When we asked whether he expects Microsoft to make Activision Blizzard Games exclusives to its own platforms (PC, Xbox, and cloud), Severin replied by stating that wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense, while a softer approach might be in order. This does seem to resonate with what we’ve heard so far from rumors and official sources, which is that at least some of the games won’t become exclusives. Even so, this is certainly going to be a hit for Microsoft’s primary competitors in the current gaming space, Sony and Nintendo. How will they react? According to Severin, Sony would do well to respond in kind, even if that might prove exceedingly difficult to pull off. Sony has indeed been trying to acquire more studios, but its acquisitions have been of a far smaller scale than Microsoft’s. While the latter has gobbled up the entirety of Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax for $8.1 billion, securing eight development studios and countless big IPs in the process, Sony’s biggest acquisition to date is Insomniac Games for around $230 million. More recently, Sony announced deals for smaller developers like Housemarque, Firesprite, Bluepoint Games, Nixxes Software, and Valkyrie Entertainment.
