Cold War actually sold more MTX than MW19 and Vanguard.
Vanguard is the disaster and has severely hurt the mainline and Warzone
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Microsoft responds to Sony's claim that Call of Duty is unrivaled & unique (Claims Sony is paying to block games from Gamepass)
- Thread starter Idas
- Start date
- Activision/Blizzard
Vanguard is the disaster and has severely hurt the mainline and Warzone
Yeah both were huge misses, if another had come out when those two hit and was good, it could've blown up massively.
I still think CW was the start of the decline, MTX sales might have been high but unit sales is a better metric because there could be 1M people who all spend $100 each which gives a big number compared to 5M who spend $5 each for example. But I do agree Vanguard was the main reason, "the last nail in the coffin" the famous term people love to say for COD lol.
Selling an IP they own on another platform is not charity, and it certainly isn't done for your convenience. Also just gonna just point out that Microsoft wasn't caring that much about "pushing for less walls between platforms with cross-play initiatives" until they found themselves at the end of a noose in the last generation.
Final Fantasy XIV is extremely profitable and given Xbox's acquisition of ABK, they could now be the de facto MMORPG console, but the reason why the game isn't on Xbox consoles yet is because they've denied Square the opportunity to release the game on their ecosystem without demanding the player pay the additional Xbox Live cost on top of the game's own subscription, which Sony never asked them to do, and Square wasn't willing to budge on. Game could've been there for years now, and perhaps if it had, the newer Final Fantasy games wouldn't be Sony "exclusives", because Square would have had an established playerbase on that platform. Nowadays, yes, they've reversed that opinion, and that's a good thing, but that has nothing to do with my point at all. The moment it stops being profitable or useful for their image, they'll reverse it again, as did Sony, and as has Nintendo before.
I wanted to respond to this particular bit because people have a very selective memory when it comes to console manufacturers.
You can have an extremely monopolistic antagonistic takeover of an industry, while that company still providing perceived short or mid term benefits for those who opt in. It's pretty obvious that a business will at the very least play the part. The world has a few shades of grey in it.
Comparing any of the studios Sony's acquired with ABK is more than a little silly. Please see at not only how much those studios (emphasis on purpose here) cost, and how much money they were and are now making, versus ABK or any of its IPs. You're comparing a guy buying a Toyota Camry to go to work, to a guy window-shopping a Porsche Panamera and still being loaded after the fact.
Microsoft is several times larger than Sony. Of course their acquisitions are going to be more costly, but that's exactly what I mean when I say they're undercutting the competition with their massive bank accounts.
And you seem to understand this, because you noted it right here:
Unless you think Call of Duty games will suddenly be free to develop once ABK's acquisition concludes, then that is literally the definition of a market undercut, because games of that magnitude aren't developed at 15 bucks a pop. And so market undercuts, especially when done at a loss, are done with the specific intention to bleed the competition, which can't afford to provide the same kind of offer at all, so they either shift focus to a less profitable segment of the market (which can fuck them over), or they concede and try to compete and go bankrupt in the process.
This isn't a new thing, it's not a new strategy that the Xbox division just came up with. In fact it's not even the first time Microsoft has done this.
Sony failed to prove that this would be a substantial blow to their business, because they failed to show how doing this with Call of Duty specifically would have a significant effect on their storefront. But add all of ABK's IPs, on top of Game Pass itself, and you can clearly see how this adds up to a massive blow.
The part where it affects you, because I know a lot of people understand things better in those terms, is that they will not operate Xbox at a loss forever, and at some point, someone is going to have to be paying them to go back to the massive profits they envision given these investments and planned losses. That someone is you, in case it isn't obvious! lol And the way that will be expressed is either in a significant price hike, a significant lower payout for games on the service, or a significant drop in quality of games being offered -- sometimes even all three. We've seen similar things with Netflix as well.
And if they have their way, at that time you won't have an alternative anymore. That is how the strategy works. It's a strategy older than gaming is, and MS has done this before with Windows.
I'm not saying MS is bleeding the competition now. I'm saying these market decisions were done with that intention, and since neither Nintendo nor Sony have the funds to combat such a hostile takeover, this is effectively monopolistic.
If Sony starts doing the same shit, I'd say the same shit about them. My issue is people not seeing this happening in front of their eyes.
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My mindset is this: I don't want publishers being bought out. By anyone. Sony can fuck off if they do the same, but they're going to, because the genie is out of the bottle now. There is no way to compete in this industry now that macro-publishers are being bought out, unless you respond in kind.
This is literally EXACTLY what I have been warning about for three years now. We all lose when everybody is playing Pokemon cards with publishers. Microsoft is not a heroic underdog here, and Sony won't be either when they return fire. This stuff is bad for all of us, and we should not be cheering for it, regardless of which console we primarily game on.
Cold War had long legs due to how badly Vanguard was recieved, so it kept making money way after people would've usually switched to the new COD.
I'm guessing?
It's no different than buying rights to a game holding out updates from the competition. It's been happening way longer than 3 years ago.
Microsoft is right and it's been clear since the day this deal was announced.
The biggest thing this deal has regarding Sony is that their #1 market position is in trouble. It's not anticompetitive to disrupt markets and Sony's not even innocent in using it's actual clear market advantage to stifle Xbox's growth.
The biggest thing this deal has regarding Sony is that their #1 market position is in trouble. It's not anticompetitive to disrupt markets and Sony's not even innocent in using it's actual clear market advantage to stifle Xbox's growth.
Pointing on the legal grounds that Sony does and doesn't have to contest this acquisition isn't cheering it on. Companies have been "playing Pokemon cards with publishers" since the dawn of gaming, and it's going to continue whether we like it or not.
what other Activision Blizzard games? lol
As of this moment, Activision is Call of Duty. There's no studio working on any game outside Call of Duty. No Crash. No Spyro. No Tony Hawk. Just a sad waste of a publisher.
Blizzard has what? 2 games on console? Diablo and Overwatch? Rest is PC and Mobile.
I don't think we would see MS buying ABK without the massive drop in share price honestly, such a shitty situation that caused the drop but it could be a blessing in disguise that could potentially get rid of the bad eggs. I don't see them going after Take Two that might be a bit too much so soon. I think Microsoft can be content with what they have once they get ABK and just pick up single studios who need the funding.
I want to play Candy Crush on my Switch damn it :P
Doesn't really excuse flying into the thread to rush the first post, admitting that you haven't bothered reading the text, then going in with a hot take which was completely unrelated to what the text was talking about.
It's vastly, vastly different, and the long-term implications of macro-scale corporate consolidation are far more problematic than just "this sucks, I have to wait a year for a DLC map". That's not to say timed exclusivity deals are bad - they suck too - but the situation is vastly different.
The industry should not be congealing into three or four massive ultraconglomerates that own everything and then control who gets to access it. Nobody should want this. I don't know why anyone does.
Bluepoint, Insomniac and Housemarque have almost exclusively developed games for PlayStation consoles outside a few exceptions years ago, Nixxes does ports of existing games to PC and Bungie's games are going to continue to release multiplatform. Can't compare those to the acquisition of Bethesda and ABK where most games are going from being on multiple consoles to just PC and Xbox.
There's a Crash game in development.
They are though, no franchises touches the amount COD sells every single year. No other franchise can release a new game every years and be the best selling every year.
There's a big difference between just "selling well" then best selling every single year
This is one of the biggest problems of ResetERA (and society in general), I sometimes wonder if you should only be able to respond after spending x amounts of seconds on the actual post depending on its length. Not technically feasible, I suppose.
Honestly i don't know why people keep buying COD so much, there has been like 2-3 bad COD games in the last 5 years and they keep selling like 50 million copies or some shit. Modern Warfare 2019 was fun and the cross-play/no map pack DLC was nice, but i don't know why Cold War and Vanguard sold so well.
I wouldn't be surprised if MS try to push an Xbox version of WoW and that maybe steals some FFXIV players off of PS5 to try out console WoW, but really that's not big numbers, MMO genre is small these days. Diablo 4 and OW2 will be multiplat, Acti-Blizz are launching them before the merger 100%, typically companies like to cash out before mergers.
Much quicker and much more convenient to grind out weapons and attachments in multiplayer, especially on Shipment-type maps. Buying the standalone games is a massive time-saver and a bit of a competitive advantage for when the meta shifts or when new weapons drop in Warzone.
![00Quan[T]](/data/avatar/31681832007/115484-m.jpg){kind=avatar}
Well, then they can't cry about Microsoft buying stuff to put on their service right?
This way it won't get blocked by Sony.
User Banned (3 Days): Platform Warring; Metacommentary
I respect the Sisyphean effort here, but you already know it's falling on deaf ears.
Anyone who is skeptical of this acquisition is caping for Sony. GamePass is a blessing. Phil Spencer is a bro.
I mean, hell, PlanetSmasher is over here taking heat for calling out the MS response as pretty transparent corporate garbo (it is), and being accused of stanning for Sony in the process (extremely laughable).
These threads are always the same.
I quite literally was responding to one of the central points of the writeup in my first paragraph.
It has but the numbers I'm referring to were released around last summer.
And then we know its significantly over Vanguard because the numbers they just released a week or two ago said Vanguard+Warzone from like March to June 2022 is down like 400 million dollars from the same period last year
Even if that chart is true, they would be pretty close to even. Sony's recent FY earnings went down south that's why it puts them in 3rd in that chart. That's not MS' fault.
I mean, if they do buy square enix, it would be because of the acquisitions that MS has been making and Sony feeling compelled to try and compete.
Your critique is shallow. Every publisher in the industry is for-profit with shareholders. Gaming is built on capitalism. This forum is a celebration of gaming and therefore, capitalism. We have OTs dedicated to platform-holders where posters faithfully perform as unpaid marketing interns doing PR work every day. ResetEra's anti-capitalist rhetoric is inches deep.
It doesn't matter what we post on this board; how many hashtags we throw up or spotlights we produce.
"F Jim Ryan for his email/stance on abortion. I'm not selling my PS5 doe."
"F Microsoft for their coddling of sexist executives. I'm not selling my Xbox doe."
"F Nintendo for mishandling their labor relations. I'm not selling my Switch doe."
We can't and won't stop buying consoles built using unethical "labor" practices. We can't and won't stop purchasing games from publishers/developers that all struggle with safe/ethical work spaces and labor practices. That's to say nothing of how they handle various subject matter in the games themselves.
Aren't you trying to gaslight us by implying that between the two companies in the equation, only one is a supergiant? Sony is a multi-national conglomerate with decades-long dominance in multiple industries, just like Microsoft. There's no reason to feel sorry for either company. Contrary to some beliefs, corporations aren't people.
If you're feeling anything other that mild bemusement at the sight of two heavyweights duking it out with each other, you're doing it wrong.
When you gotta piss on the perceived enemy, you can't afford to waste time reading.
console wars are hilarious, we've seen years of amateur warriors arguing how their favorite company is way better than the other. meanwhile thanks to Idas we can see that the actual professional console warriors go for the "we actually fucking suck, look at the other side they are actual gods at this wtf, imagine comparing us lmao" strategy.
There's a certain sense of irony is dedicating a significant portion of this thread to derailing it by hyper-analyzing what PlanetSmasher said in the first post. After a while, the derail itself is far more damaging to the thread than the thing people are criticizing. Do y'all really think it's better to make their post the central theme of this thread?
You were talking about MS purposefully devaluing the brand they're trying to buy, which wasn't what they were doing at all. They're arguing against Sony's position that CoD is a unique category/genre of its own.
Why are you so invested in people being critical of Game Pass? It's a fantastic service. Consumer friendly, developer friendly, incredible value.
A few of the points are actually pretty damning for Sony and not the other way around comparing the two threads (with understanding we are looking at this with a certain POV).
Using your position to lock out products of a competitor's market (aka locking out games from being on Gamepass) is much more anti-competitive than purchasing a non-direct competitor or a supplier in the chain. I'll point to Microsoft and Internet Explore/Windows. One a surface level it's almost the same thing. If Microsoft can prove that is the case with Sony, that would be the nail in the coffin if I was on any of the board reviews.
Using your position to lock out products of a competitor's market (aka locking out games from being on Gamepass) is much more anti-competitive than purchasing a non-direct competitor or a supplier in the chain. I'll point to Microsoft and Internet Explore/Windows. One a surface level it's almost the same thing. If Microsoft can prove that is the case with Sony, that would be the nail in the coffin if I was on any of the board reviews.
Exactly. It's fun. Threads like this are why I'm even on this forum in the first place. I am interested in learning more about the business aspects from documents like this. This is an especially rare thing to see because a lot of the corporate consumer-facing speak is completely gone.
Wish we could see all the redacted stuff.
MS spent like 90 billion dollars for gaming in like last 3 years. That's more than Sony earned from gaming since existence of PS. They are not an "underdog". Also when this deal comes through if they will start adding AB revenue to MS revenue they will get close if not pass Sony.
Exactly
People are too busy being fanboys vs seeing the big picture. MS is not doing this cause they love yall, they want all your money and free time and they not gonna get it from Nintendo or Sony because they will most likely walk away from COD if it comes to them having to subjugate their business to MS.
I enjoyed both of their campaigns?
Admittedly us campaign buyers don't make up a large percentage, but...
This is another weird defense. Yes, no one is forcing square to accept Sony's money. It's why I regularly hound them too.
But that doesn't make Sony offering the money any less scummy.
I think it's because of the certainty that MS will increase prices at some point. It's a valid concern, but the continued success of $70 games has shown that companies are happy and brave enough to raise prices to screw the customer, streaming success or not. No one is on the consumer's side perpetually, so settling for the 'one right now' is the only thing you can do really.
Sony dominated during the PS, PS2 and PS4 era in the console market. Of course they do not want the competition to take away what they have invested over the years and not be able to compete to adapt to changes in the market. There are no good or bad, only corporate interests.
Sony is nearing 50%+ market share. A massive chunk of ABK is also Blizzard/King which do not help Xbox consoles.
They absolutely are underdogs.
If timed exclusives and marketing deals are scummy, then buying a publisher at 70% of the value of their top competitors parent company for full control of their staff and IPs has to be on a whole different level of scum.
