Pretty much everything we have heard from both of these companies regarding this deal has been a lie. Companies lie, or at least obscure the truth all the time, but this has been fairly bold. Throughout
PlayStation head Jim Ryan’s emails, he tells other senior staff that there is no danger of
Call of Duty being taken off PlayStation and describes personal meetings with both Xbox chief Phil Spencer and Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick wherein he was convinced “we will see COD on PS for many years to come” - the core element of this case has been Sony’s public belief in the exact opposite.
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Other emails show an exchange between Spencer and Ryan wherein Spencer reiterated that all Activision Blizzard games that are current franchises will release on PlayStation with the same features and on the same date as Xbox, “through December 31, 2027”. This date is some way short of the ‘ten years post-acquisition’ offer that Spencer has made publicly, and it is the first mistruth (of not outright lie) from Spencer that we’ll get into today.
Ryan balks at this suggestion, and not only because of the length. He doesn’t believe it is fair for even new IP from Activision to ever be Xbox exclusive, and
despite claiming Game Pass is damaging for Xbox’s brand, feels the ‘same features’ promise is misleading if Xbox slap games on there for free while Sony charges. These claims are hypocritical at best, given that Sony has made exclusives the backbone of the industry, and has invested heavily in timed exclusives of ostensibly third-party games, whether they be long running series like Final Fantasy, or new IP like Deathloop. Call of Duty has also historically had special features only available on PlayStation, as have many other cross-platform releases. Hogwarts Legacy is amongst the most recent.
Jim Ryan says exclusives are bad for gamers and that he’s not worried about Call of Duty leaving PlayStation, all while
pushing a business model of exclusives and loudly complaining about Call of Duty leaving PlayStation. A major part of the reason Xbox is going down this road is to catch up to Sony’s market share, and despite what Spencer has previously said, Activision Blizzard wasn’t the only play the company made.
Back in November 2020, Bloomberg reported that Xbox was attempting to buy up various Japanese developers - a fact Phil Spencer outright denied four days later. However, as unsealed emails revealed yesterday, in between that story and the denial, Spencer asked Microsoft to acquire
Sega. At an unknown date around this time, Xbox also looked into buying Square Enix to help not only strengthen its reach in Asia, but to grow Xbox Game Pass on mobile.
Spencer’s denial was a pretty obvious lie, while Ryan has shared so many disparate opinions in emails to Spencer, emails to Sony, and public statements that it’s hard to know what he believes. What matters is you should think more critically than choosing a favourite console then deciding to agree with everything the green team says or everything the blue team says.
These emails reveal nothing new and everything new. I have said all along that I fundamentally believe an acquisition of this size is bad for gaming, but that Sony is the last company to criticise it. Ryan and Spencer say one thing and think another, but the truth of it is very simple - there is no good reason why Xbox should not buy Activision Blizzard, or any company, and it’s a failing on gaming’s part that we cannot provide one.
