These are days full of emotions for those who follow the video game market. On the one hand we have the CM extension English blocking the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft and on the other we find Sony which, with Playstationachieves a record quarter of console sales and exceeds 500 million home consoles (not portable, considering portables had already arrived in 2018).
Not that the two facts are connected, of course, but considering that the CMA aims to block any operation that could limit competition in the English market, it makes you smile to see that Sony is the one who can rejoice in this clash, despite being above Microsoft in the console market. Xbox, while demonstrating positive results in terms of services, has instead suffered a huge drop in hardware sales.
Phil Spencer’s strategy has long been based on not having to rely entirely on consoles, given that Game Pass arrives on PC, mobile and even televisions, but it is undeniable that seeing an inflection in sales of current generation consoles in one of the first periods of great availability of stocks does not bode well. After all, fewer consoles undeniably mean fewer new users signing up for Game Pass and fewer direct sales through the Xbox Store, which remains the most lucrative source in this industry (not that that means Game Pass isn’t lucrative, but…).
We repeat, however, the blockade of the CMA and the overwhelming power of Sony Playstation they are not related, but in a sense they are. The CMA itself confirmed that the acquisition would not make it impossible for PlayStation to compete with Xbox. We can say that it would have made his life more difficult, but it would not have destroyed the Japanese company. On the other hand, the lack of acquisition has the opposite effect: it makes it even more difficult for Xbox to compete with PlayStation. Having access to Call of Duty through Game Pass would be a great reason to buy Xbox and overturn Redmond’s sales reports.
However, the acquisition was blocked for completely different reasons, to prevent the cloud was dominated by Microsoft, an absolutely credible reality. Sure, for the moment the cloud doesn’t really seem like a slice of the fundamental gaming sector, but small or large, a monopoly is a monopoly.
Except that Sony doesn’t seem particularly interested in pushing on at the moment cloud, perhaps also because other big names in the industry aren’t achieving incredible results or, like Google, have simply failed. The blocking of the CMA therefore buys time for the number one company… are we sure that this will be at the service of innovation and consumers? Or will it simply slow down the arrival of a true gaming cloud market given that there is no big name to push and force others to catch up?
Ah, in all this speech we should also have taken into consideration Nintendowhich is the real number one in terms of hardware in recent years, but given that the CMA does not seem to consider Nintendo (which only makes games for children and family, they say, as if this puts it in an alternative dimension where it does not compete with Sony and Microsoft), why should we do it too?
Let’s talk about it is a daily opinion column that offers a starting point for discussion around the news of the day, a small editorial written by a member of the editorial staff but which is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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