With the legal battle to decide whether the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft will be approved in the US in progress, new information about the backstage of the video game industry appears on the internet.
This week, the judgment was attended by Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, who, when talking about the negative impacts of the merger and how it affects PlayStation’s business and the gaming industry in general, commented on the exclusivity of Starfield in the Xbox ecosystem.
A few days ago, Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox division, revealed that they bought ZeniMax Media to prevent Starfield from being a PlayStation exclusive, which caused some impact in the judgment promoted by the Federal Trade Commission.
Commenting on the matter, Jim Ryan stated that he does not see the fact that Starfield is exclusive to Xbox consoles as an anti-competitive practice, even if he does not like the idea.
Ryan said the same about Redfall being an Xbox console exclusive.
I don’t like it, but I fundamentally have no quarrel with it.
Basically what Ryan said is that he doesn’t like what Microsoft is doing in making Bethesda or other titles Xbox/PC exclusives, but his main concern seems to be the potential impact of Call of Duty going exclusive.
It is worth noting that one of the main criticisms of PlayStation is the fact that the company privatizes many games on PlayStation, including the recent Final Fantasy XVI. In short, Microsoft is just fighting back with the same weapons, but we should also remember that most PlayStation exclusives are original games made by Sony-owned studios, not developers with established franchises that were later purchased.
In this war of exclusives, the only ones to lose are consumers, who need to choose the platform with the best deals.
And you, what’s your side in this war?
