Microsoft’s Activision acquisition should be allowed to pass

Sony’s complacency and hubris will be its downfall

I love Sony’s games, its console is a delight, and its leadership has been stoic. But just as gamers complained that Microsoft had gotten too cocky with their Xbox One reveal, Sony has continued to showcase its complacency as the top dog in the video game industry. Sony never believed that video game streaming would take off, or that subscriptions would be such a massive source of revenue and be worthwhile in an industry of $60-$70 products.

In both cases, Sony was wrong. Late to respond to the success of Game Pass, they just this year released a competitor to Microsoft’s juggernaut. They’ve also been accused of having paid studios to keep their games off Game Pass, which is itself an anti-competitive measure, but also a business practice more complicated than what it appears at face value. As Microsoft faces backlash from industry giants such as Sony in regards to their Game Pass success, they’ve attempted to make their own inroads to building a content infrastructure that can weather such storms.

Even if this deal goes through, Sony will continue to dominate in the console industry and sell millions of its own games on that console, but Microsoft is looking at a picture far bigger than just the console industry, they’re looking at the industry as a whole.

In conclusion

The idea that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard is anti-competitive is the false presumption that Microsoft is attempting to dominate a single facet of the industry. When Microsoft purchased Minecraft, it did everything but block that game from being published on every single device known to man. Call of Duty’s following is just as large and is unlikely to ever be shrunk down to merely a console exclusive.

There are other parts of Activision that are just as interesting as their intellectual property, and that’s their relationships with professional gaming as well as their cloud technology and gaming tech which can put Microsoft on a different level.

The gaming industry is consolidating, the FTC sees the acquisition as a threat to independent studios and market leaders such as Sony. I get it, I really do. It appears as a case of the rich getting richer, and Microsoft just buying its way to the top, and it’s something both the FTC and this current presidential administration have little intention of allowing to happen. But as streaming subscriptions grow, and games continue to get more expensive, the complaint of one company that itself has raised prices of both games and its own consoles should not be enough to block one company from attempting to steady itself in a market that has continued to be full of surprises.