In the midst of an ongoing spat over Activision Blizzard’s impending purchase, Microsoft has dismissed Sony’s stance on PS Plus day-one games, arguing that the company will actually benefit from launching its first-party games on the revamped service. For the uninitiated, Sony and Microsoft are going back-and-forth over the Activision Blizzard deal as regulators around the world consider the acquisition’s potential impact. As part of the process, Sony has expressed its concerns about the Game Pass model whereas Microsoft has accused Sony of “blocking” games from landing on its subscription service.
What Microsoft has to say about PS Plus day-one games
As spotted by folks over at Kotaku, part of the document released by Brazilian authorities that’s been making rounds reads:
Sony could be able to leverage the high quality of their first-party games even more by making them available on PlayStation Plus at launch day. Such a strategy might be able to quickly speed up the growth of the service’s user base as a response to the competitive pressure of Game Pass (or any other service) and [the strategy] is not adopted by Sony, even when it comes to the new and updated PlayStation Plus. Such a move by Sony could make PlayStation Plus even more attractive in order to be able to rival eventual strategies by competing game publishers – to the benefit of gamers.
Sony has previously said that it doesn’t make financial sense to release first-party AAA games on PS Plus considering the costs associated with making games. The company, which evidently doesn’t have the kind of cash flow Microsoft does, is of the view that making a loss on blockbuster games would ultimately diminish their quality because studios won’t rake in enough money to further invest into future games and technological improvements.
In other news, a new job ad has fans hoping that Sony will finally release some special edition PS5 bundles, and some devs are reportedly so worried about God of War Ragnarok’s launch that they’ve moved their games out of the way.
