While Sony and Microsoft continue to fight over the latter proposed the $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzardmore and more people – relatively powerful and influential people – are drawn into the debate.
One such person is Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell (Washington State Representative), who earlier today raised the specter of Sony’s monopoly in the “high-end gaming market,” going so far as to urge US trade officials to discuss the issue with Japan as part of ongoing digital trade negotiations.
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing on “The President’s 2023 Trade Policy Agenda,” Cantwell said — among a host of other international trade talks — “I’ve been told that Sony already controls a 98% monopoly of the high-end gaming market The Japanese government has allowed Sony to engage in apparently anti-competitive behavior through exclusive deals and payments to game publishers, and to establish games that are among the most popular in Japan.”
I’ll pretend she’s talking final fantasy There.
Blaming Japan’s Federal Trade Commission for failing to investigate this “exclusionary behavior,” she then asks US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, “What do you think we can do to address these issues and create a level playing field?”
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In response, Tai says that there are ongoing talks between the US and Japanese governments on the digital economy: “This is new to me, but let me take that back and I look forward to moving forward with you and your team on this.” “.
Aside from Cantwell turning this from a video game industry thing into a thing of international trade and diplomatic relations, it’s wild to see Cantwell casually take up this stuff. We all know politicians can’t be experts on everything they ever talk about, that’s part of the job (and that’s why they have consultants and lobbyists), but anyone with even a cursory understanding of the video game market knows this is a really bizarre statement.
She refers to the Japanese market with her statistic “98% of the high-end gaming market”. very Carefully selected (by the US FTC last year) to exclude the PC, Nintendo and mobile games, which in this case pits the supposedly monopolistic PlayStation against the underdog Xbox (which is true in Japan, a market that Microsoft has freely and fairly failed in for over 20 years). Which of course explains why the Japanese government never bothered as they would realize the video game market is bigger and more complicated than pitting two consoles against each other like it was still 1992.
Globally, Sony doesn’t even have a 98% share God of War market, a series you own, as Steam gets 30% of every sale on PC. Everyone from Epic to Microsoft (both American companies) are handing out “exclusive offers and payments to game publishers.” the whole time. And if she wants to talk about monopolies, the latest Steam stats for PC show that 96% of the platform’s install base uses Windows.
It’s very strange that with so many actual and credible ways she could criticize Sony’s rejection of the deal, she’s settled on some completely inaccurate statistics and a direct attack on the Japanese government. Ah great! Let’s end this blog and leave her at that, taking note of this as her political career progresses Cantwell’s largest single donor of campaign finance was Microsoft Employees .