The news has recently broke about European Union regulators supporting Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard for $69 billion which has many people in shock. The announcement about Microsoft’s plan to acquire Activision-Blizzard was first announced this past year in 2022. The main issue that people had with the news was its possibly violation of antitrust laws in relation to competition. However, it was revealed that the European Union believed that Microsoft’s purchase of Activision-Blizzard would not have significant impact on Sony’s ability to go head to head with them within the console wars. The truth is that when it comes the console wars Sony has almost always had the lead of Microsoft and that was especially true during the 2010’s decade when PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One. The PlayStation 4 was the best selling game console of the 2010’s reaching over 117 million units in worldwide sales with big titles like God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and more. A majority of Sony’s revenue in relation to the PlayStation 4 came mainly from first-party video games along with the console itself.
During the past decade it felt like Microsoft had to rely more on third-party games than Sony did which is probably one of the reasons why the Xbox One was not as successful as the PlayStation 4. If anything the European Union could argue that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard creates more balance in the gaming wars between PlayStation and Xbox consoles. One of the key takeaways from the EU’s decision regarding Activision-Blizzard was that “Microsoft would not be able to harm rival consoles and rival multi-game subscription services”. While Microsoft’s new deal could potentially be harmful to competitors in relation to cloud based gaming we are currently in a period where people still purchase consoles from manufactured by corporations like Sony and Nintendo. For the past few years there had been rumors about Microsoft moving away from making consoles and focusing more on cloud gaming since they cannot really compete with Sony’s PS4 or PS5 for that matter. Even though, Microsoft now officially owns Activision-Blizzard it was mentioned that ” The European Commission had required them to license popular games created by the video game developer to competing cloud game services” which is supposed to apply globally. Despite, Microsoft’s new deal with Activision-Blizzard its unlikely to have a significant effect on either Sony or Nintendo since both corporations rely more on first party games nowadays.
Gaming Hearts Collection 