Microsoft and Sony have been at loggerheads for about a year and a half due to the intentions of the former to buy Activision-Blizzard King, which would be by far the most expensive operation in the entire history of the video game market. Let’s remember that when barely a few weeks have passed since the beginning of 2022, acquisitions worth almost $ 70,000 million were announced by Redmond and ABK, and that from the first moment Sony began to manifest and resort to all possible measures that will try to avoid surgery.

A year and a half later, everything is on holdafter a large number of regulators supported the operation, but also with the rejection of the British CMA and with the American FTC in a position that appears to be quite critical until its final opinion. If the US federal body eventually gives the green light, the operation is most likely complete, but if it vetoes it on its national territory, it will most likely mean the end of said plans, in addition to sources of possible appeals and their judicial path.

Activision-Blizzard King’s role in PlayStation exclusives policy is undoubtedly at the epicenter of this hurricane.Although Sony tried to steer the discussion into other areas such as cloud gaming or subscription services. And it is that, for better or for worse, as it depends on the opinion of each of them, exclusive games are a key element in the sales policy of Microsoft and Sony consoles.

However, as we can read in the Wccfts, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella opposes the exclusive games model and is pushing for its elimination. These statements were made during hearings that are being held at the request of the FTC, which asked to temporarily block the purchase operation, as it seems that it is afraid that Microsoft and ABK would complete it before their final statement, because it could spoil the situation.

“If it were up to me, I’d like to get rid of console exclusivity” he said as part of his testimony. «But that’s not for me to define it as a low console market share player. There is a dominant player [Sony] defined competition in the market with exclusive products, so we live in such a world«. And I add: “I don’t like that world«.

Obviously, Nadel’s opinion is one thing, and Microsoft’s current policy in this regard is a completely different matter. Without further ado, let’s recall that the still recent Xbox Showcase 2023 revealed quite a few titles that will be exclusive to Xbox + PC. However, it is true that Even if Microsoft abandoned this model, it seems highly unlikely that Sony would follow suit..