Microsoft: Call Of Duty Is Not A “Must-Have” Game For Every Console
Microsoft made a key argument to the EU that possibly made the difference in getting their deal approved.
Basically, they explained that no single Activision Blizzard game, not even Call of Duty, is truly must have for any single console.
We will summarize Microsoft’s arguments, found in paragraph 324, on pages 71 to 72, of the EU decision to approve the Microsoft Activision deal below. Microsoft did make six distinct arguments to make this case, and we’ll go through them one by one.
The first argument is that Activision Blizzard King is only one of many game publishing companies with popular content, and it is not even the largest one. The biggest publisher, for those curious, would be EA.
Microsoft argues further that the other two console companies, Sony and Nintendo, are also major video game publishers in their own right. Nintendo does stand tall as the largest single publisher. Their games sell so well on their platforms that they struggle to get third parties to publish their games on them. Ironically, this has created a cycle for Nintendo where they are the dominant publisher on their consoles, and every five years or so then becomes dominant in the entire industry.
As of this writing, Sony is the fourth largest publisher. That actually makes them comparable to Activision Blizzard in terms of market share itself. While Microsoft will be bigger with Activision Blizzard under them, Sony is hardly an underdog.
Microsoft’s second argument is that gamers don’t choose to get a PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo console based on a single franchise being on those platforms. I believe Nintendo fans would eagerly dispute this claim from Microsoft, but Microsoft submitted evidence of this to the EU that wasn’t made available to
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