Microsoft has alleged that Sony might be paying game developers to decline the offer of their games being added to the Xbox Game Pass.
As Microsoft’s deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is almost complete, they have the challenge to convince worldwide governments that Xbox taking over big titles is not an example of antitrust behaviour.
Documents sent to relevant governing bodies from Microsoft to facilitate the acquisition are rather intriguing.
The most recent example is Microsoft’s controversial opinion on the current state of the industry in their submission to the Brazilian Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE). The document claims that Sony is blocking their titles from being launched on Xbox’s Game Pass by paying off developers.
You may think their words could’ve been misinterpreted but no, they didn’t beat around the bush stating, “Sony pays for ‘blocking rights’ to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass,”.
They also stated that Activision Blizzard games aren’t ‘must-have titles’ which was spurred on by Sony’s claims that Call of Duty, is an unrivalled blockbusting game that shouldn’t be owned by a console manufacturer. It’s worth noting that Microsoft has explained that it would make no sense to only release COD on Xbox and that they won’t be leaving PlayStation fans out.
It’s not hard to see where Sony is coming from now that Xbox control a plethora of well/fairly well-established IPs. The main concern being they will slowly start to phase out games supporting PlayStation which will certainly not sit well!
Do you think Xbox will do this?
In the meantime, check out the HYPD Stream Team on Facebook and HYPDLive on our Twitch channel streaming games daily.
While you’re here take a look through the rest of the latest gaming news!
