a Spider-Man game, Sony chose Insomniac as a dev. While Spider-Man as a character is not owned by Sony, Insomniac's "Marvels Spider-Man" is a first party game. No one else outside of Sony could ever create a sequel to it set in the same "universe".
