The Federal Trade Commission’s request for an injunction stopping that acquisition heads toward opening arguments this week, the federal regulator cites one piece of what it calls “powerful evidence” that it can’t trust Microsoft’s assurances. In short, as the FTC puts it, “Microsoft’s actions following its 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax speak louder than Defendants’ words.”
Yeah, exclusives have been a part of the console business model since their inception, so it is odd that they’re just starting to look into this business practice now. Still, exclusives do need to die, so better late than never, I say.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that they’re drawing some kind of line on exclusives now. The issue is that Microsoft has pinky promised that if they buy Activision, that CoD at least (most likely other games as well) will NOT be Xbox exclusives. So that’s why Microsoft’s purchase of ZeniMax and then releasing a Xbox exclusive out of the deal shows that Microsoft’s pinky promise for Activision might not be as good as it seems.
Honestly, I hope the deal gets blocked. I am a slight Microsoft fan boy (and I really loved all of the ree’ing from PlayStation fan boys when it was first announced), but I really hate all of this buying and consolidation of companies, it really needs to stop. Let companies compete with each other.
Did they ever promise that ZeniMax games would not be exclusive? If so, then yeah, that’s pretty shitty.
Hear, hear!
I’m pretty sure they were super vague and shady with the language they were using when talking about that.