[jhoelzel]

> “Even assuming that SIE had the ability and resources to develop a similarly successful franchise to Call of Duty, it would take many, many years and billions of dollars to create a challenger to Call of Duty – and the example of EA’s Battlefield shows that any such efforts would more than likely be unsuccessful."

Ouch that has to burn

[ethbr0]

Or, you know, you just fund people to jump ship: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respawn_Entertainment

The industry as a whole would be a lot better off if platform-studio vertical integration were banned, and strict financing-only co-ops set up as counterweights to EA/Activision accumulation.

[scarface74]

So no company that owns a platform should be able to release its own software? Should a platform owner be able to fund a third party studio to produce content? Should the courts force a game maker to support all platforms?

[ethbr0]

IMHO, no, yes, no.

The intent is to prohibit platforms from leveraging their greater capital reserves to purchase and permanently acquire (and platform-limit) those who make software, thereby decreasing competition between platforms and increasing profits.

There's never been an industry where this worked well for the consumer or society. See: ATT, IBM, Microsoft, Apple.

[scarface74]

Microsoft released Word and Excel on Macs before it was released on its own platforms and has been available on Macs for 40 years. PowerPoint started on the Mac. An Office 365 subscription works across Macs, Windows, iOS and Android.

Apple has never had anywhere near a monopoly on any platform. AT&T had a government mandated monopoly.

What major software company has Apple acquired aside from NeXT?

[ethbr0]

Microsoft has always had a love/hate obsession with monopolization. In the early days, they were famous for stating that strategically they wanted to be the platform people-who-were-not-MS made software money on, because that was how you became a dominant platform.

But of course that buckled at various times (first with proto-Office vs 1-2-3 & WordPerfect, then with the 90s dominance / Encarta-era smorgasbord of random MS software).

Excel was released on Mac because Microsoft wasn't confident in directly challenging 1-2-3 (on DOS) or early-Windows capabilities. And ultimately, it was exactly the fact that Microsoft owned the OS that allowed them to dominate in office apps and browsers in the 90s/00s.

Apple has had a monopoly on two device platforms (iPods, then iOS) and has abused both of them to its own profit.

ATT didn't have a government mandated monopoly: it had a series of every-few-decades consent decrees in which it bargained with the US government to avoid being nationalized. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment

Apple has acquired a substantial amount of software and developers. They just tend to do so at the nascent product stage (vs Google and MS acquiring later). See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisit...

[scarface74]

> Apple has had a monopoly on two device platforms (iPods, then iOS) and has abused both of them to its own profit.

iOS is not a monopoly with 50%. We had a real judge during the Epic vs Apple case say as much.

Encarta was also available for the Mac.

[nerdix]

Interesting thing is that Battlefield is a 20 year old franchise with about a dozen mainline releases, has sold tens of millions of copies, and has likely generated billions in revenue for EA. It's a wildly successful franchise by any metric other than "compared to Call of Duty".

[jhoelzel]

i was thinking exactly that! I have not played in years, but if I had to choose, i would always opt for battlefield over COD. Well at least since BF 1942.