Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard Discussion Thread (Part 1)

Wow. Sounds clear cut when you put it like that. I believe they put out a similar statement for Zenimax before making everything exclusive to Xbox and PC.

I literally dunno what could convince someone insisting it’s still up in the air.

The secret to decrypting MS’s super secret code is to simply take what they say, chop it into parts you like, reconfigure it to say what you want, and then ignore what they actually said on multiple occasions to the public and various regulatory agencies. It’s brilliant! /s

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Well they will say whatever at this point. Microsoft is preparing the FTC for CoD to be Xbox exclusive.And Sony is telling the FTC thats what they expect. Much like they did with Zenimax. They have definitely been caught off guard.

I literally dunno what could convince someone insisting it’s still up in the air.

I dunno what’s going on with some of these people lol

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And if that doesn’t work, then one merely needs to translate phrases into other languages until the translation back means what you want it to. This is exactly like all those Silent Hill truths. :rofl:

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MS literally told us with Zenimax ‘some games’ would be exclusive and some would not be. And they lived up to that to a tee. They never once suggested those big games would not become exclusive. They never stated TES or Fallout or Starfield would come to PlayStation or Nintendo like they are directly and repeatedly stating wrt CoD. These are not the same.

That other deal is not the lens thru which to view this one, especially if you want to read between the lines and infer things beyond what is being stated.

Ha, hey now I have my own fun SH conspiracy theory, I don’t need ones about Abandoned! Mine is that Mikami/Tango is secretly working with Kojima on Silent Hills exclusively for Xbox, that Overdose is actually Silent Hills Ep 1, and that all will be revealed at the end of the TGA’s with an Overdose playable teaser with Silent Hills branding showing up at the end. /let me dream

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Sony cant complain about anything. I beleive ms triggered that bethesda deal knowing sony were trying to moneyhat half their games.

Theres no contractual obligation for ms to do anything.

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Actually they did constantly. Like Phil Spencer said

Doom. Wolfenstein. Starfield. Elder Scrolls, Fallout. Deathloop 2. Redfall. Ghostwire Tokyo 2. Indiana Jones. Have all been taken away from Sony and Nintendo. Phil lied.

Xbox CFO Tim Stuart also stated that they werent planning on pulling PS5 support and Zenimax games would only be first, better or best on Xbox

All PS5 support has since been pulled. Future titles cancelled. Tim Lied.

They are identical at every level.

Even the wording to the FTC is identical to the Zenimax submission. No mention of continued support anywhere whatsoever.

They could have shaved months off this buyout by making a definitive statement about future games. Instead its the exact.same.terms they used for all those Zenimax exclusives.

I literally dunno what could convince someone insisting it’s still up in the air.

They didnt state that with CoD only, it was Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles”

So you are in fact insisting that all AB games will be releasing on Playstation indefinitely, because its all part of the same claim and there is no room for movement.

Yet Tina Summorford states “some will be exclusive”, so the original statement is in error or hers is.

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Yeah I’m with you. It’s a joke that we still don’t have deathloop on GamePass!

I’m of the opinion they should also shut down servers for FO76, ESO etc and only have it running on platforms where GamePass is, but Phil is just too much of a nice guy.

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I can understand why someone might think that but one is a vague PR statement to the public and the other is more specific and towards regulators. Whenever a statement is official and towards a regulator, you don’t want to play semantics. Microsoft has worked 20 years to restore its rep with the government and I believe they’ll be direct and clear with their intentions. End of the day, I don’t think CoD on PlayStation would even hold up the deal so I believe it’s sort of like a misdirection of a concession they’re making here honestly.

Consoles are stagnant…and eventually a shrinking industry in the context of gaming. It’s not the type of thing that regulators are focused on. They’re focused on new industries, services, tech, and cloud.

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While everyone feel free to place your bets (respectfully) where you think exclusivity will line up, end of the day, we won’t get long-term confirmation until the deal is done and maybe not even until after the obligations are up in 2024.

What I think is interesting is whether CoD being multiplat is actually more beneficial to Microsoft’s long term goals than it being exclusive. I believe because CoD is a platform, it operates differently than all other Zenimax IPs that won’t come to PlayStation consoles.

I believe:

  1. We over-rate how vital winning console sales are to the long term Xbox vision
  2. Under-rate how much impact subscriptions are projected to have on the industry
  3. Under-estimate the value of CoD for marketing
  4. Under-estimate the value of gaming everywhere

I’m not saying console sales aren’t important. If that were the case, they wouldn’t lose more on the Series S than X. I just don’t think they’ll trade CoD being this irreplaceable juggernaut for a few more plastic sales. CoD’s value in the ecosystem wars only grows as core gaming is more accessible through streaming or on other local devices. A deal like ABK is made looking 10+ years out. No need to create a vacuum on the PlayStation that Sony could potentially fill with one of their upcoming GaaS games. Microsoft can make CoD stronger and in the meantime, it blocks others from taking its place while acting as a Trojan Horse for friends across ecosystems. Some gamers will switch as they move generations due to the Game Pass factor and with things like Discord bridging friends across communities, wouldn’t Microsoft love their CoD Xbox base advocating to other gamers across ecosystems the value of Game Pass?

Microsoft could easily bundle virtual bucks monthly as a return for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers along with mainline CoD being free and suddenly it becomes a no-brainer value to that customer base.

Of course, these are just my opinions. Could be wrong. Look forward to learning more about this soon. :slight_smile:

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This is what I always try to express but you do a better job of it haha

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Reading that from Sony just made me roll my eyes sooooo hard lol….

They just can’t admit that they got seriously and I mean seriously outflanked on this one…Gamepass and cloud based stuff ARE the future, MS was and is now way ahead of the curve of seeing this and basing their long term strategy around it, and Sony is salty because they are now ions away in both departments.

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They said current games will remain multiplatform and some new ones will be exclusive, if MSFT lied you’d be hearing a lot more about it.

I find it hilarious that Sony is saying that no one can build a rival to COD and how crazy hard and expensive is.

Bruh… you just bought a rival to COD with Destiny :skull:

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Both what you quoted from Phil and the CFO are related to existing content already on PSX. That stuff was never taken away from those ecosystems. PS5 support was not pulled for any of those games you listed. You can still play those games on PSX and they still are maintained/updated on PSX.

Wrt future titles, Phil said “some will be exclusive” and naturally that means some won’t be. And Deathloop and Ghostwire aren’t exclusive and were ‘future titles’ when he made the statement. And DOOM’s DLC wasn’t exclusive either. Nor was the DLC for TES:O, nor was Skyrim’s Anniversary Edition. Nor was Quake’s remaster. So I’m not sure how you conclude that Phil was lying when he said some stuff would be multiplat given all this stuff I’m citing was/is indeed multiplat.

Wrt the language about ABK, it explicitly is about new stuff, not stuff existing already on those storefronts as is. For instance, they have mentioned Nintendo platforms multiple times for future CoD games and reiterated taht they are happy to release new CoD games on PSX into the future (even beyond the existing deals in place for it). CoD was likened to Minecraft by Brad Smith himself when asked about if CoD had a future on PSX. Minecraft’s new games post-purchase aren’t Xbox-only.

These are not ‘identical at every level’. The way the deals came together were entirely different, their purpose for MS was entirely different, the implications on the industry are entirely different, and their scale is literally an order of magnitude different. And there is no indication other highly popular ABK games won’t be multiplatform. Tiny Sommerford only said some games will be exclusive, not some of their biggest IP. This is what the article says about her comment:

“GM for programming and events Tina Summerford did make clear that some games will become Xbox exclusives, presumably brand-new projects in development at Activision Blizzard.”

That is super far away from what you are suggesting she said. Here is what Booty says in that article too, which you somehow totally ignored:

“Ultimately what our goal is, is to make gaming more accessible to players and more accessible to creators. If we acquire a game that comes with a big community across a number of platforms, the last thing we want to do is take something away,” Booty said. “If anything, we feel that it’s our job to be caretakers, to be shepherds, to continue to build and nurture that community, not to cut it up into pieces and try to take some of it away.”

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These circles… There is never a end to this :grimacing:

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Hey man I TRIED to hijack the thread to be about my Silent Hills conspiracy theory but nobody bit. /sniff

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Sony have no shame. They should see the anxiety they cause for Xbox players thinking about what they could money hat next. This forum should be submitted to the FTC as evidence :phil_lmao:

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