Things are really heating up at Sony about Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.This week, we saw Sony accuse Microsoft of ruining PlayStation games by patching bugs in Call of Duty, PlayStation boss Jim Ryanexplain: “I don’t want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger”.
Renowned video game analyst Michael Pachter has spoken on this topic many times, most recentlyexpressHe is “98% sure” the deal will go through. Now, he’s been very vocal about how he thinks this will affect Sony.
in visitDestin’s podcastAt the time, Pachter was asked if Sony was telling the truth that this deal would negatively impact their ability to make first-party games like God of War: Ragnarök, to which he replied that it would“serious”hurt them:
“This deal is going to hurt Sony badly. It’s not going to hurt consumers at all. So yeah. That’s what Microsoft’s proving is that $15 a month for content is better than $500 upfront, $70 for content, and $5 a month for multiplayer.” trade.
So Sony either adapts or gets crushed. So what’s going to happen with that Game Pass… I think the console guys like Sony are going to continue to be ridiculously stupid and will continue to hand the edge over to Microsoft to allow them to grow.
I admire Microsoft because they saw this happening and are taking advantage of it. Remember, at the end of the day, Microsoft doesn’t care about profit per game, per consumer. They care about growing Game Pass from 25 million subscribers to 225 million.
Do you agree with Pachter that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard threatens the entire PlayStation business model?