The war between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo

December 14, 2020

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When I signed up for my annual prepaid service Sports Events Channels In January of this year, I never thought that my prediction of which channel to put in the background when preparing my work for the next day would be reduced to the following finalists: 1970 Horse races (by mere event and enthusiasm) World Leagues of International eSports, every day of the week, in any language, commentators, Even with the option to run a story box in subtitles and sign language. If this is not the premise and the acceptance of the masses, I do not know the definition of those two terms.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t matter. In fact, I learned to live and accept it without hiding it: I was a lawyer by day, and one Player At night. I do not feel alone, because according to the data Statistics By the end of August this year, I and 2.7 billion other casual or professional players; About 266 million in Latin America alone.

In those days my interest in black and white screens and “cartridge” operating systems was started by my mother, against all odds. My first memories of the world of video games were summers without schools, sitting in front of the box TV, connecting my super Nintendo with yellow, red and white cables, listening to my mom’s instructions, she never played a video game, she was more involved in the plumber story than I was with the mustache and red hat. Proof of that? Magazines he bought with clear instructions on how to finish the game 100 percent completely.

But what appears to be a profession of good times, leisure and some is, in fact, corporate jealousy, fights within the limits of what the world’s anti – monopoly authorities allow, and above all, billions of dollars in transactions (value in US dollars): my 2.7 billion colleagues Gamers I am eating.

In these times of imprisonment, the questionable need to do everything from the comfort of our homes and cell phones goes unnoticed by the ratings, revenues and profits that the big video game companies have brought to their investors during these months; Proof of this is E.A. ( Electronic Arts ) An increase of about 20% in the value of its shares or almost 45% in its value from January this year to date The role of Nintendo At the same time.

^{Statista / Image: There are 2.7 billion casual or professional gamers in the world, according to Depositphotos.com}

It is obvious, Washington Post It released after a study by them: video games, consoles, accessories and ” Add-ons “In 2019 sales of the same period rose to an equivalent of 35%.

As this news goes unnoticed, streaming entertainment companies, service companies that buy and sell products online, monopolize the front pages for their increases above the above percentages.

It is precisely this “dark side” and theft of the video game industry where my daytime career meets my nighttime entertainment; Each of these transactions, negotiations, acquisitions and, in general, Power-plays The three key players in the industry (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) are behind complex negotiations, extensive periods of due diligence, extensions, relaxation and many more.

I was talking about this with colleagues a long time ago: today we are in the middle of a battlefield where Microsoft and Sony are in competition to cover as much content as possible, exclusively and enviously to their respective consumers; Nintendo looks at it from a distance because its consumers and users are generally consumers and users of Microsoft or Sony, but never both. This phenomenon is known Player As slang “Console Wars” ; Sony and Microsoft have previously struggled to control only one video game that can be played on both consoles, thus forcing consumers who consider themselves loyal to the video game owner to switch consoles to continue playing their favorite games. . Consoles have new models every two or three years, and the average price of last generation consoles ranges from $ 400 to $ 500; Let’s take that number as opposed to the number of active consumers in the world, and be well aware of the quantities that these hardware sales represent.

The above evidence is the news that rocked the world of financial markets, intellectual property and law firms specializing in media a few days ago, and we gamers. Microsoft’s surprise acquisition of Genimax, the controller of video game developers’ studios, has been made public. Surprising thing: Genimax has 8 development studios, each studio has a comprehensive list of intellectual property and video game owners who have been in the heart of consumers for decades, and the price Microsoft has to pay for this total acquisition is 5 7.5 billion. US dollars.

Before reading the details and numbers of the acquisition, I was surprised when the authorities could not stop the transaction on matters such as preventing monopolies and unfair competition, citing the fact that the move did not meet the initial requirements of the investigation and justified it. Function No. Acquisition of a content development company by a company responsible for distributing content, rather than a link (horizontal connection / acquisition) between fellow competitors.

^{Microsoft and Sony / Image: Depositphotos.com Today we are in the middle of a battlefield.}

I hope this acquisition will be in the textbooks for Business Management, Lawyers, Accountants and Software Developers’ Professions, and the lessons I need to learn in similar books are obsolete: Disney Purchase Star Wars , Or the best example of mergers and acquisitions in the entertainment industry: in Time Warner and Fox News 1997.

It will be interesting to see how this functionality affects the “Console Wars” landscape, which offers a significant advantage over Microsoft’s rival Sony; It will be even more interesting to see how the world of video games moves from the third page to take the place of Amazon and Tesla in the first pages of Wall Street.

In the meantime, my suggestion is to be aware of this change in the entertainment world; All I do is lean back, relax and look forward to the next updates, drive my console and invite our friends to our favorite video game game.