In the takeover battle, Microsoft struck a blow at Sony , claiming the Japanese company paid “blocking rights” to prevent developers from adding their content to the subscription service Game Pass .
The information comes from a , as part of the review process of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for 68,700 million dollars.
“Microsoft’s ability to continue to expand Game Pass has been hampered by Sony’s desire to inhibit such growth. Sony pays for ‘block rights’ to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass and other competing subscription services.
According to the presentation, one of the most important elements in Sony’s strategy with PlayStation is to have exclusive titles within its platform, for which they consider “incoherent” the fact that the company is concerned about the future exclusivity of PlayStation content. Action for Xbox.
This reveals “the fear of an innovative business model that offers high-quality content at low costs to gamers, threatening a leadership that was forged from a device-centric, exclusivity-focused strategy over the years. ”.
It is worth mentioning that the body in charge of reviewing acquisitions in Brazil is usually transparent in its processes and last week it announced that it questioned various companies about the purchase of Activision and Sony’s response generated controversy.
And it is that the Japanese company highlighted its concern about the fact that the offer of content available on consoles, specifically Call of Duty , influence the purchase decision by consumers.
This situation would undermine PlayStation’s business, because to create a game of that magnitude, the company said, it would need an investment of “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs.” In addition, analysts point out that they would face a franchise that is very well positioned among the players.
Microsoft responds to Sony’s fear
The document also noted that Microsoft is aware of Sony’s concerns, however, calling them “unjustified” and noting that games developed by Activision Blizzard will continue to be available on rival consoles.
The company also argued that not distributing such popular games as Call Of Duty “simply would not be profitable”, because the exclusivity strategies imply specific costs, which would be added to the estimated lost sales after leaving the other platforms, something that was not they could compensate.
“Such a strategy would only be profitable if Activision Blizzard games could attract a large enough number of gamers to the Xbox ecosystem and if Microsoft could earn enough from game sales to offset losses from non-distribution of those titles in the Xbox. rival consoles,” they wrote in the document.
