(Photo by Protocol)
In some colossal news in the video game industry, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for an incredible $68.7 billion in order to make Microsoft the third-largest game company in existence in terms of revenue. This comes after their blockbuster acquisition of Bethesda Softworks around a year ago. Microsoft now have power of some of the most iconic and commercially successful video game series in the world, including Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Fallout, and Call of Duty to name a few. Whether or not this means that all of these series are now exclusive to Microsoft and Xbox is still yet to be fully revealed, but it got me wondering about the state of the video game landscape right now with the fight for rights and exclusivity being more prevalent than ever before.
With this acquisition, Microsoft announced that Activision Blizzard games are now coming to their impressive Game Pass, whilst also announcing that existing Sony contracts will be honoured and that they won’t make Call of Duty an exclusive yet. With ‘yet’ being the key word here, meaning that one of gaming’s biggest commercial franchises could potentially be unavailable for a vast majority of gamers. Whilst this doesn’t particularly bother me (I am awful at Call of Duty), I can imagine the outrage of millions and millions of people as they will either have to stop playing a franchise altogether or have to shill out and jump across the video game battlelines to Xbox. Video game exclusives have been around since the dawn of time, with companies having to produce their best exclusive work to entice potential customers to buy their consoles and games over their competition. But the amount of money being splashed around in order to buy these rights and lock them away has never been higher.
Console exclusives make up some of my personal favourite games of all time, with myself being firmly on Sony’s side of the divide with the mesmerising range and quality of exclusive games that they provide. The Last of Us, Spiderman, God of War, Uncharted, Horizon Zero Dawn, I could go on for hours and hours about how these games alone are some of the most incredible stories with immersive and challenging gameplay. It would be so cool if everybody could play these masterpieces without them being locked behind your loyalty to a particular company. It makes you feel some sort of weird allegiance to the company as well, I am defending Sony over Microsoft to my friends as ‘we’ have the better exclusive games etc. These exclusives sometimes do head over to other systems, with one notable one right now being the 2018 God of War reboot being released on PC this year, four years after its initial release on the PS4. One of the first exclusives I remember playing was the original Halo on my Xbox when I got it for Christmas one year, telling my friends about this cool game with that big sticker on the top ‘Exclusively for Xbox’, meaning those who only had PlayStation or Nintendo couldn’t play it. However, this didn’t stop the future Dave from sticking exclusively to Xbox as I flirted around with Nintendo and PlayStation throughout my childhood, eventually deciding upon Sony for my next generation console purchase. The only thing that would possibly entice me to jump back towards Xbox would be their incredible Game Pass scheme, a brilliant way to get more people to buy online memberships by merging it with a massive selection of games both old and new available to download to console whenever your heart desires. A fantastic way to try games that you otherwise wouldn’t get around to playing without having to weigh up the individual cost of each game. This will be extremely prevalent as Microsoft try to make more waves in the PC gaming scene, with these Game Pass exclusives being available on Xbox and PC, both sets of gamers can play a vast array of incredible games for a fixed monthly price.
Now the question that comes to my mind immediately is, when does it all end? How far will these companies go to lock rights away from their competition and ultimately, from the players? How much more money will be thrown around following these two monumental deals? I would love all gamers to be able to play the greatest games available, without having to be forced to pick one side or another, but this will probably never happen, and I can’t blame these companies. I think in the next 5-10 years, a large majority of independent studios will have been purchased by one of the giants of the gaming world, ready to lock them into their expanding empires. That the prospect of being able to platform your game on every console will be taken away. With a lot of 2022 still to go, it will be interesting to see whether any more earth-shattering acquisitions will be announced and to see who and what will be affected in the grand scheme of the gaming world.
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