I find this all extremely laughable.
Activision, a company with known despicable anti labour behavior towards its employees. Multiple scandals. Attempts to bust unions forming that was on a company path to implode within a matter of a few years after investigations comes in. Has a board that decides hey we might need an off ramp.
Ms a company with past anti competitor behavior decides to put in a purchase offer after multiple scandals had just occured. Ms also the only console maker publishing games on all platforms is accused by sony, the market leader ( also with past anti competitive behavior ) accused ms of doing something that will hurt thier business and the game industry.
First i gotta say bullshit to sony. What would really hurt sony is if Activision crumbles and dissolved (as has happened with past large publishers ) with less scandals and problems ). Was acquired by an amazon or google and restricted thier propriety platforms
Ms is the ONLY publisher capable of making this purchase that would be willing to keep publishing games on their platforms. Not only that, but publish on MORE platforms (switch, pc, mobile in addition to current supported consoles )
I've yet to see a single argument that proves this is "bad for the industry". I dont buy the MS will stop publishing it on PlayStation consoles excuse. They have yet to demonstrate this behavior with any established franchise that already existed on other platforms.
No starfield doesn't count. Its not an established franchise. There is no gaurentee it ever would have launched on playstation. Bethesda was another company that needed to weather a financial storm and massive delays. Ms have yet to pull any other bethesda franchise from PlayStation. They have still released updates and addons for current play station games. Still supported games on stadia!
Sony do not release or publish games on competing consoles. Mlb the show isnt published by sony on other consoles. and they were forced into it by MLB directly. If it were up to sony, it would still be exclusive.
I also dont think sony will keep publishing on pc. They have done this in the past and then stopped once the console base was large enough. Imo i think there is a higher likelyhood of sony stopping or limiting pc support then there is of ms stopping or limiting games on PlayStation. New unknown franchises may be exclusive however. But COD stays.
There is no chance of that occuring in this instance, as the franchise makes far too much money on playstation. Sonys arguments are only to ensure they keep a market advantage ( dont forget some of the cod games are exclusive to playstation) with something which isnt likely to happen for years from occurring. Despite the likelyhood of it occuring with activision imploding.
Me personally i want these games on gamepass. I swore years back i would never buy another activision game. So if there is anything worth playing its via gamepass or i go without.
its a bit odd to accuse a company of behavior they havent exhibited in years to protect the market leader that frequently pays to block games appearing on other platforms.