American Senators Continue to Target Sony Over PS5, PS4 Timed Exclusives | Push Square
More and more American senators are calling out Sony over its timed exclusivity deals, as the fallout from Xbox’s unfathomable $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues to rumble. North Dakota’s Kevin Cramer is the latest to throw his hat into the ring, sending a letter to CEO Kenichiro Yoshida expressing “concern about the company’s efforts to protect its gaming console business from competition”. Unsurprisingly, one of Cramer’s campaign contributors is Microsoft – as has been consistent with several other US politicians since this story started.
Effectively, Cramer wants PlayStation to hand over “unredacted copies” of the agreements it’s made with publishers like Square Enix over timed console exclusives like Forspoken and Final Fantasy 16. He’s also eager to see any contracts that bar publishers from releasing titles into subscriptions like Game Pass, as well as all of the documents and correspondence regarding its acquisition of Destiny maker Bungie.
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Cramer has justified his letter by pointing out that the game industry has a $20.6 million impact on North Dakota’s economy and is responsible for 221 jobs, with plenty of room for growth over the next ten years. He added that PlayStation’s lobbying of the Federal Trade Commission to try to prevent Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is an example of “anticompetitive conduct”.
Of course, none of this is likely to go anywhere and is all just part of a side-show in the trillion-dollar Microsoft’s unprecedented acquisition of one of the biggest publishers in the world.
A true PlayStation veteran, Sammy's covered the world of PS gaming for years, with an enormous Trophy count to
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