So Sony is the underdog now?

 How the turns table.

Sony and Microsoft are the like dual antagonists of the world's most repetitive anime, one that is rife with filler episodes that are stuffed with petty disputes where Twitter memes are slung back and forth, to huge arc enders where one side decids to try and get the other totally destitute and destitute. (Huh. Kind of like the relationship of the McGill Brothers from Better Call Saul now I think about it.) We've had a lot of the former kind of ribbing through the recent years as the big spokemen from both companies have gritted their teeth and sung the 'We're all in this together' song from High School Musical. It's always been a façade, though; the world sees straight through it. And in fact we got our chance to get a major ending arc moment when Sony tried their darnest to get official government regulators to block a huge potential Microsoft acquisition by taking a huge slice of 'hypocrite pie' and characterising themselves as scrappy underdogs under big-bad-Microsoft's shoes.

Now there is obviously no doubt about it; Microsoft does indeed have a simply scandalous amount of money at it's disposal and it's more than Sony could ever hope for in order to play about with. But you must also bear in mind that this is because Microsoft owns the single most popular Operating System in the world and is deeply entrenched in just about every part of the tech world whether directly or through subsidiaries. Sony has it's TVs. Pretty much any other angle they've tried to branch out in hasn't really amounted to much apart from their phone business. I still hear fond memories of the Ericsson here and there, for those that still use phones. Although not to distance them too far apart as competitors; Xbox is a minor division of the Microsoft whole, they are beholden to their corporate masters just as Playstation is; only if Xbox are really good boys and do all their homework on time, they get a slightly bigger allowance that Playstation would in the same scenario.

Such an allowance that could lay the ground for a 68 billion dollar buyout which still makes me wince to consider. Where does that money even actually go? I mean I know it goes to Activision; but where from there? I'm sure they roll some of that into the studio but come on- that isn't evet going to be anywhere near to a billion. Lawyers will take some vile cut of the pot, but then do the executives all go off and buy themselves private islands or something? Retire twenty years early? That's enough money to make every single employee, from the managers to the janitors, millionaires and still have too much left over to know what to do with. That's just simply too much money to throw around bloody game development studios. I can understand why Sony might look at those numbers and decide there's some shenanigans going on. (Someone did the money hack in real life.) But only if it gets through regulatory bodies of office.

We aren't privy to the regulatory hearings that such a process is subject to unless we get all litigious, but thankfully thanks to the international scale of Microsoft we were bound to run across a legislation with more lax rules on in-house conversations. Through this we've managed to get a ear into the process through which regulators reach out to other big players in the game's industry to get their perspectives on the deal taking place and to see if they believe it to be too monopolistic. For the Activision Blizzard deal in particular, one big point of contention was the ownership of the Call of Duty franchise and how that might effect the game's market if it were to become a sudden platform exclusive. Such is not the plans for the series currently, as COD is committed to at least three more releases on all applicable platforms but after that contract is up... well, Microsoft would be crazy not to put the screws on the kings of exclusivity deals, wouldn't they?

And so regulators turned to Ubisoft to ask them how they'd feel about an ecosystem ruled by COD exclusivity. "It's no biggy" Ubisoft said "We've got 'Rainbow Six: Siege'". "Ditto" said EA, "We've got Battlefield" and so on and so forth; all the way up until the conversation turned to Sony, want to guess what they said? "It's not fair" they said "Microsoft is cheating, COD is a game so huge it becomes a category of game unto itself, it cannot be realistically competed against. Whatsmore, Microsoft is trying to create an environment that no one can profitably stand up to them in." (For the sake of transparency I need to disclose that none of those were direct quotes but rather summations of points.) That's right, Sony believe that by taking COD from Microsoft they are going to irrevocably tilt the console wars in their favour because 'COD is a game that informs people's console choice'. Ain't that peachy? Imagine a video game company relaying and draconian exclusivity contracts to try and tilt the public's console choice? Well I never...

Of course that's exactly what Sony have been doing for years upon years! They've built and maintained a cadre of studios dedicated to creating the most polished single player games in the industry and then jealously maintains their exclusivity for years before giving them up to PC. They've also tried to use this monopoly on the cutting edge of the industry to try and push the retail price of video games up by another $10, all the while Microsoft is offering first party games day one access on Game Pass. That last bit is what's really getting under Sony's skin, because no matter how they cut it they're not willing to try and compete with that service and so are doing anything they can to sour that deal. Including, according to Microsoft themselves, locking devs in contract that prevents them from showing up on Game pass. The mind boggles at how ridiculous that is if there's any actually fire to that smoke. (Which isn't that hard to believe given this blocking attempt by Sony.)

Now it's very unlikely that Sony's words had any real effect, given that all of their peers seemed utterly unabashed with the buyout, it would be surprising if regulators took Sony's sole, clearly biased, condemnation as sacred. However this has unleashed something of the ill will between the companies which has been somewhat kept at bat until recently. Microsoft has already made a shot back across Sony's bow about those alleged contract lock-outs, and everything is looking like console wars 2.0 after years of 'will they won't they' about cross compatibility. (Another pro-consumer step which would be so easy to implement if not for Sony dragging their heels.) I'm not one to take sides in a war of corporate interests; but I will say that Sony is certainly looking more wrong out of the options available.

To be clear, Sony seem to be a bit up their own ass recently trying to paint themselves as a company on the brink when they are the leading console developers in the world right now. They have a very competent line of exclusives ahead of them and a huge headstart in popularity. There are no underdogs in a story like this, and maybe if Sony were a bit more honest with the way they formed their arguments I would have an easier time taking them seriously. As it stands they've got me rooting for Microsoft's deal to go through just for how bad faith this argument was, despite me not liking the overall market consolidation of developers in general considering we have a lot of evidence recently that the bigger the company becomes the worse their games end up being as everyone loses sight of what they've even making in the first place. Long story short: shut up, Sony.