Over the last year, PlayStation has been fighting tooth-and-nail to ensure that Xbox’s proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard does not get approved. PlayStation has been actively campaigning against the purchase, arguing that the Call of Duty franchise will end up exclusively on Xbox, and that it will hurt competition. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority previously agreed with that stance, but has since changed its tune following new numbers provided by Microsoft. The CMA now believes that Microsoft would stand to lose too much money by pulling the series away from PlayStation, thus negating one of its biggest competition concerns.
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The CMA won’t make its final ruling on the Activision Blizzard deal until the end of the month, but the reversal would seem to bode very well for Xbox. PlayStation is clearly aware of that fact. According to reporting from The Verge’s Tom Warren, Sony responded by calling the reversal “surprising, unprecedented, and irrational.” While Microsoft has clearly satisfied regulators over the Call of Duty exclusivity, the CMA does still have concerns on the deal’s potential impact on cloud gaming.
Sony’s argument that Microsoft will make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox has become much less convincing over the last few months. Microsoft has extended deals to Sony, Nintendo, and Nvidia guaranteeing the franchise will remain on those platforms for at least 10 years. Sony has thus far refused to sign the deal, but Nvidia and Nintendo have. Notably, Call of Duty has not appeared on a Nintendo platform in quite some time, and now the series is guaranteed to come to the company’s platforms for a decade; that makes it a bit hard for PlayStation to argue that consumers will see a negative impact.
At the end of the day, the CMA’s changed position makes a lot of sense: there’s far too much money on the table for Microsoft to pull Call of Duty away from PlayStation. Such a move would hurt perception of Call of Duty, and ensure far less people get to play it, thus damaging a brand Microsoft is spending a whole lot of money to acquire.
Do you think Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard will gothrough? Do you think the CMA’s reversal makes sense? Let usknow inthecomments orshare yourthoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
[H/T: The Verge]
