We continue with the progress of the lawsuit between Microsoft and the FTC for Activision Blizzard. Both companies publish interesting information that gives us a clear view of the line that Americans want to follow with their studies. Now it’s the turn of Fallout 76, if you remember, the game came to Playstation Now even as part of Xbox Game Studios, which, for example, did not happen with games like Minecraft.
Today we know that the decision on this issue It was taken by Phil Spencer himself, responding in the affirmative to an email to Tim Stuart, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, and others at the company. In this email, Sarah Bond was even copied.
“I don’t want any platform, including Sony, to be able to select us title by title”
In that email, which I leave translated below, Spencer clarified that from now on and with the exception of Fallout 76, they would eventually have to review the games they would take for other subscription services . He gives as an example Activision or Electronic Arts, which negotiate the whole catalog or nothing.
I agree with F76 on PSNow. We didn’t allow Minecraft to help you support PSNow because we see it as competition for XGP and there’s no need to support their financial situation with PSNow, which would only allow them to compete more effectively with Xbox Gamepass.
I don’t know why I feel differently about Fallout 76 being so open to conversation here. In my opinion, F76 is in an interesting place. Obviously, he had a rough start. The team remains focused on improving and finding a wider audience. It looks like we have to see how it hits 10 million monthly active users (MAUs) across all platforms or decide to move on, and if you think PSNow can help make it more relevant then I’m with you.
What I mean about sharing talks is that I want our collective ability to negotiate with platforms to come to fruition. When Activision Blizzard or EA look to Xbox for better economy on our platform, they don’t do it on a title-by-title basis. They come to us with their entire catalog and basically tell us that they won’t support Xbox if we don’t process their entire catalog. They don’t allow us to say “we’d like to support Call of Duty and Diablo and forget about Tony Hawk and Crash Bandicoot”, for example. So I don’t want any platform, including Sony, to be able to select us title by title.
We are a wallet and I want us to get better economics and support from other platforms based on our total wallet weight, which is now large. So I would like us to collaborate more with other platforms in how we engage with them.
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