Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, by Yang Zongshuo

When will World of Warcraft join XGP?

After Microsoft decided to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in cash-which happened in January-Microsoft has been targeted by antitrust regulators around the world. You know, mergers and acquisitions between large companies are always like this. Not only can the two companies agree to complete the transaction, but the impact on the market environment is also inestimable. According to the extraterritorial jurisdiction principle of anti-monopoly in international practice and the anti-monopoly laws issued by some countries or regions in the world, as long as the acquisition case reaches a certain scale and does affect the relevant industries in various countries and regions, then it will be brought into the supervision of various countries and regions, and even the relevant acquisitions can be vetoed.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are both industry giants. A company with a market capitalization of US $1.76 trillion, ranking second in the world and spanning various industries, is about to acquire a well-known gaming company with several top IP. They have extensive business in all countries and regions of the world, and they are all within the scope of regulation. In September this year, the British antitrust agency said: Microsoft's acquisition harms the competition in the game console market, subscription service market and cloud game market, and the transaction should be investigated in depth.

From the point of view of competitors, such deals are also frightening. As you can see, the competitors here are talking about Sony, Microsoft's number one enemy in the console gaming industry. Since the launch of the original Xbox and the entry of Microsoft, this wonderful relationship has been going on for 21 years and several mainframe generations, with both sides winning and losing, fighting in all parts of the world. At first, Sony dominated the market through historical accumulation in the generations of PS2 and Xbox, but then the Xbox 360s were also very powerful, competing with each other to this day. Friends who have been following the console game market for a long time can more or less tell some key events-- whether it is the "three red", Microsoft's early second-hand policy, the upgrade of half a generation, the launch of the XGP subscription system, and Sony's tricks in the PS5 generation. Generally speaking, neither of them has completely defeated the other in the past 20 years.

Sony is not doing very well on its own, and Microsoft has acquired Activision Blizzard, which may be one of the biggest crises facing Sony in the gaming industry. If you imagine a bad future for Sony-call of Duty will no longer be available on PS, Diablo 4 will be downloaded for free on XGP, and Microsoft will regain its disadvantage anywhere in the world (including Japan). Or, if not so determined, you can play the latest call of Duty on your beloved PS5 or PS6, but it costs $70 or more and you have to join a member to get online. On Xbox, people only need to subscribe to XGP to get you six months ahead of time-if I were Jim Lane, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, I'd be in a hurry to do Blood Curse 2 on the forehead.

In order to deal with this situation, in addition to doing "Blood Curse 2" to improve itself (hypothetically, not really), another thing Sony needs to do is to stop Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard. It began to appear in regulatory inquiries in various countries and regions. In order to achieve their goals, the two trust-level giants began to say strange things, flattering each other, praising "you are the number one game manufacturer in the world." Meanwhile, Nintendo, the third pole of the mainframe world, has bought some land to build another office building of its own.

Since the beginning of the year, in a nutshell, that's what happened.

"We expect Microsoft to abide by the contract agreement." We expect Microsoft to abide by the contract agreement to ensure that Activision Blizzard games remain multi-platform. " A Sony spokesman told the media two days after Microsoft announced its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

After a while, Phil Spencer, the boss of Xbox, tweeted in response to Sony, saying that the two companies had called over the weekend and confirmed that they would continue to abide by the existing agreement and would continue to keep the "call of Duty" series on PS. Phil Spencer added, "We value our relationship with Sony."

An hour later, Bloomberg reported that Activision Blizzard's next three "call of Duty" will still be released on the PS platform.

Call of Duty: modern Warfare 2muri-War rekindled will still be launched on the PS platform, reminiscent of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda's parent company. Although some of the B Club's later games are still available on multiple platforms, remember what we said about the "cycle of death"? "Bethesda's last game on PS." The real big head "Starry Sky" has become the monopoly of Xbox.

So let's assume that what everyone says is true, Microsoft will abide by the existing contract agreement, and Sony will get the future three "call of Duty", but then what?

"Let's buy one, too." after Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Sony quickly announced at the end of January that it would buy a large studio from fate's developer Bungie--, but not as big as Activision Blizzard, with a purchase price of $3.6 billion, equivalent to 5 per cent of the Microsoft acquisition. The deal was completed on July 15 this year, and Bungie became a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment, but also had a high degree of autonomy.

Sony has acquired Bungie, the developer of Destiny, and in April, Sonny invested $1 billion in Epic Games to further develop meta-universe.

Of course, these investments may not have much to do with each other, and we can't say that Sony called Bungie after watching the news-the acquisition was obviously premeditated, but Microsoft may have upset its plans.

"call of Duty is really important." since the middle of this year, Microsoft has been debating with regulators around the world, trying to convince them that "this acquisition will not lead to a monopoly." there's nothing special about Microsoft or Activision Blizzard.

"not playing call of Duty is certainly not a big problem," Microsoft said. "there are so many similar FPS games on the market."

Most of the information we have so far comes from regulators in Brazil and New Zealand, which are more transparent on such issues and publish most of the information that does not involve trade secrets online-for example, in New Zealand in June. Microsoft claimed that "Activision's game is nothing special", while in Brazil in August, Sony said, "call of Duty is an irreplaceable triple-A game." A blockbuster, the player community is deeply ingrained and can influence players' choice of game consoles.

Sony spoke highly of call of Duty-"this is the only game IP that has made it into the top 10 of global entertainment brands, just like Star Wars, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter."

"each call of Duty takes three to five years to develop, costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and releases a new call of Duty every year."

"more people are producing call of Duty alone than all the developers at most 3A game companies."

The public test before the release of call of Duty: modern Warfare 2muri-rekindled was very successful. Microsoft said, "call of Duty" is just a game IP, there are many kinds of IP. Sony disagrees with Microsoft and is desperate to stress the irreplaceability of call of Duty: "call of Duty is almost the best-selling game in every year for the past 10 years, and if you only look at the FPS type, it is undoubtedly the best-selling game. Even the popular call of Duty: vanguard is one of the best-selling games in 2021."

Sony also believes that games like Battlefield can't be compared to call of Duty. "call of Duty has 2400 million and 12 million followers on Facebook and Instagram, while Battlefield has 7 million and 2 million followers. Players who play call of Duty are unlikely to play another game. Not only do they feel different, but you also need to play with your friends."

In response, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in an interview that Microsoft has provided a written agreement to ensure that call of Duty will remain on the PS platform for years to come.

"I didn't want to discuss it publicly." with regard to the deal, Jim Lane said in September that Microsoft only offered to retain call of Duty on PS for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony. " This series has been on the PS platform for nearly 20 years, and the proposals provided by Microsoft are inadequate in many ways and do not take into account the impact on our platform players. We want to ensure that PS gamers continue to have the best call of Duty experience, and Microsoft's proposal undermines that principle. "

Jim Lane added: "I wasn't going to talk about this private business discussion publicly, but Phil Spencer said on social media that I felt it was necessary to clarify the facts."

Phil Spencer probably didn't think much about it when he tweeted, no matter which version you believe, that is, "the next few years." further away, Microsoft doesn't guarantee that there is a "call of Duty" on PS, and it still sounds a little worried, but what you can do to Microsoft, you don't seem to be able to guarantee that call of Duty must go on forever and log on to PS.

"I'll teach you how to do subscription service." frankly speaking, at least in our country, Jim Lane is not a popular person. Some players attribute PS5's temporary failure-or stagnation-to the CEO from the West.

Whether or not some of Sony Interactive Entertainment's recent decisions have anything to do with him, many of the company's projects have failed. Or it's not bad, but it doesn't give people a good impression. Toule, for example, criticized PlayStation Plus's subscription service on its first day of launch.

Not to mention whether the subscription content is less than Microsoft, just upgrade members can not be settled in a month, must be upgraded according to the remaining time of members, it is already worthy of criticism by players.

In August, Microsoft submitted a document to Brazilian regulators refuting various anti-takeover proposals put forward by Sony. You know, in the long competition, Sony has always regarded XGP as a very big threat, although no one knows whether XGP can make money or not, but we can see that Sony is a little afraid of this, whether we eventually evolve into the subscription era, or XGP may have to monopolize the "call of Duty", which is not good for Sony's strategy.

Jim Lane has been having a hard time lately. In this document, Microsoft mentioned that Sony had "paid some money to prevent certain games from logging into XGP." Of course, it doesn't necessarily mean that Sony has done anything about XGP, but it may have paid for some games to monopolize PlayStation Plus.

At the same time, there is a tip from Microsoft: "Sony can take advantage of its high-quality games by allowing them to log on to PlayStation Plus on the launch day of first-party games. Such a strategy could quickly accelerate the growth of the service user base in response to competitive pressure on XGP (or any other service). However, Sony did not do so."

"you are the first gaming company," Microsoft CEO Satyanadra-- not Phil Spencer, but his boss-- talked about the acquisition of Activision Blizzard in a recent interview. "any acquisition of this size will be subject to scrutiny, and we will be allowed to pass," he said.

"our goal is to bring more games to more gamers on all platforms and to provide more choices for publishers and developers around the world." "everything we do with content, cloud games and communities is to promote this choice and opportunity," Satyanadella said. "

Low-key Microsoft CEO about Sony believes that the completion of the Microsoft acquisition will create a monopoly, Microsoft CEO said: "Microsoft is the fourth or fifth place in the game industry, the first game company is Sony."

Sony has not yet announced that Microsoft is the number one game company.

It's not over yet. up to now, Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard may only be a half-court, but the audience is also a little tired. After a long period of mutual attacks and strange words, I hope that Sony, Microsoft and regulators around the world will bring us something substantial in the second half. So far, only Saudi Arabia has approved the deal, and investigations are ongoing elsewhere. In early September, the Competition and Markets Authority concluded the first phase of the investigation into the acquisition, but did not pass it directly, but opened the second phase to continue the investigation. The European Commission also announced that it would conclude the first phase of the investigation by November 8, when it will decide whether to move to the second phase or finally approve the deal.

In addition to watching weird talk and caring about when we can play Diablo IV in XGP, we are happy to continue to pay attention to the acquisition itself-perhaps the wonderful story is far from over.

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