Eleven members of the United States Congress openly accused Sony of unfair competition in Japan with PlayStation, and started a petition to Joe Biden, the President of the United States, to inform him of the situation. From what I’ve been able to read, the matter is more serious than it appears, and I’ll explain why.

According to congressmen, Sony has spent decades adopting a an exclusivity strategy with important local developers that always leaves Xbox out. This means that PlayStation gets key games exclusively for the Japanese market, and that Microsoft’s console will never get the same amount of attention from those developers due to orders from Sony.

Documentation submitted by congressmen confirms that Sony managed to agglutinate 98% of the total market share in Japan, in the sector of high-end consoles, that is, within the models that we can consider expensive models (Xbox Series X and PS5, excluding other systems that are cheaper). This means that the PS5’s dominance in this market is absolute and that the competition is conspicuously absent.

This is a problem, and clearly there are clear indications of unfair competition, but the most serious is that according to the documentation presented by the congressmen, there is a completely passive and permissive attitude on the part of the Japanese governmentwhich does absolutely nothing when it sees the clear signs of unfair competition from Sony.

Both Republicans and Democrats have called for an investigation into the matter, though admittedly It’s strange that it’s coming to the fore right now, just as Activision Blizzard’s buying operation is at one of its most important moments. We don’t know how far this will go, but there is a formal request to escalate to the Japanese government to ask for clarification and identify “other obstacles” for US companies to enter the gaming market in Japan.

I don’t believe in coincidences, this is quite clear it’s a push in favor of Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, although it remains to be seen what effects it has. Personally, I repeat what I told you a few days ago, I believe that the Redmond giant will eventually come out of this, that the aforementioned purchase operation will be completed without problems, and that this complaint to the United States Congress will be forgotten when it happens. .

Update: While I was finishing writing the article, new information came out that is very important to mention, namely that the Fair Trade Commission of Japan has given the green light to Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. The only real hurdle left for the purchase to be completed right now is the FTC in the United States, although all indications are that Microsoft will have no problem winning the lawsuit.