Microsoft, Sony and Activision Respond to CMA’s Provisional Findings Alongside Six Different Game Companies
The CMA has published the responses of Sony, Microsoft, Activision and six other gaming companies to its provisional findings.
Last month, the UK regulator published its provisional findings and provisionally concluded that Microsoft has the incentive to make Activision-Blizzard's Call of Duty franchise exclusive to Xbox once the merger has been finalized. "The evidence available to the CMA, including data on how Microsoft measures the value of customers in the ordinary course of business, currently indicates that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own consoles (or only available on PlayStation under materially worse conditions)", the CMA wrote in its findings.
After the regulator published its provisional findings, Microsoft issued a statement, saying that the company is committed to addressing the regulator's concerns. Fast forward one month and we now have the responses of Microsoft, Activision, and Sony as well as responses from five anonymous gaming companies and the co-founder of 4J Studios - a Scottish developer responsible for porting Minecraft to consoles and other platforms. 4J Studios also worked on Perfect Dark for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Banjo-Kazooie ports.
The responses are quite extensive but we've included some parts of them below:
Sony
As expected, Sony states that Call of Duty is of major importance and believes that the transaction will cause harm to the industry. Blocking the megadeal between Microsoft and Activision could prevent this from happening. "Call of Duty’s importance would give Microsoft the ability to foreclose its rivals", the conclusion in Sony's response reads. "Microsoft’s previous acquisitions and strategic rationale
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