![]() ![]() In a sense, Microsoft is simply fighting fire with fire, buying a big company with a proven portfolio of popular games in order to bolster the value proposition of the Xbox and Game Pass. The Golden Age of Multiplayer: How Online Gaming Conquered Video Games Why ‘The Last of Us’ Was Uniquely Suited to Lift the Video Game Adaptation Curse Sony, for its part, earned its advantage over Microsoft in terms of exclusives by negotiating terms with third-party developers, such as Square Enix and Kojima Productions, but also by outright acquiring developers, such as Naughty Dog, to produce games unique to the PlayStation, such as The Last of Us. Historically, PlayStation always beats Xbox in hardware sales, largely on the strength of its exclusive releases, while Microsoft decisively beats Sony’s PlayStation Plus in subscribers and revenue with its own monthly games subscription platform, Game Pass. ![]() What happened?įirst, some context: After lagging behind Sony and the PlayStation for nearly a decade, Microsoft needed a triumph in the console market. This latest acquisition would outvalue that transaction nearly tenfold, but suddenly, the deal seems to be falling apart. A year earlier, Microsoft bought the video game holding company ZeniMax Media, responsible for titles like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls Online, for $7.5 billion, a breathtaking price tag at the time. But more than that, the $69 billion agreement was framed as a significant disruption to the video game business and a massive bet on the future of the metaverse. The latter publishes Call of Duty, the world’s bestselling first-person shooter franchise, so the deal was seen as a great coup for Microsoft’s Xbox and a grave threat to Sony’s PlayStation-if Microsoft ever decided to make the game exclusive. It’s hard to overstate the industry-wide shock at the announcement 13 months ago that Microsoft would buy Activision Blizzard. ![]()
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