Ten years is enough for Sony to make Call of Duty alternative, says Microsoft.

A shooter exclusive to Playstation isn’t going to reach the same heights as a multi-platform title anytime soon. It would be better if there was another series that is as popular as CoD, and that comes to Playstation and other platforms. That’s exactly what just about every publisher has tried several times, and knocking CoD off the throne isn’t exactly easy.

I think the situation has actually been undesirable for much longer, but we are used to it. There are too few platform holders, and the biggest games have become bizarre big money machines. Now there is the situation where a handful of mega-publishers also make the hardware and determine through deals which mega-sized game comes to which platforms. If we could think this all out from the ground up with the best experience for players in mind, the entire market should look different. It hardly matters anymore whether there are, say, 5 or 4 big players, and who exactly earns the most from CoD. All possible outcomes are far from healthy or optimal. Something that applies to many more markets, of course.

This is all due to insufficient competition law and anti-trust. There has been too much concentration going on for decades, instead of broad competition and distribution of power. Large players buy up dozens of small players every year, so that they cannot become competitors. Or they have so much more money than new entrants that they have little chance. In other words: neoliberalism in all its glory. Thank goodness for the indie games and medium titles, where a lot more happens for the player and less for the shareholder.