This might be old news, but as the focus has been on COD, this is the first I’m hearing of the 10 year agreement being more than COD
These 10 year agreements are such bullshit. So Microsoft just has to wait 10 years to then perform monopolostic actions using their aquisition of Activision instead of doing them now? I don’t think Microsoft cares that much, so they’re willing to make these deals to appease the regulators.
While I agree that MS is going to do something like that, 10 year contract is understandable. They needed an agreement for the acquisition to go through, and you can’t have a lifetime contract, things can change, and then you get stuck into a contract that isn’t possible for you to complete. So, you always have a time frame until you are bound by any contract.
Or better yet, Microsoft could just not keep becoming a bigger conglomerate. They just bought Zenimax, and Starfield is Microsoft exclusive (Xbox and Windows).
I wouldn’t be surprised if TES 6 and the next DOOM game are also exclusive.
Very clear case of monopolistic practices. Sony isn’t much better either, with their rumored aquisition of Square Enix.
I wouldn’t be surprised if TES 6 and the next DOOM game are also exclusive.
I am quite sure that they will be exclusive. Read somewhere that Pete Hines (Bethesda marketing head) was saying they got blindsided by MS about Call of Duty, since they were told to keep their games off PS, and COD is going completely opposite way. And they have no idea why the difference between two.
Didn’t read the exact quote, or from any official source, so I could be misquoting some of that, but that was the general gist of it.
I guess the regulators didn’t care as much about Zenimax for whatever reason, even though TES and Fallout are some massively popular franchises.
It looks like TES has sold 58.5 million, Fallout 38 million.
Meanwhile COD has sold 428 million.
It’s easy to see COD with its annual release cycle being seen as a more important revenue stream.
It’s so disgusting. Why is nobody calling out these stupid deals? I mean if we could really trust Microsoft with one of the biggest VG publishers in the world they wouldn’t need to write contracts basically saying “we’ww be good, we pwomise!!!”
My guess is desensitization. Every company is buying each other, and antitrust enforcement hasn’t been a thing since FDR.
Neoliberal economics at its finest. Thanks, Reagan.
10 years from now, we will get some gnarly switch 2 ports of games that have no business running on that hardware
Did the contract say when those games will be available? I bet some or probably all titles will have a delayed release on outside platforms.
The only platform Microsoft would theoretically delay is Sony, given that in the court, they have pointed out that Sony refused to give them a dev kit, at least for the early launch window.
If amything, Microsoft has history of doing the opposite (later release on their own console). Deathloop is an Arkane Lyon project. It was released on Playstation and PC a week before it was released on Series.
That’s because the Deathloop exclusivity period on PlayStation and PC was set before the acquisition and they had to honor existing contracts. It’s not indicative of a pattern they’re going to follow
