Why won't you do it? You unbiased and neutral right?
You agree Jimbo lied too?
Jim’s email’s need to be understood in chronological order.
He initially believed that Xbox weren’t making an exclusivity play and were thinking bigger.
Then an email offer arrives from Spencer offering 5 years for Call of Duty. So that’s alarming in the first instance - that is an exclusivity play.
Then later on Ryan tries to get Spencer to commit to parity for COD and other Activision games (new and forthcoming) and then Spencer does not commit to this - this indicates that forthcoming Activision games may miss PlayStation altogether.
This this point the regulators get involved. Ryan et all didn’t see the need to while they believed that Xbox would keep all Activision content on PlayStation as they had previously done. Ryan felt that the initial moves were Mobile and wider market reaching and wouldn’t harm PlayStation.
Clearly, the offer as it stands, does. In a typical situation, unless there is a marketing deal etc, PlayStation would expect a PlayStation version of Activision games if there was an Xbox version planned etc. Spencer’s emails allude to the fact that this isn’t the case. This harms the PlayStation ecosystem and limits their potential growth in subscribers.
Spencer also decided to make all new Bethesda games exclusive at some point in 2021. Typically, like Activision titles, if there was an Xbox version planned then a PlayStation version would be expected. Spencer said that this would be done case by case (Starfield etc) but broadly this would probably be true. That is in doubt now and we know they’ve changed contracts to exclude PlayStation from releases such as Indiana Jones.
So Ryan goes from thinking that Microsoft are trying to extend into mobile to now having the reasonably founded belief that Xbox are trying to foreclose on the PlayStation business by cutting them off from increasing numbers of games, or at the very least limiting their ability to negotiate for games and deals.
All of this is being done using Microsoft money, not Xbox money. Phil Spencer testified that Xbox is run as a separate profit/loss division of Microsoft. If that were the case the wouldn’t have access to the capital to acquire ABK, and probably would have struggled to justify Zenimax. So Xbox are using unearned means to foreclose on their nearest competitor, and without a doubt they are making a play for the cloud market and seeking to control that from the beginning, given it’s a nascent market.
Everything Ryan said appears to be logical given the time at which is is quoted to have said it. Spencer however has been saying one thing publicly and then saying and doing different things repeatedly behind closed doors.
The problem we have now as gamers is that Sony will have free reign to bite back if this is allowed to get passed the injunction. Given Microsoft are making or planning to make a lot of IP, historical and new, exclusive, Sony will be perfectly within their rights to move from commitments to multiplatform (Bungie) to potentially taking games off of Xbox as they see fit. Once the precedent is set, anything goes.
It’s gamers that lose out. For this reason I’m against consolidation in the industry. I’m not personally affected by Zenimax or ABK as I don’t play their games, but soon I will be, and that means increasing numbers of others will be.