Microsoft President Compared Sony to Blockbuster

The Microsoft acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King has received some pushback from various places, from concerned gamers worried that this will mean too much consolidation in the video games industry to regulatory concerns from the FTC, but the biggest opponent of this acquisition has been Sony. This has been criticized by Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith as being like Blockbuster’s response to Netflix.

 

Brad Smith stated these provocative thoughts in a recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. He called Sony the “loudest objector” to the acquisition, mostly thanks to Sony’s concerns that Microsoft will pull Call of Duty from the PlayStation console if the acquisition does go through, but Smith further claims: “Think about how much better it is to stream a movie from your couch than drive to Blockbuster. We want to bring the same sort of innovation to the videogame industry." How this acquisition will produce innovation is not explained though.

However, the piece does continue the present Microsoft strategy of claiming that Xbox is actually in the weaker position rather than its competitors because Microsoft is “in third place in console gaming” after Sony and Nintendo’s dominance, and that the Xbox Game Pass simply doesn’t have enough games to lure people to its subscription service. All of this apparently ignores the numerous acquisitions intended to create that exact situation that Microsoft claims it does not yet have.

He defended the acquisition, claimed it would be good for gaming as a whole, and that the recent possibility of the FTC moving to block the acquisition is unnecessary as this acquisition, according to him, does not pose any antitrust issues.

Sony will likely continue to oppose this acquisition regardless of what Microsoft executives have to say, and we will have to see whether the merger is allowed to go through in the coming months.
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed