The Federal Trade Commission’s request for an injunction stopping that acquisition heads toward opening arguments this week, the federal regulator cites one piece of what it calls “powerful evidence” that it can’t trust Microsoft’s assurances. In short, as the FTC puts it, “Microsoft’s actions following its 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax speak louder than Defendants’ words.”
Yeah, exclusives have been a part of the console business model since their inception, so it is odd that they’re just starting to look into this business practice now. Still, exclusives do need to die, so better late than never, I say.
The difference is buying a massive multi platform developer and taking their future production away from the other platform.
Microsoft not publishing Gears of War or Sony not publishing Uncharted on the other platform are adding choice, because those games would have probably never existed without their investment. Microsoft buying Bethesda is taking choice away, because Bethesda was already a big publisher already making games and already had the processes for multiple platforms. They’re not suddenly doing the hyper optimization Sony gets out of their funded platform exclusive developers, either. They’re using the engine they already had that’s already designed to support a bunch of platforms and just not supporting one for the sole purpose of that platform not having it.
Bear in mind that Bethesda/Zenimax weren’t in the best shape when MS brought them. They were increasingly focussing on GASS and love service titles after a string of critically loved but low selling titles like Prey. They were taking bags for Sony for times exclusivity on every title and were in talks to do so with Starfield too. We’ve just seen Bethesda be allowed a whole extra year on SF to polish under MS, where as if they were still independent we may have got a multi format but it would have been rushed out buggy and unfinished by Zenimax last year.
Exclusives are what built the console model we have today though. Nintendo with their still loved franchises like Mario, Metroid, Zelda, etc all began as exclusives to drive NES sales. Sega, Sony, Atari, etc, they’ve all had exclusives. People only seem to have taken an issue with it in the last decade or so.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that they’re drawing some kind of line on exclusives now. The issue is that Microsoft has pinky promised that if they buy Activision, that CoD at least (most likely other games as well) will NOT be Xbox exclusives. So that’s why Microsoft’s purchase of ZeniMax and then releasing a Xbox exclusive out of the deal shows that Microsoft’s pinky promise for Activision might not be as good as it seems.
Honestly, I hope the deal gets blocked. I am a slight Microsoft fan boy (and I really loved all of the ree’ing from PlayStation fan boys when it was first announced), but I really hate all of this buying and consolidation of companies, it really needs to stop. Let companies compete with each other.
Did they ever promise that ZeniMax games would not be exclusive? If so, then yeah, that’s pretty shitty.
Hear, hear!
I’m pretty sure they were super vague and shady with the language they were using when talking about that.