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Microsoft is yet again reaching out with greedy hands for a bigger market share in the console gaming industry. Microsoft has entered talks with Vivendi Universal over a deal that would bring all of Vivendi Gaming production under the iron grip of a company already in the deep for monopolizing parts of the PC software market.

Vivendi, having such companies as Blizzard, Black Label games, and even Sierra Entertainment under its wing could easily become the defining factor that brings the Xbox into the lead of the console war. The Xbox, debuted in November of 2001 has been struggling to keep up with the more experienced Nintendo, and with Sony, a powerful competitor with a large amount of market share.

With a deal such as this, Microsoft would get a library of games that would exclusively come to their systems; obviously, they would have total control of the developers they own. At this point, Microsoft seems to be the only company capable of making such an investment. Although from a glance this seems to be good for game development, with a company like Microsoft that has billions of dollars lying around, some companies struggling to stay alive could gain the funds to finish their products, and in fact polish them to be the best in the industry.

The long run effects however are hazardous. If MS does win the console war we so often hear about, competition will be dead in the console market, leaving MS in a position to do with it as they wish. A good example that has been duly noted would be Nintendo’s GameBoy, which has long been the unified handheld console, with no competition they were able to get away with not upgrading their hardware for years, and when they finally made some improvement (GBA), they were able to charge prices that with competition would have been unacceptable. If the gaming industry is toppled, we could see shovelware being produced by the loads, and people would buy it because the lack of anything better. We would have one console, and we would have no options.

MS would be able to price its next console at whatever it thinks people will pay, and price drops would no longer be necessary, and thus, even less frequent. MS seeks a stalwart control over the gaming industry, perhaps a unified system; much like the PC market today which almost exclusively uses MS’s windows OS. A unified system would be the ideal in every way. We would have to buy one system, and have access to all games. This is a typical Marxist goal, perfect, but not realistic in our world of greed and Laissez Faire economics.

Mac users also fear that they will, if this deal goes through, lose another key Mac gaming developer to the depths of Microsoft’s vaults of cash. After losing Bungie (producers of Halo), Blizzard is one of the top Mac game developers. Having released both Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3 at the same time on both the PC and the Mac, Blizzard has gained the respect of thousands of consumers on either end of the hardware spectrum. So with this deal, MS will have a possible weapon in two of the industries it is trying to get total control over.

Further rumors claim Blizzard’s StarCraft Ghost is to be canceled on all platforms but the Xbox, a title that was originally supposed to be a GameCube exclusive. Checking Blizzard’s FAQ for SC: Ghost, this has now officially been changed to all consoles, and if rumors are true that our preorders for NGC versions of Starcraft are to be refunded, we will know that this deal has indeed gone through.

We sit at an interesting bend in Console Gaming history, and from here we can do nothing but watch. Let us hope the monopolistic empire that is Microsoft does not gain complete control of our gaming future.

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