Sony criticizes CMA’s revised stance on Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal
Sony has issued a new statement regarding the Competitions and Markets Authority, or CMA, and its recently narrowed scope of concerns over Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The paper, submitted last month and recently publicized, sees Sony describing the CMA’s “reversal” of its position on its consoles theory of harm as “surprising, unprecedented, and irrational.”
This is in regard to the CMA’s recent update, where its provisional findings determined that a strategy of making Activision games like Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox would be “significantly loss-making under any plausible scenario.” On this basis and from its updated analysis, the CMA says that Microsoft will still have an incentive to continue making Call of Duty available on PlayStation.
“Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action,” said Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting the CMA’s investigation in the statement. “Our provisional view that this deal raises concerns in the cloud gaming market is not affected by today’s announcement. Our investigation remains on course for completion by the end of April.”
Sony’s response goes into several errors it believes the CMA has made in its findings, including an assertion that Minecraft, which is already on multiple platforms, says “nothing” about whether Microsoft would pursue Call of Duty exclusivity.
In one instance, Sony cites a recent quote from Arkane’s Harvey Smith to IGN. In it, Smith said
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