Impact of Microsoft purchase of Activision on Playstation. Thoughts?

TheIrishGrover

Just wondering what the general feeling is about the impact of Microsoft's purchase of Activision.

Will this mean that all their console games will become Xbox exclusives? Will this be used as a means of killing off the main competition? Or will they continue to release games for PS/Switch, happy in the knowledge that Sony and Nintendo will have to hand over part of their profits to Microsoft?

I think this is very bad news for gamers (Apparently Sony took a 18% hit on stockmarket at that announcement). I'm sure the teenage fanboyz will be all about the XROX!!!/PS-SUX!!! but for those with double-digit IQs/age mentalities....

Personally, I don't know. Would they REALLY make CoD XBOX/PC exclusive for example in order to kill off Playstation? There are a huge amount of Playstations out there (Well, PS4 anyway). Would they release games for the PS4 (fewer games as time goes on) but nothing on PS5, hoping to get people to shift from PS4 to Series X/S?

The fear is that there will be an escalation of the exclusives "Arms Race" and we will find very little overlap between consoles. Sony will buy this, Microsoft will buy that. This would also potentially lead to poorer and poorer games. Next thing you know, there are the occasional stellar games on either console. Followed by cheaper, buggy, unfinished shovelware. "What are you going to do? Switch to PS? You can only play CoD here. So if you want CoD or next Elder Scrolls then suck it up"

Riesen_Meal

I have both consoles so won't make a difference to me, I don't play CoD other than the odd game of Warzone...

I don't see them killing CoD on PS just yet, maybe in a year or two, but not just yet...

More interested to see what happens the likes of Crash, third party but historically a PlayStation third party exclusive for the first few years with Naughty Dog and obviously now Vivendi and Activision

I'm not the target market but will see what it means in roughly 2 year's I would think...

Potential-Monke

CoD has killed itself off imo, it's all about the F2P Warzone now, and I doubt they will make it exclusive simply because of the amount of money the MTs make. I reckon Warzone will still be multiplat, but Xbox will get features a month or 6 before PS now. Meh, hopefully BR games will start dying out this year, they're a pain in the hole tbh.

I also hope it means Sony will start bringing out more first party games. CoD really was the only game from AB that I used to play, but it hasn't been fun since MW reboot. But we won't see the full impact for a couple of years. I'm not too worried, again because AB mainly made PC games with some multiplat shooters that were never aimed at me anyway. And I honestly believe Sony are more innovative, with the DualSense being a game changer imo, and the upcoming PSVR2... I'm not worried. I do have both, and while I have been mainly Xbox for the last couple of months, due to it being new, I miss the PS5 and play any multiplat games I have on it.

It's not a good sign that MS bought these, but I don't think it will kill off Sony.

super_furry

Microsoft's end goal is to get Game Pass on the Playstation. Which, if that does happen, it's win-win for everyone.

Don't think we'll see any immediate impacts though. It will take a year for the deal to go through and nothing will change before then but eventually we could see the likes of Call of Duty, Diablo and Overwatch 2 become Game Pass exclusives.

Hopefully it will encourage Sony to take more gambles with their games. They've become very safe over the last three or four years and everything now seems to be a big budget third-person adventure.

Wouldn't be surprised if Sony make a move of their own and snap up a major Japanese developer. Square Enix would be the most obvious given their already close relationship with Sony.

Penn

There's definitely an argument to be made for Sony allowing Gamepass on PS5, however I'd imagine they might only do so with certain limits, like a pared down Gamepass with only Xbox exclusive games. Otherwise why would anyone use the higher tiers of the proposed PS+ replacement or even buy multiplatform games from the PS Store if they're also available on Gamepass. Unless Sony were getting a decent cut of the Gamepass on PS sub I imagine they'd end up losing a decent chunk and might not be worth it.

Outside of that, buy Konami or do a deal with them to let your studios make new games with those licences, and let Konami still Pachinko them. Get some exclusives from Capcom and Square Enix too. I think deals like that are reasonable in terms of cost, big franchises that will attract people, and will help retain a good section of players.

TheIrishGrover

Well, yeah, I'm too old for the likes of CoD or ANY PvP games really. I'm more of a single-player/RPG fan myself so I like Sony's first/second-party studio focus on these type of games (Naughty Dog for example). Currently playing Ghost of Tsushima. IMHO, Sony seems to focus more on these type of games I like as opposed to PvP.

As has been said, it will probably be a couple of years before there will be an impact (There will be an impact, i suppose it depends upon the level of impact). I didn't think of TIMED exclusivity as mentioned above. That actually would probably be the avenue they would go down. They don't want to KILL Sony (Too large an install-base. Too many gamers who simply PREFER Sony (I hate the xbox interface for example. It is designed to sell you games rather than access games you already have). BUT, a timed release may tempt people to "Give xbox a look"