CMA Spells Out How Call Of Duty Is Different From Exclusives Like Redfall

gameranx.com:

Did you think the CMA was in over their head studying the Microsoft – Activision deal? But they have demonstrated that they understand what the situation is well enough.

In the document titled Addendum to Provisional Findings, published on March 24, 2023, the CMA made these observations on pages 11 to 12 (edited for clarity and brevity):

“We remain of the view that console providers, including Microsoft, place significant value in having exclusive content to differentiate their platform and attract more users.

Moreover, where Microsoft has seen value in making multiplatform third-party studio games exclusive to Xbox, it has done so (eg, the upcoming release in the Redfall franchise following the Bethesda acquisition).

We consider, however, that the financial and strategic calculation of creating new exclusive games for Xbox may be different from that of making CoD exclusive to Xbox:

making an existing multiplatform gaming franchise exclusive leads to quantifiable losses (ie, lost revenues from customers on other platforms), which have to be weighed against uncertain gains (ie, increased revenues from new Xbox customers).

Moreover, in this case, at least part of CoD’s value comes from the size of its community of gamers, and that would be eroded by removing it from PlayStation.

By contrast, making new gaming IP available on other platforms has some costs associated with it (eg, optimizing for a different OS and possible diversion of users to a rival console) and leads to uncertain gains.”

So if you thought that Microsoft making Redfall exclusive was somehow the company cheating or fooling regulators like the CMA, think again.

They understand very well that Call of Duty and Redfall are completely different. The way they