In the fallout of yesterday’s Microsoft/Activision almost Billion Deal, Sony shares in the Tokyo stock market have dropped by 13 percent which relates to a billion loss in market value for the company, spotted by Bloomberg.
This is Sony’s largest market value drop since October 2008 which was during a time when the company had to recall 100,000 laptop batteries due to fire hazard issues. While Sony is going down, other Japanese publishers like Capcom, Konami, and Square Enix saw a rise in stock prices by more than five percent. The increase isn’t limited to Japanese publishers as French publisher, Ubisoft saw a huge stock price increase of 11 percent after stock markets closed yesterday.
Sony’s stock price fall hints that Activision Blizzard joining Xbox Game Studios will be a bigger threat to PlayStation than previously thought. If Call of Duty takes the exclusive path, PlayStation won’t be able to showcase the new entries in the popular shooter franchise on its platform, which is a paradigm shift as the brand previously had a timed exclusive deal with Activision for content to drop on its consoles first.
“Sony will have a monumental challenge on its hands to stand on its own in this war of attrition. With Call of Duty now most likely to be added exclusively to the Game Pass roster, the headwinds for Sony are only going to get tougher,” Asymmetric Advisors’, Amir Anvarzadeh said to Bloomberg.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is likely to be finalized sometime in 2023, so PlayStation might be getting one more non-Xbox Game Studios-led Call of Duty game this year. Afterward, it is up in the air, but Xbox head of gaming, Phil Spencer says “It’s not our intent to pull communities away from that platform, and we remained committed to that.”
A Bloomberg source that’s is “close to the situation” believes that Microsoft will allow certain titles from Activision to continue to prosper on platforms like PlayStation. Xbox has done this in the past with Minecraft which was on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms before Microsoft bought Mojang. Recently, Xbox Game Studios even released a new game in the series, Minecraft Dungeons from the developer for not just PC and Xbox but even its competitors. Microsoft’s approach is case by case, Starfield is one of those games that makes sense as it is the first game for the IP.
