A new player has entered the saga of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell (representing Washington State) looked at the matter today in a somewhat confusing way.
Spotted on ResetErathe senator made some comments during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the President’s 2023 “Trade Policy Agenda,” which we’re sure were incredibly engaging.
Senator Cantwell stated that she was “told that Sony controls 98% of the high-end game market, yet the Japanese government has allowed Sony to engage in blatant anti-competitive behavior with exclusive deals and payments to game publishers, creating games that are among the most popular in Japan.”
This figure is 98% Completely misleading, ignoring PC games, Nintendo games and mobile devicesinstead referring to the rate of Sony’s adoption of Microsoft in Sony’s home region of Japan, which should come as no surprise to anyone moderately familiar with the video game industry.
After accusing the Japanese Federal Trade Commission of failing to properly investigate this alleged “exclusionary behaviour,” US Trade Representative Catherine Tai asked, “What do you think we can do to address these issues and create a level playing field?”
like Luke Plunkett at Kotaku rightly points outIt’s absurd to suggest that Sony has some kind of monopoly in the Japanese game market because “Sony doesn’t even have a 98% market share for God of War, which is a series of haveSince Steam takes 30% of every PC sale. “
Obviously, we can’t expect elected officials to be experts at everything, but it sure is a clear shot through a somewhat critical moment in the ongoing takeover effort.
Is it appropriate that Microsoft (not to mention Nintendo) are The headquarters are located within the Senator Cantwell District in Redmond, WashingtonOr that Microsoft has He contributed more than half a million dollars to the Cantwell Company Over the past two decades? We’ll let you decide.
What do you think of Senator Cantwell’s comments? Let us know in the comments section below.
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