What will be the end of this case?

At the beginning of this year, game lovers were shaken by a bombshell news. Microsoft was advancing its growth plans in the gaming space with acquisitions. The company, which bought Zenimax, to which Bethesda is affiliated, last year, this time bought Activision-Blizzard, one of the largest companies in the game world. When we think about the free economy, there was not the slightest wrong point. However, what happened after the announcement was bigger than Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.

Let me state at the outset that this is going to be a rather long article. I hope you can endure reading to the end and share your valuable ideas with us.

Do you think it all started with Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard?

I am neither a lawyer nor a representative of a firm. I can only interpret what’s going on with the player’s eye, and I’ll try to do that in this article. These are my thoughts to write. It may be completely wrong or incomplete, but there is a situation that is increasingly confused and as a journalist, I want to write my thoughts and what I see. Of course, there will be friends with very different perspectives than I do. However, at the end of the day, it is clear that these lawsuits have damaged our industry. Let’s get to the reasons…

Microsoft’s biggest problem has been its gross disregard for the gaming industry over the past decade. In this area, he could not find what he wanted in the XBox One series, as he could not only take out the console and feed it with proper content. It was also not possible for a device with an empty game library to succeed. If we were in the old years, maybe they could manage a whole generation with a few games. However, the world went into such a huge consumption frenzy that Microsoft had no answer to it. The future of the console was at stake, and it had to be prevented somehow.

They still needed to enlarge the library. The easiest and fastest way to do this was through purchases. Microsoft also decided to use this path. But first he had to put it in his holster. First of all, they should have revealed that the company’s reputation in the gaming space is not just about the XBox console. With the name XBox Live, they started to emphasize that they are both on PC and XBox. Actually, this was not a new service. It was a service that has existed since XBox 360, but its content was developed and put back on the agenda. Many of us, myself included, have started using XBox Live.

Then the second step was taken. In order for PC users to gain loyalty to the XBox platform, it has started to give away many gifts such as free games, which we gamers love the most, and to win love. All of this is a marketing strategy and I definitely support the company at this point.

While Microsoft was taking these steps, it was not taking any steps towards exclusive content, the point where Sony and Nintendo garnered the greatest respect and love. However, it is unthinkable that the company, whose most important feature is software, does such an amateurism. However, in my personal opinion, at this point, Microsoft embarked on a plan to rise to the top of its rivals like bawl and suddenly dominate the industry. After the purchase, he may have thought that the power in the attachment would be enough for him. However, if he had not stopped in this process and tried to feed his platform with special games, I think these lawsuits would not have lasted that long.

On the other hand, Sony part also made very important moves. First of all, it anticipated this situation and started to bring console special games to PC one by one. I think the reason behind this may be not to give Microsoft the opportunity to say, “Look, you’re making games for your own console,” rather than generating an income. Because Sony was the one who showed the most opposition to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. However, at this point, we have to go back and consider that the concept of “Console Exclusive” also emerged with Sony. Of course, there were Nintendo’s productions before. But I won’t dig into that point much, as Nintendo seems shy about this case for now.

I definitely have to say that Sony’s bringing console exclusive games to the PC has deeply affected the console’s fans. After all, the console market has turned to support the football team. For years, the conflict between Sony and Microsoft has also fueled this. In the end, console players were divided among themselves as “Xboç” and “PlayStation”. When the biggest weapon of PlayStation fans was taken away by the company, they saw themselves as cheated and wasted money. Considering all this, the fact that Sony is bringing its own special games to the PC shows me that it was a very strategic decision to support its own arguments in these cases.

When a figure of 68.7 billion dollars was agreed for the purchase, this news fell like a bombshell in the gaming world. With the brands in hand, Activision-Blizzard was changing hands with an incredibly big offer. The first question that pops into people’s minds is “Will Call of Duty come to other consoles?” had happened. Call of Duty was just the tip of the iceberg. The audience, which plays only one game throughout the year, is not too small, but still negligible. However, considering all the brands that Activision-Blizzard has and that they will not come to other console platforms, it is obvious that it will cause Sony to suffer a great loss, even if it does not cause it to be deleted from the game industry.

Although Microsoft told Sony that the Call of Duty games that will be released for ten years will be developed for the PlayStation console in order to reach the agreement, this is a very short date for the industry. Although the duration is long for human life, it is not so for companies. In today’s economy, plans are made for 10, 20 or even 50 years. For a company like Sony or Nintendo to stand up to this, it will have to put a lot more resources against it.

At this point, things seem to have gotten out of hand for both companies. Today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is suing Microsoft over its planned $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying the deal will “enable Microsoft to put pressure on competitors to Xbox game consoles and the rapidly growing subscription content and cloud gaming business.” “Microsoft has already demonstrated that it can and will hide content from game competitors,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Competition Bureau, explaining the cause of the lawsuit. “Today, we are trying to prevent Microsoft from taking control of a leading independent game studio and using it to undermine competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing game markets,” he adds.

In short, the bee hive is now screwed. We are waiting to see whether the bees that come out will sting the owner of the stick or their companions. However, there is an apparent truth that is the rift that these developments have opened in the sector. No matter how much Sony wants to regain the trust of its audience from now on, we always have a “I wonder?” There will be a question. The rift that will be opened by Microsoft if the purchase is not approved is much larger. Because he will have to make much larger investments to fill his library. Although we seem to have lost players in the short term, it may even be to our advantage in the coming years. The competition of both companies can increase the quality and result in the announcement of many new titles.

Of course, he may have tied it with a result a bit like Pollyanna, but the heart always wants this to happen. After all, as someone who is tired of Remake and Resmastered games, I sincerely hope that we, the players, will be the winners of this case.