That being said, I think the industry might fight this one for sure. There is too much invested into Activistion-Blizzard globally to let this happen on excluding the Sony all together. This could be a shaky deal for MS, as this is the same way T-Mobile stole billions from AT&T after they were attempting a buyout, and then turned around and bough Sprint. This is going to be super interesting.
Sony and Nintendo need to quit laying around, Microsoft gave up on the console ware and started a Publisher/Developer war lol. I’m not a fan of buying these 3rd party publishers, but this is a BOSS MOVE and BME (Big Money Energy). COD is the biggest franchise love it or hate it, and Microsoft just took it and said “I’m the captain now”. If they make it exclusive to Xbox or timed exclusive, that’s around 10 million gamers instantly going out to buy an Xbox Series console at launch of the next COD whenever their current contracts are done.
Sony and Nintendo need to start buying up some of these Western publishers and start splitting up these JP studios afterwards since they have priority in JP. Square, Capcom, Namco-Bandai, Sega, Konami, Tecmo etc…. need to be looked at, and if they can buy up some of these mid-sized Western developers before Microsoft or worse TENCENT starts a western monopoly.
Crazy times….but exciting nonetheless until the monopoly happens.
