Sony is not happy with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for reversing its stance on the Microsoft Activision Agreement. Its summary report updated at the end of March noted that the agreement No result in a “substantial” decline in competition in the country, a position that Sony considers “surprising, unprecedented and irrational”.
Sony considers the CMA’s latest decision to be based on “extreme assumptions”
In a now public document titled “SIE Comments on PF Addendum”, Sony believes that the new tentative decision on the addendum is based on faulty reasoning. The document is a bit weighty, but Sony says the decision apparently ignores data that Microsoft has an incentive to not include Activision games on PlayStation consoles in the future. In particular, Sony says it would have “strategic value for Microsoft” in its Xbox Game Pass expansion.
Sony also claims that the CMA is far underestimating the profit Microsoft would make by making Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. This is partly because Call of Duty players are not “average users” as they tend to spend significantly more than the average user of the platform.
The CMA ruling said CoD gamers with less than 10 hours of gameplay or who spent less than $100 on the game would not switch platforms after the deal, apparently from PlayStation to Xbox. Sony repeatedly disputes this as “unsubstantiated speculation”, “extreme assumption” and “pure conjecture”.
The ruling also used Minecraft as an example of Microsoft releasing a popular game across multiple platforms despite owning Mojang, but Sony believes Minecraft and Call of Duty are not comparable due to the difference in graphics and user engagement. . Even so, Sony claims that Microsoft has “blocked Chrome OS’s access to the consumer edition of Minecraft,” revealing the company’s intentions to make its games exclusive.
He sees Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax as much more indicative of what the company would do to make Activision games exclusive to Xbox if the merger were approved.