That's not a good strategy, but it was their strategy. Fri 24th Mar The only issue with CoD is largely one generated by Sony, that claims it's "too big" to be allowed to be platform exclusive, largely because an outsize part of their revenue and strategy depended on it.I think it was basically the Genesis era that we first saw paid-for third party exclusives, first one I can think of are the Mega Man Willy Wars, that didn't make it to the US at the time since it was locked behind Sega's Japan exclusive subscription service (Game Pass before Game Pass!!!).Ĭorrection, Willy Wars was actually 1994, so the first paid for third party exclusive i can think of ends up being Street Fighter II on the SNES, 1992. They simply used their market position to tell publishers "if you want your game on our console, you must sign this contract that blocks you from making games for the competition (Sega)." I am having a hard time finding the exact legal challenges they faced, most search results are prioritizing Atari vs Nintendo and hearings between Sega and Nintendo over violence in video games, but there was a change, not sure if court mandated or law, that made the contracts invalid, opening up for publishers to make games for competing consoles. On that Nintendo note: Nintendo didn't "pay" for third party exclusives either. Edit: Often these were not even exclusive, often enough they simply were the only ones licensing the games, but other times Coleco and even NES (there was an overlap with the 2600) would also get versions. Third party games were not exactly licensed, but Atari had no way to stop them, unlike Nintendo later, as you explained. All these games were made by Atari themselves, as far as Atari cared back then, they were the only ones that made Atari games. They paid for the license to make their own version of these third party arcade exclusives. Fri 24th Mar Atari didn't exactly pay for third party exclusives."Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action."Īlthough this might sound like the CMA is fully in favour of the acquisition, it's pointed out further down the press release that today's provisional findings have no relation to the CMA's ongoing concerns about the cloud gaming market, so there's still plenty to be settled before the regulator reaches its final verdict by late April. Here's a bit of what the CMA had to say in its latest press release: Xbox's acquisition of Activision Blizzard looks to almost be complete in the UK, as the Competition and Markets Authority has today narrowed its "scope of concerns" relating to the deal, specifically in regards to the "lessening of competition".īasically, the CMA no longer thinks that the deal poses any threat to the console market, meaning Sony's concerns about Call of Duty are now falling on deaf ears.
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