Recently Microsoft purchased Activision/Blizzard. Now, no matter your thoughts on either company you can’t deny that this will have large ramifications throughout the entirety of the Video Gaming community. Activision/Blizzard being the creators of two Genre Defining games in World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, Fan-Favorites like Overwatch and Starcraft and one of the biggest mobile games of all time: Candy Crush Saga. (That narrator saying “Sweet” and “Delicious” still haunts me to this day.)
Many people have been talking about how this move will end up hurting the industry as a whole. What with Call of Duty possibly becoming an exclusive to Xbox/Game Pass after the next three titles. (According to the most recent reports.) That means that by 2025 we could see Call of Duty as an Xbox Exclusive. Obviously, this would make other companies nervous except that Nintendo won’t care because they already didn’t have Call of Duty on the Switch and it just became the Sixth Bestselling Console of all time. (Editor’s Note: This was written before Nintendo’s Fantastic Direct on 2/9) Sony, however, well that’s what we’re here to talk about.
In the week following Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision/Blizzard, Sony announced that they had bought Bungie, The original developers of the Halo franchise and the current developers of the Destiny franchise. Many people saw this as an answer to Microsoft but to paraphrase Alanah Pearce: moves like this take months and sometimes years. As such, I don’t consider this as a response to Microsoft as it was probably in the works over the last year.
Now as to how they should respond, honestly, on one hand it would look like they shouldn’t have to. The Microsoft Acquisitions have really just brought Xbox up to speed compared to the Monstrous Sales of the PS4 over the Xbox One in the last generation. While it might’ve taken Sony some time to find their footing during the 8th Generation, once they did, we got console exclusives such as Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War and Marvel’s Spider-man. That being said, if they did want to respond they have two options that I think would be viable sales tactics for the PS5.
The first option would be straight nostalgia and attempting to revive old series and genres from the PS1 era that People have been wanting to see for a while such as:
- Ape Escape
- Twisted Metal
- Cool Boarders
- Battle Arena Toshinden
- Syphon Filter
All of the games above are of a different genre and two of those genres haven’t seen a major release in over 7 years. Does Nostalgia always sell? No, not always. But I know that these 5 games would have a passionate following that would easily buy a remaster or remake even if you didn’t want to do full games. As for the other option…
BUY KONAMI!!!
So sticking with that Nostalgia aspect, do you know what three of the biggest games on PS1 were? Castlevania, Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid. Do you know what people have been begging for over the last 8-10 years? New Castlevania and Silent Hill Games! I don’t know why Konami just gave up, but I guarantee that if Sony bought them out and put some of their primary studios/designers onto them then you would have some of the best-selling games of that year. A new Silent Hill and Castlevania would be considered games that you buy the consoles for and that’s not even thinking about the previous exclusives that I already mentioned.
In conclusion, I want a new Castlevania and Al wants a new Silent Hill. Please make it happen!
