Microsoft has changed the rules of the game and, if it wanted, it could have changed them even more.
alien vs. Predator was an infamous movie on so many levels that it makes me angry just mentioning it, but he had a fabulous catchphrase: “Whoever wins… we lose.” Sony’s situation with Microsoft and Activision is a bit out there now. Microsoft has done the obvious, which is to perpetuate the countless millions of dollars involved in launching Call of Duty on PlayStation land, but who could have blamed Microsoft for giving the biggest blow in the history of the video game and staying for the times of the times the Call of Duty franchise? Obviously it’s not as simple as throwing bills into a piggy bank and dropping a bombshell in the form of a Phil tweet; there are signed contracts, agreements to fulfill and millionaire clauses to pay when you don’t comply But of course, what is “millionaire” when you have spent 70,000 million?
Did you know that the best-selling game in the history of the long-awaited PSVita is from Microsoft?Why does Sony “lose” with cross-platform Call of Duty? Simple: the millionaire sales of the Bobby Kotick company saga (who, luckily, has two newscasts left) they fill the microsoft piggy and that helps to thrive with an annual injection of millions and millions of dollars. Something that, in fact, was already happening long before the launch of the dice of the particular Monopoly that Microsoft has been playing for a couple of years: I’ll tell you a perverse fact, did you know that the best-selling game in the history of the long-awaited PSVita is from Microsoft? Just over 3 million Minecraft sold on PS Vita… Do you know how many million units Minecraft has sold on PS4? Do I need to tell you how much money PlayStation game sales translate into Xbox coffers?
What has surprised me most of all the media shenanigans of recent days is the unreleased submissive display of PlayStation in public. That is precisely the one that gives me the clue to something that has been evident for a long time: it is not that everything is going to change; is that everything is changing now. Redmond’s door-knocking submission sample to find out what’s up with Call of Duty multiplatform doesn’t match Sony’s 18 million views tutorial between Yoshida and Boyes sharing a physical drive in full devour of the Xbox corpse One at E3 2013. Remember when Bethesda came to the fore and everyone was wondering what move would sony make? Well, now she is forced to make a move, because everything is changing.
Now Sony is forced to make a move, because everything is changingAnd, in fact, it is incredible that the general public didn’t realize it before. History shows us that the way of exploiting and distributing entertainment in general, regardless of its format or exhibition, how could it be different with the video game? Cinema has changed forever, reading has changed forever, sport is changing forever and the video game is doing it too. Microsoft has been changing the format and the way in which players enjoy their video games for years, so it has literally years ahead of PlayStation. Will it be possible to sustain the traditional model of buying and selling video game software based on the titles that the Japanese have announced and to announce, or will it be necessary to use something more than seductive names?
Because let’s be realistic: Microsoft has even bought the prompter and already had impressive studios in its ranks, but what is really scary is that the purchasing muscle and its teams has not been shown yet. We know that there are Perfect Dark, Fable, Forza, Avowed and The Elder Scrolls 6, but the playable samples of titles announced years ago is testimonial or null. Is it bad news? In part yes, but do not doubt that a tsunami of samples of play and muscular exhibition of the five mentioned and the gazillions that are still unannounced and simmering in the furnace of fantasy that is Microsoft Game Studios today. It’s impossible to screw up: Great times are ahead for Xbox users.
Of all the dance of tickets, exclusives and services I only have one thing clear: Nintendo is brought to the heave. What is happening in Kyoto? There are voices that ask Sony for a move, but also others that ask for it in Nintendo while, probably, Shuntaro Furukawa hasn’t even heard about Activision and Microsoft. Nintendo is paradoxical: the industry mutates, changes and evolves and nothing ever matters there because Nintendo is Nintendo and will always be Nintendo, is the only thing that will never change; everything else yes. Because if someone still had any doubt left, they can now dispel it: the video game has changed. It also sounded Chinese to you to pay for a digital game and look at you now. The rules have changed, for better or for worse, at the stroke of a checkbook, and the industry will change with or without you.
More about: Call of Duty, Activision Blizzard, PlayStation and Opinion.