Microsoft Would Have Hurt Their Reputation If They Made Call of Duty Exclusive

gameranx.com:

We already know the CMA’s decision to end their investigation to what the Microsoft – Activision deal will do to consoles. However, there are still some interesting details in CMA’s statement that are worth talking about.

In the document titled Addendum to Provisional Findings, published on March 24, 2023, Microsoft had noted that their own reputation was on the line when it came to Call of Duty exclusivity.

This is what they stated on page 5 of the document:

“Reputational benefits: Microsoft stated that, as withholding CoD would directly contradict Microsoft’s public statements, the effect would be likely to be very negative given the significant gamer backlash that would inevitably occur following such a reversal.

Also, Microsoft submitted that, insofar as the suggestion is that those reputational harms would be outweighed by having CoD on Xbox, there is no good evidential basis for that conclusion.

However, Microsoft conceded that, to the extent that CoD causes switching, the five-year horizon in the LTV again likely means that any reputational benefits are captured in the calculation.”

Not that we needed to know this, but Microsoft has pointed out to the CMA that the backlash if they ever actually did make Call of Duty exclusive to the Xbox would be monumental. It is unlikely that gamers will switch consoles because of the high costs of doing so. But, that would only fuel that anger that would be directed towards Microsoft for such a decision. It should also be noted here that gamers do have a high distrust of corporations, in spite of (or perhaps, because of) the fact that most video games are produced by such big companies as well.

Microsoft follows up this statement by pointing out that they don’t believe that it