The battle continues, as Sony recently published a statement providing new arguments as to why it believes that Microsoft’s pending acquisition ofActivision Blizzardwould be harmful to fair competition in the video game market. This statement was sent to the CMA, the market regulators of the United Kingdom, who have been the ones most heavily scrutinizing the deal, moving their investigation onto a second phase not too long ago.
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In this recent statement, as transcribed byVGC, Sony callsCall of Duty"irreplaceable," and claims that Activision-published games drive more “user engagement” onPlayStationthan all of PlayStation’s first-party exclusives combined. Despite the fact theXboxhas nowpublicly agreedto commit to Call of Duty staying on PlayStation for over a decade, Sony is still unsatisfied, stating that whatever timeframe Microsoft offered, after the deal was over, it would “have the ability and incentive to exclude or restrict rivals… from having access to Call of Duty.”
Sony goes on to explain that if such an event unfolded, PlayStation users would be compelled to switch to Xbox, which in turn would make PlayStation a weaker competitor. This would then supposedly allow Xbox to increase console and game prices for its users, as well as “reduce innovation and quality.” Call of Duty fans would be “locked” into the Xbox platform, and that would “effectively prevent [PlayStation] from competing for the business of a large portion of console gamers.”
WithGame Passbecoming so dominant, and PlayStation/PlayStation Plus being “foreclosed,” independent developers would have little choice in the way they distribute their games, and would be in a “weakened negotiating position,” in which they “would likely receive worse terms for their content from Microsoft or even be required to promise exclusivity in return for distribution.”
That’s not all. In an attempt to answer Microsoft’s claim thatNintendodoes very well without Call of Duty and thus PlayStation would as well, Sony has stated, as relayed byVGC, that this reveals “Microsoft’s true strategy” of making PlayStation “become like Nintendo.” According to Sony, what Microsoft wants is for PlayStation to be unable to compete in the shooter genre by owning “the best-selling shooter franchises” likeOverwatch,Doom,Halo, and now also Call of Duty. According to Sony, Microsoft wants PlayStation to offer a “differentiated experience,” like Nintendo does, and thus not be a direct competitor to Xbox.
