Member Of Congress Want Action Taken On PlayStation’s Dominance In The Japanese Market

Ahh, the con­sole wars, a con­cept that many gamers are famil­iar with, and one that now has a new curi­ous par­ty seek­ing change: the US gov­ern­ment. First report­ed by Axios, 10 mem­bers from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sent let­ters to the US trade rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Com­merce Sec­re­tary Gina Rai­mon­do, cit­ing con­cerns over Sony tak­ing advan­tage of Japan’s gov­ern­ment inac­tion to prof­it from its coun­try of origin.

One of these let­ters states that Sony holds 98% of the “high-end con­sole mar­ket” in Japan, that Sony signs deals to keep Japan­ese games off the Xbox plat­form, and also claims these actions might be in vio­la­tion of Japan’s anti-trust laws. Fun­ni­ly enough, Nin­ten­do is not includ­ed in this “high-end con­sole mar­ket” dis­cus­sion, even though it owns the biggest mar­ket share in Japan.

“The Japan­ese government’s effec­tive pol­i­cy of non-pros­e­cu­tion when it comes to Sony appears to be a seri­ous bar­ri­er to U.S. exports, with real impacts for Microsoft and the many U.S. game devel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers that sell glob­al­ly but see their earn­ings in Japan depressed by these prac­tices,” the let­ter par­tial­ly says.

Although no offi­cial word has come yet, it is like­ly this pres­sure from US offi­cials is direct­ly tied to Sony’s ongo­ing efforts to block Microsoft from acquir­ing Activi­sion Bliz­zard. Axios report­ed that its gov­ern­ment affairs team dis­cussed “these issues” with mem­bers of Congress.