PlayStation "cannot protect against the loss of Call of Duty", Sony says
Sony has outlined Call of Duty's vital importance to PlayStation as part of its ongoing efforts to derail Microsoft's $68.7bn Activision Blizzard buyout bid.
«SIE [Sony Interactive Entertainment] cannot protect against the loss of Call of Duty,» Sony wrote in a document published today by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority regulator, which is currently scrutinising the deal.
Simply put, Sony says it cannot compete with a Microsoft-owned and Xbox-exclusive Call of Duty via its own blockbuster first-party franchises: not in terms of gameplay hours, revenue, or in the budget it has to spend on building its own exclusives.
«SIE's recent development experience of shooter/battle royale games is limited and its main active shooter franchise is significantly less impactful than Call of Duty,» Sony wrote. «Destiny, SIE's main active first-person shooter franchise, had only [redacted percentage] of the gameplay hours and [redacted percentage] of the game spend of Call of Duty in 2021.»
Sony's response is one of several published today by the CMA as part of its ongoing process to evaluate Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal.
Microsoft has its own response, which largely seeks to contradict and (in its view) correct the CMA's provisional findings that concluded with the suggestion Microsoft may need to structurally change the deal in order to get it approved.
As expected, Microsoft repeats the statement that it will not seek to hinder or withold access to Call of Duty on PlayStation in any way.
Sony's response, meanwhile, seeks to largely reinforce what the CMA has said already, including the regulator's earlier finding that there were «few franchises as enduring and as significant in terms of PlayStation's revenue and
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