In the dispute over the planned takeover of the publisher Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, including all game brands, the arguments of the companies involved have now been disclosed. This also applies to competitor Sony insofar as it is still trying to prevent the takeover.
In order for the billion-euro deal to actually go through, competition watchdogs have to give the go-ahead – and above all in Great Britain, Microsoft is encountering resistance from the cartel authorities with its plan to buy Activision. After the latter had previously expressed its own concerns, stakeholders and the public were asked to submit comments. Sony’s has now also been published freely accessible.
Above all, with regard to a possible exclusivity of the popular Call of Duty shooter series, Sony is trying to prevent the deal. While the $68.7 billion acquisition has already been completed in countries like Saudi Arabia and Brazil, that is far from being said in England. There, Sony is now stating to the Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA for short, that the deal will “damage competition, market participants, innovation and end customers”.
Should a series like Call of Duty “fall under the sole control of Microsoft” and therefore no longer appear on other platforms such as your own PlayStation, then this title for the respective platform “cannot be replaced”. For Microsoft, this represents “an unprecedented advantage in terms of content” over its competitors.
In the October 28 statement, Sony was still far from being convinced of Microsoft’s promises to keep Call of Duty on the PlayStation in the long term. In this context, it is also stated that Microsoft makes no secret of wanting to offer “Activision content exclusively in Game Pass”.
Above all, should Call of Duty become Xbox-exclusive, according to Sony, “a significant number of PlayStation users would most likely switch to Xbox”. The demand for multi-game subscriptions would clearly trend “towards Xbox/Game Pass” – and that would also result in a worse market position for indie developers who would benefit from fair competition between Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. According to Sony, the over-close endangers “the gaming ecosystem in a critical way”.
In this context, Sony also confirms that Xbox Game Pass is already noticeably ahead of PlayStation Plus in terms of subscriber numbers. According to the filing in October, Microsoft’s subscription format is said to have already counted over 29 million subscribers on PC and console.
Microsoft has also submitted a statement to the authority and insists that the planned purchase will have “no anti-competitive effect”. The Redmond-based company doesn’t even shy away from praising its competitor Sony and its first-party titles. Brands like The Last of Us, God of War or Spider-Man are proof that Sony’s in-house exclusive games are “of better quality”. In short: In terms of exclusive players, the deal would only catch up anyway.
In this context, it goes on to say that exclusive games on Xbox were responsible for less than 10 percent of sales generated in the period 2018 to 2021. On the PlayStation, the sales share of exclusive titles is already significantly higher at 10 to 20 percent. Incidentally, Microsoft also refers to the higher Metacritic ratings of PlayStation compared to Xbox titles.
Overall, Microsoft put 111 pages on paper in its statement on the subject. End of whole number: currently open.
On the PlayStation you get the exclusive Season 01 Combat Pack with additional content in Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0.
