After an interesting first two days as the FTC tried to question Phil Spencer and other Microsoft representatives in court, the courtroom was calmer on the third day, with a pre-made video of PlayStation head Jim Ryan being the most interesting.
Ryan has confirmed that he is opposed to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.. He also confirmed that he told Activision’s Bobby Kotick that he was not interested in a new Call of Duty deal, but simply wanted to block the merger.
“I told him that I consider this acquisition anti-competitive and I hope that the regulators will do their job and block it.” Ryan confirmed in the video. On the other hand, he does not consider all of Microsoft’s actions to be anti-competitive. Even though he doesn’t like your exclusivity Starfield And Redfallbut in principle has nothing against and does not consider this action anti-competitive.
In other words, he does not consider game exclusivity to be anti-competitive. If that were the case, it would be self-defeating since Sony has its own exclusives too, plus it pays other publishers and developers for console exclusivity over time. Even with the recent games Bethesda: Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo. Spencer said in court last week that They bought Bethesda out of fear that Starfield wouldn’t be another such exclusive..
Source: bethesdaAMD is involved in optimizing the PC and Xbox versions of Starfield with FSR technology.
XBOX GAME PASS DECREASES THE VALUE OF GAMES
So what is Sony? It’s probably not even Call of Duty, because the management of the Japanese company is convinced that Call of Duty will continue to be released on PlayStation consoles. Moreover, Phil Spencer himself stated this in court under oath. What do we know for sure? Sony hates Xbox Game Pass, and according to Ryan, other publishers and developers don’t like it either.. Ryan made the announcement at a Fidelity investor meeting in February 2022, where he also talked about the importance of in-house content in fending off competition from Game Pass.
“One of the reasons we invest heavily in the development and publishing of our titles is because they give us an edge against pressure on a historical business model.” Ryan claims. According to him, publishers don’t like Game Pass because destructively affects the value of games. This is supposed to be a very common belief among publishers. That’s why Sony has never talked to Activision about the terms under which new versions of Call of Duty can be in a PlayStation Plus subscription. In addition, Kotick himself made it clear that the subscriptions weren’t right for Activision, even before Microsoft intended to purchase them.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been several instances of creators speaking negatively about Microsoft’s subscription. They can be summarized as follows Developers and publishers find Game Pass both awesome and intimidating. This can turn out positively, but also negatively. Sometimes a subscription game can cover a larger number of players. On the other hand, it contributes to content overload, and it can be difficult for players to fall in love with the game and enjoy it, because subscriptions provide a lot of choice.
“A lot of people try the game and don’t invest in it.” says Dino Patti, co-founder of Jumpship Studios (which released the sci-fi adventure game Somerville last year), noting that players who play the game on a subscription usually have to play the first 10 minutes. If these first minutes are not impressive, the player turns off the game and goes to try another one. However, he considers the Game Pass to be a great solution, but personally prefers the older model.
SONY BEWARE, THE FUTURE OF THE CLOUD, EXPECTATIONS FROM BUNGIA
If Microsoft releases some Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax/Bethesda games on the PlayStation, developers will have to go without dev kits for a while as they transition to the next generation. The development versions of the consoles will be sent by Sony to the studios owned by Microsoft, only after some time.. Sony did the same with Mojang. That’s why Minecraft Legends only came out on PS5 in the PS4 version.
Sony fears that the technologies used will not be misused by Microsoft. Even a confidentiality agreement between game developers is no guarantee for Sony in such a case.
Cloud computing is expected to become important to gaming between 2025 and 2023.. According to him, Ryan did not want to give a more precise date, because no one can accurately predict when cloud gaming will play a big role.
Source: Bohemia InteractiveMicrosoft considered buying Sega, 505 Games and major Czech studios
Ryan expects a lot from Bungie. He believes that Bungie will give Sony much more than Activision.. As we know, Sony bought the creators of Destiny for $3.6 billion because of their live experience. PlayStation intends to bet more on this segment in the future, although it will continue to create single-player story games.
Ryan does not see Nintendo as a direct competitor to the PlayStation. He also doesn’t think that Call of Duty will be a success on Nintendo, because the general Nintendo fans are completely different, they like Mario and Zelda, not Call of Duty.
Ryan also believes that interest in the Xbox Series X and S is high. Like the PlayStation 5, the new Xbox line also struggled with device shortages. According to the head of Sony, the Xbox brand is strong in the US. He cited shooting games as the main reason.
“Most of their games, a lot of their games have a shooting element. And many of their games feature online multiplayer elements, both genres that tend to be more popular in the United States than outside.” Jim Ryan explained.
Today will be the turn of statements by the heads of Microsoft and Activision.
Source :Indian TV
