Is this the case of how the mighty have fallen? Well, not necessarily.
According to yesterday's Bloomberg article, Sony shares had fallen 13% in Tokyo two days ago with the biggest loss since around October 2008, which occurred after Microsoft made a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
Despite the PlayStation garnering big success by publishing exclusive titles as in Insomniac's Spider-Man series, Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, Guerrilla’s Horizon Zero Dawn, and Sucker Punch’s Ghosts of Tsushima Xbox has instead opted down its subscription service, Game Pass, to bring additional players into the fold.
While many gamers including PlayStation loyalists are upset over what may be a potential separation for PlayStation systems along with concerns about monopolistic practices, nothing is cemented in stone unless the deal officially goes through in the Summer of this year, presuming August. Anything can happen between now and then. And in other Microsoft slash Sony news, the PlayStation spokesperson mentioned how he hopes that Microsoft will abide by Activision's multiplatform contractual obligation.
Phil Spencer responded by saying that he had good calls with the heads of Sony and their intent is to honor all "existing" agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard and their desire to keep high profile games such as Call of Duty on PlayStation.
This sounds a bit vague, as Microsoft will honor the contractual agreement with Sony either until it expires post-merger or, free to play COD games like Warzone will make their way to the PlayStation consoles, and not the campaign mode nor the basic multiplayer playlist which includes the Zombies mode. As of this writing, we don't know which Activision Blizzard games that are exclusive to Xbox consoles or what would be still available for the PlayStation fanbase. However, if there’s any hint from the Xbox exclusive release as in Bethesda’s Starfield, future Activision games possibly including Call of Duty may be an Xbox first-party exclusive.
Now here's the shits n giggles part, previously, Sony has been buying up other game developers like Bluepoint, Guerilla Games, Sucker Punch and even made exclusivity deals with FROM Software (Bloodborne) Square Enix (Final Fantasy) and Capcom (Street Fighter V) not to mention those timed DLCs from Activision's Call of Duty, so now they are coming off as hypocrites with these "expectations " from Microsoft.
So now it’s time that Microsoft gets to call the shots for a change.
Don't hate the player Sony, hate the game.😉