Sony Under Fire for Allegedly Abusing Its Dominance in the Industry

I think its a pandora's box.
If Sony needs to provide access then literally every store would need to as well. That doesn't quite make sense to me. Sony's store isn't that unique.
Or am I misunderstanding something?

*Under fire.

Underfire isn’t a word.

Sounds like between the CMA and RCC they don’t know video game business to save their hides. The CMA looked bad and confused today in court and now this. Silly silly silly.

It's not too surprising. It was only a matter of time before Sony would begin to take advantage of their significant presence in the market. This is why competition is not only good, but entirely necessary.

I didn’t realize that Sony had stopped third party retailers from selling digital codes. Could had sworn I could still buy digital games off Amazon and Best Buy, but never actually tried so it might be either just memory from when they did it or only noticed it for competing consoles.

Edit: just went to Best Buy app to do a quick spot check. RE Village is only available physical for both Xbox and PlayStation.

Final Fantasy VII Reunion is only physical for PS5, PS4 and Xbox, but can buy a digital code for Switch directly from them.

It seems that this issue is an issue with bot, Xbox and PlayStation, and in an odd twist of events, Nintendo plays nice with third party retailers. Heck I actually remember buying Digital DLC for Breath of the Wild from Best Buy.

@Tharsman I know you can buy digital code for Xbox and Switch. I bought my digital copy of Tears of the kingdom through Amazon, and digital copy of Mario kart through humble bundle… I have seen some codes for PlayStation on super gray market site, but never on any site I trust.

@AverageGamer I just edited my post, didn’t do a deep search but a quick spot check seems to show no ability to buy Xbox digital keys from Best Buy either, only Switch.

@Green-Bandit from what I am seeing, the RCC has a point here. From the closing paragraphs on the article, Sony used to allow retailers to sell keys. Nintendo still does. Xbox seems to not do it (anymore or ever?) I didn’t check but am sure we can get Steam keys from many retailers.

So this is indeed an oddity were both Xbox and Sony are cutting off the middle men from selling digital keys to increase their profit margins (since there retailers obviously take a cut of the sales.)

Although I don’t think allowing this would necessarily lower prices, certainly would not in the large scale, it does prevent it happening at all. I recall l, for instance, buying the Breath of the wild DLC from Best Buy very cheap during a rare sale, those are savings that would had been impossible for me to enjoy if Nintendo cut off retailers from also selling keys.

@Tharsman I saw, but Final Fantasy VII Reunion as an example for Xbox isn’t good. As Final Fantasy sell poor on that system, so they don’t offer many digital codes… Something more mainstream would be a better example. Jedi Survivor which you can buy a digital code for Xbox and not PlayStation.

@Mythologue Agreed. Thanks to completion, MS got two publishers and we lost a ton of games. Gotta love competition.

@Mythologue only a matter of time for them to begin? LOL They have sold games that way for almost 30 years what are you talking about.

@PC_Peasant sorry Mr Ryan but as always you are late. Sony PC ports outside Spiderman and GOW don't sell. So ... IN YOUR FACE LOL

@AverageGamer after looking a bit more it does seem there are some Xbox digital games, but they are separate listings instead of options under the same listings.

It also seems to be very limited, might be publisher based. Nintendo seems to offer practically every first party game.

@PC_Peasant you need ms to remove games from Sony system..... how is that good for competition exactly?

@Green-Bandit the messed thier numbers up too they thought every gamepass subscriber was a cloud gamer too!

@naruball who is we?

They’re overlooking a key point here is that Sony allow a competitive market for buying of PSN credit. This creates a a level of discount on credit similar to the level of discount games would have under competition. Xbox and Switch game keys are available but there is no (or little)price competition for digital credit from third party sellers.

The IOS store by comparison has no competitive pricing mechanism at all. No keys, no third party credit. If you are going to start this fight over digital stores then it has to start with Apple, they are the most egregious offender.

@Tharsman Xbox digital code most likely adhere to the same restriction as physical. Where a minimum number of physical copies needs to be produced in order to have a physical copy. So only the bigger games or games from big publisher are going to have digital codes available.

@Tharsman you can buy Xbox digital cards at Best Buy. But they are the same price. This seems like a reach. But i don’t know the rules on this one. I know the CMA looked crazy dumb today and even the judge was laughing at them and saying no. But this digital key thing, i am not sure what the legal rules to that are.

@PC_Peasant so you want the death of console gaming. where Microsoft the worst company out the big 3 when comes to managing they’re studios to monopolize console gaming by owning everything.

@Toot1st and said ABK was going to bring the games to cloud when Bobby has said they are against cloud and have zero intent to support cloud, but once MS owns ABK they are free to do what they like. CMA was making stuff up and the judge and MS’s lawyers were given it to them. CMA just looked bad in front of the world that will likely remember this when they want to do business in that region. I think the UK is about to step in before this hurts them further. There is YouTube videos showing how bad the CMA either lied, didn’t know or made stuff up.

@Toot1st
In context, I guess they mean PlayStation owners who don’t want to spend a load of money on a console that has 99% the same games. The PlayStation owners who have lost a load of games due to MS buying third party publishers, and are about to lose even more if the ABK deal is allowed to go through…at least that seemed clear to me.

@darthvirgin updated

@ChrisDeku Great counter argument well raised there. Sony would do well to raise this (as I’m sure their lawyers will).

@naruball Sony have attempted much the same. The idea of third party publishers and developers seeking exclusivity deals with platforms is practically universal. So yeah, it's good. The alternative is a monopoly. You probably don't need me to tell you that it's a universally bad thing.

@Toot1st people who game on playstation. Unless you're on the wrong site.

@Mythologue no they have not. Buying a publisher is not the same as anything that Sony has done. And it's besides the point. Competition can be good, but is not always. That's my point. Anyone who knows anything about how markets work knows that it's true.

@naruball I can't personally think of any instance where a lack of competition would be a good thing.

I think the talks is less about brick and mortar stores and more about online key distributors. You can compare prices between them at sites like allkeyshop.com

The site has been a great resource for me for buying switch DLC and digital only games, as well as for steam keys, where you can get many games for mere cents.

I did not realise that Sony didn't permit ps5 games to be sold there (since I mostly buy physical) but I went and checked, and yes, if there are any other resellers besides the ps store, they sell accounts with the desired game instead of a code to activate it on your account.

Sony, like so many others, want to make consumers 100% dependent off of them, so I'm glad they're experiencing some deserved pushback.

Sounds a bit 'toys out of the pram' to me! There's plenty of deals on reduced PSN credit on the likes of cdkeys and shopto, it's the next best thing.

I have bought absolutely loads of Xbox digital codes from other retailers here in the UK. The price difference sometimes is massive.

They've got a fair argument to make there. People are looking more and more at walled gardened ecosystems (iPhone app store) and questioning whether that's an allowable practice.

We need price competition, we all know that when Sony get on top they tend to start seeing what they can get away with. The only strong price competition Sony sees is buying games for an alternative platform.

This is one of the points raised in the £5billion gamers lawsuit against Sony, lead by Alex Neil, that is currently being heard by CAT here in the UK.

Seems everyone is starting to go after them for it, and it's going to be hard for Sony to argue against

Whilst we have the option to buy physical copies of games I see this as a none issue, you have the choice to buy either the physical game or digital version if you want it cheaper. However if the console industry goes fully digital then there would be concerns. If the only place you can buy games from is PS store then sony can charge whatever they want and people will buy them, either that or buy a new console or a PC.

If/when the console industry goes fully digital they will have to let either other storefronts operate or they will need to give retailers codes for games allowing them to charge what they want and discount them if they want. Then we will have a fair competitive console industry.

If Sony is accused of dominance in the gaming industry now, they will surely be accused of world domination when the Project Q Lite handheld launches

@Jamesblob I think what they mean is that you should be able to buy game codes from elsewhere that you can reclaim on the PSN. I actually agree, as then you’re not subject to only Sony’s pricing for digital games. Standard for pc.

@Mythologue you're still arguing about a different point.

Also, the ps4 and ps2 did wonderful without much competition.

I tend to side with the RCC on this one. Sony has been trying to make you buy exclusively from them for awhile now.

On the other hand there are ways for smart gamers to buy the games cheaper, ways that give you the freedom to choose the stores that give you the best discounts.

Sony allows users to create multiple accounts on their consoles, AND to play any game bought on any of the accounts on that console.
Make 1 account for US, 1 for UK, 1 for a European country etc.
And for example buy a game on the US account and you can play it on the UK account or the EU country account with no problems.

Why is this relevant - you can buy top up cards from wherever you find them cheaper, and redeem them in their corresponding PS store accounts.
Also, you can take advantage of promotions from all of those regions (PS store discounts don't come everywhere at the same time, or for the same amount).
Not to mention the parities... for example, if you live in a European country, you can buy games from the US account, because given the Euro-Dollar parity, it will be cheaper for you.
You won't be able to use credit cards or Paypal, but you can buy top-up cards from other sites, as I've said above, even at discounts.

@BeerIsAwesome God of War 2018 was already ported on PC.
Besides, every platform has it's own exclusive games, it's not just Sony.

@ShadowofSparta

I actually agree, as then you’re not subject to only Sony’s pricing for digital games. Standard for pc.

This argument is false because Sony don’t actually set prices for third party games, the publisher does. Additionally when prices are set they are not competing with their own product on different platforms, SF6 on Xbox is not competing with SF6 on PS5, they’re competing with alternative games from different publishers, SF6 competes with tekken for example.

Somewhat unintuitivly this means that more platforms, or stores, don’t significantly impact the competitiveness of the video game market, but is primarily driven by the existence of a large competing group of rival publishers. This is why consolidation of major publishers is potentially a big deal.

Competition between Sony and MS doesn’t drive price competition in games. Competition between EA, ABZ, Take-two, Capcom, SquareEnix etc. drive price competition in games.

More stores will mean that it’s more likely to get games below RRP, but setting of RRP is the really important matter and it’s not driven by this retail competition.

Whilst it might be a form of control,there are more often than not a regular cycle of psn sales these days usually with a 2 week turnaround,especially since Shu Yoshida took over Indie operations.🤔

Are there improvements that'd benefit PSN? Gifting friends,an automated Steam style refund system etc.,absolutely!
But would you want grey markets ala G2A etc. getting in,& causing headaches over dubious keys that may or may not work?

I'm aware of more legitimate sites ala Humble store etc.,but always leaves you exposed if there's a problem that the 3rd party reseller just ignores you & the site your buying for says its not their problem. Discovered GOG seemingly exited most 3rd party sites,so its not a Sony only situation

I don't see the problem with letting retailers sell digital keys, it's just like selling physical copies where the retailer sets the price as they have already paid sonys cut to get the stock, take cd keys for example most of its digital games to buy are out of stock which is strange as its a digital key so you would think it would be unlimited, this obviously shows that it works just like physical copies do where a retailer buys a certain amount.

For Third party I fully agree they should be allowed to be sold at different retailers and shoukd be a decision by the developers, but Sony's first party then that should be up to sony how they sell them.

It’s a good thing to be able to shop around for Xbox digital codes. I saved £14 on Diablo IV digital. That adds up per game so yea… Playstation not offering it is a bad thing. But the usual people are defending the decision… so stupid.

@Toot1st I was going to ask the same thing.

Think people might be missing the point. Sony sells any game for it's console exclusively through the PS store. That means you are only able to purchase a game from them. In turn means they can charge whatever they like and you have no other option. If you look at the world of physical sales. Shops compete with each other to sell the game at the best price. So you go with who's cheapest. Now that we are falling into a more digital based purchasing system this competition doesn't exist as Sony does not allow. "Want to buy that 10 year old game that you loved. Well you will have to buy it at it's original retail price."

I would be all for this ..I prefer digital games and I can often find digital versions of Xbox games much cheaper than on the Xbox store....example picked up diablo 4 for £15 less on cd keys than the Xbox store

@Deformedpye You’re missing the point, Sony don't set prices for third party games.

@Sakai So if Sony lose that battle who gets the £5 billion? That figure seems way too high for me, no way that's the amount they are claiming would of been spent elsewhere

I've just checked cd keys and they have playstation games available including games like God of war Ragnarok and HFW cheaper than the PlayStation store, so......

https://www.cdkeys.com/playstation-network-psn/psn-games

@Kidfried That's also a problem, what if you buy a digital key from a retailer, redeem it on the PlayStation store and find the game to be broken (cyberpunk situation), how would you get a refund? It wouldn't be down to Sony as you didn't buy from them, and the retailer would refuse as its a digital sale so they can't get the game back to give a refund.

@Tharsman CD keys (UK) and Shopto (UK) both sell digital keys for playstation and xbox games, so it seems the issue is that Sony and Microsoft must be selecting certain retailers to sell digital keys to, and it's the ones being left out that are kicking up a fuss.

@UltimateOtaku91 The sony games that are available are ones that have been included in bundles with digital keys. This is how a lot of the game key business works, procuring keys from a wide variety of sources and through different means. Some of them not legal means either.

Don't trust anything those corrupt Romanian organizations say. They are corrupt as fk. Trust me, I live there.
They probably got some paycheck from MS to stir some trouble for Sony. Probably the easiest country to manipulate with cash.

I hope sony sells digital games key through other stores too, like xbox or steam.

@UltimateOtaku91 i believe that if it is sucessful then UK gamers will be able to make a claim of their share of the £5billion, depends how many games etc they have purchased from Sony. The £5billion was an estimate from Neil and consumer group Which?. The codes available to buy online for Playstation are from bundles i believe, not made available from Sony. Its an illegal grey area are not the same as what Microsoft and Nintendo do. Its why everyone is only after Sony, i believe, but until these cases play out, nobody really knows but Sony and the people claiming. I sure dont

@Kidfried Nintendo and Microsoft supply keys to other sellers, direct from them, so its only Sony in the firing line unfortunately. The only keys available for Sony games online are from console bundles and other similar methods, that are then resold. This is also a legal grey area i believe, but I could be wrong. Just going off what i have read.

We will just have to wait and see what happens really

@Sakai Ah I see thanks for the info, another thing I just thought is that Sony do infact allow retailers to sell PSN wallet top ups to which the retailers can set their price for as I can get a £90 playstation credit for £75 which in turn people can buy to save money on games from the store, I know it's not the same as buying the games digital key but it could end up being cheaper by buying discounted wallet top ups. For those in the UK especially there's absolutely no reason anyone should be paying £70 for digital releases.

Man I hope this goes somewhere. It was super annoying when they yanked their digital games from everywhere except themselves.

I’ve seen people commenting that you can just buy discounted wallet cards but I don’t really seem them discounted much ever in the USA. If they are, can someone give examples?

@UltimateOtaku91 i buy all my games on ps5 physical, so I am not as informed on the various intricacies as some others may be.

Maybe they can use that psn credit argument you mentioned in their defence, but it could just be labelled as whataboutism and not really helpful to them. We will just have to see how it all plays out.

@Tharsman You can 100% buy digital codes for Xbox games. Maybe not every game, but the redemption vouchers are 100% hanging on the shelf at Walmart. I think it's more just a publisher decision. Newegg sells a lot of Xbox codes as well, often on sale sometimes even day one. I know that just happened with Jedi: Survivor.

Is there even a legal obligation to do so? From Nintendo's deal with Yandex Market way back when to their AND Sony's occasional Humble Bundle events, I've been under an impression that this was mostly on a voluntary, negotiable and specifically advertised basis. And then, on PC side, we have third party key markets like G2G which recurrently get accused of selling ban-risking fake codes, which probably doesn't encourage console makers to open their doors too wide either.

@Green-Bandit oh well if there are YouTube videos that must mean it’s true ;]

I would be targeting their propensity for Third Party exclusive contracts. Even when timed they still have a devastating effect on all competition.

@Green-Bandit
Regardless of any minor flaws in the CMA's reasoning for blocking the ABK acquisition, they are the only ones who understand empty ten-year deals do nothing and allowing a company of Microsoft's immense wealth to buy a publisher every two years must be stopped.

@Toot1st
Game Pass is absolutely a vessel into cloud gaming, both because Xcloud is "free" with Game Pass and because Microsoft would be fools to not leverage that subscriber base, which absolutely dwarfs every other competing cloud streaming service (Luna, GeForce Now, etc.) in terms of size.

I'm not sure why it is so difficult to understand that the decisions regulators must make are not based only on the present. Allowing the Xbox brand to be subpar since its inception and then buy two publishers to be at the top won't be good for anyone and it certainly would be a disaster of the standpoint of industry consolidation. If ABK, the largest publisher, is on the table, EVERYTHING is on the table.

It would seem their biggest concern is Romanian devs not being able to publish games on Playstation. I'm not sure why Romanian devs would be excluded, but they have been enough that the RCC deemed it necessary to note. I think the other issue with digital games is secondary to them and was used as the primary factor due to wanting other countries to join the fight. We'll see what happens, but I'd like to hear more about why Romanian devs haven't been able to publish.

@Secryt it was in the court room, wasn’t like it was someone in their basement saying stuff. You can see the CMA and their lawyers getting railroaded by MS’s lawyers and even the Judge. It’s public info, don’t take YouTube or my word for it if you want to see how bad they sounded and looked.

@TheCollector316 not really, they made up false idea’s in their heads and blocked it. The CMA even went on to say it’s fine for console, but not for cloud and then made up reasons as to why it was bad for cloud. MS won’t buy another publisher unless it’s for Sale. ABK is for sale and it has what MS needs and that’s King, so they can launch into Mobile. Mobile is where the money is and they want to get in there and build a store front. Consoles are on decline generation to generation in overall meaning all 3 in revenue and profits while mobile is 10X it’s market. Even Sony is all in on mobile, they see the money as well. If the CMA talked in court with confidence on why they blocked it i would be ok with that. But my man, they looked bad in court yesterday. Like the Judge was laughing at them and declining their attempts and asking for an October ruling. Their math was wrong, they said ABK was going to bring titles to the cloud when it’s in writing that ABK is not brining games to cloud. The list goes on and on and it got to the point where the UK knows this is a bad business look for them. Now it’s ok not to agree with it, but legally they have no legs to stand on.

@Green-Bandit Was going to say this as well. I'm all for regulating competition to ensure fair practice, but the RCC is just talking about things that have been bog standard for a while now. The statement about preventing games from being sold elsewhere is also interesting because Nintendo is far far more infamous for this. Why Sony and not Nintendo?

At the end of the day competition is good. As a playstation fan as well Diablo fan, I hope Microsofts acquisition goes through. Not because I want to lose things I enjoy but because I want more competition, which results in better quality products more often than not.

@DeathlySW Super good post. I 100% agree. I have all 3 consoles and want them all to find their groove and it seems like they have. MS is for sure proving they are committed to growing Xbox as an ecosystem and aren’t leaving gaming. PS5 are selling like hotcakes and the 6 year old Switch is still chugging along and when the Switch 2 hit’s i am sure that will sell by the boat loads also. It’s a great time to be a gamer, plenty of choices out there. PC is doing great again, Mobile is HUGE. Cloud will continue to improve over time, we got the Sony Q coming. Choices choices choices, and yet most gamers complain or want others to fail. That is sad and a bad look for an industry that is proving options are appreciated. I enjoyed your post very much, thanks for sharing and being smart about competition 😊

@Tharsman Xbox digital codes are available at BB and elsewhere. IDK why you didn't see it or not for those games, but that seems to be a publisher thing. Spot checking Jedi Survivor and others turned up digital codes at BB, Amazon, and Gamestop, so in the US, this really is just a Playstation thing.

However I remember either XB or Nintendo, but can't remember which one, stopped selling them in some territories, EU I think was one of them, so it might still apply in Romania.

MS’s doing, no doubt.

@NEStalgia I posted an update on a follow up reply. The digital codes for those Xbox games are listed as separate products, not options, that’s why I missed them.

Switch games seem to always list them as options under the same page entry.

@ChrisDeku

The IOS store by comparison has no competitive pricing mechanism at all.

Apple does sell Apple Gift cards that are the same as PSN Credit cards, can be used for iTunes, App Store and even to buy anything from the Apple retail stores. It’s also not that rare to find them on discounts during holidays.

Edit:

As for credits being an alternative to directly buying from the retail, not really. These gift cards come at pre-set values of $10, $25, $50 and $100. If you are looking to buy something that is not within those brackets, or reachable via a combination, you will be forced to over-spend in credit.

And yea the same applies to Apple (and Google play) but they multiple jurisdictions have been working hard to force Apple and Google to allow third party app stores in their devices. That should “address” the issues eventually.

@BlaizeV

I thought Romania (or was it Albania?) is where all of Britain’s stolen Mitsubishi Tritons and Range Rovers ended up.

Not sure I'm following this correctly but CD Keys website in the UK you can get digital keys for all platforms it's the cheapest place for regional locked content.

It's a fair argument that I hadn't considered for awhile. I usually wait until a sale for digital purchase, but having the competition of retail codes would mean a better market for the consumers with new releases.

I'm surprised that we're not seeing this from more competion authorities.

It's an anti-competitive practice that has pushed games retailers out of digital market and led to digital games costing more than physical games, despite the reduced overheads.

New game prices in the UK are especially ridiculous. I barely buy new games anymore - I generally just wait for them to appear on PS Plus now.

This whole mess is the result of lawmakers, worldwide that are 25-30 years behind the times and missed the digital economy existing entirely, while the world moved to spreadsheets, these people were still keeping paper ledger books.

Yes, Apple does it. Apple should not be doing it. The whole concept of digital walled gardens where by nature no sales competition may exist and hardware buyers are 100% locked into buying all software from the company store was the very definition of anti-competitive behavior from the start. It shouldn't be targeted at one company though, or from a small country like Romania, this is a massive issue that affects the places most software is consumed by most entities, both consumer and commercial, in mobile, and needs to be tacked as flat-out bans on hardware-locked walled economies. It's basically a loophole that allows the old tricks of the old robber barons that mostly relied on slow on the uptake legislators to not understand what happened, while tech could make it look like an inevitable necessity of technology.

It's just made most obvious by PS because right now they're the only one not selling keys, and, compared to Apple, video games have a physical analogue sold by conventional retail networks that can visibly be seen disappearing only to be replaced with a monopoly company store for direct sale only, while Apple and Google never really had that physical analogue that displays in concrete terms the evaporation of competition.

With any luck, the obviousness of consoles doing it will make it more visible that the same problem exists in mobile and help change that as well.

To be fair, Amazon is a viable option on Android, while nothing exists on iOS, but it's still considered "side loading" with numerous warnings about how doing anything but the company store is a security risk.

Nintendo, eventually, got nailed for their cartridge racketeering and mandatory exclusivity conditions in the 90's. The digital economy (not just PS) needs its reckoning now.

So no one thought to challenge sony for protesting when Microsoft wanted to buy blizzard/Activision ?
I don't get big business, I really don't.

As xbox monopolizes gaming

@KeanuReaves In the EU both android and Apple will need to allow alternative stores on their devices by next year. It going to be interesting to see if that applies to consoles as well as phones.

@NEStalgia An apple won't be doing it in the EU 2024.

@knowles2 Very interesting!

@knowles2 I believe so far Sony has distanced their platform from what they refer to as "general purpose" ie. smartphone platforms, tablets, PCs, etc.
I believe it happened because of the Epic Games vs Apple case.

@KeanuReaves it's that Xbox, Steam and some other Pc stores sell codes to resellers. Meaning you can have competition in digital codes and buy them via people like CD Keys. Sony does not hence the case.

I'm not sure what goes on with Nintendo as there seems to be a selection of games available with codes, but not many.

Edit: I might be out of date on Sony as Cdkeys do have keys for PS, maybe they don't in Romania...

I'm very confused by this as you can go on CD Keys right now and buy a digital key for GOW Ragnarok, for example. There's currently 160 digital PS5 games listed for sale