Sony has thrown almost everything to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but a recent filing with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is among the things the company has heard since the acquisition was announced. It may be the most terrifying thing inin this week Long statement to CMA (opens in new tab),discover The Barge (opens in new tab)Sony is asking regulators to consider one thing: what if Microsoft completely sabotages COD on the PlayStation?
The PlayStation maker has asked the CMA to imagine a scenario where “Microsoft could release a PlayStation version of Call of Duty that would only have bugs and errors after the game’s final level or a subsequent update.” “Call of Duty is almost always bought in the first few weeks of release,” so Sony says it doesn’t matter if “such degradation is quickly detected” and fixed. It’s the go-to venue for playing Call of Duty” and, unexpectedly, may have made the switch to Xbox.
Sony has said it cannot accept Microsoft’s recent deal. This indicates that the company has committed to bring his COD to the Nintendo and Nvidia platforms. (opens in new tab) A successful acquisition of Activision shows that it has been operating with integrity for at least 10 years. In fact, “Microsoft’s behavioral commitment to granting competitors access to Call of Duty may pose greater risks to consumers. Why?” The myriad ways are very difficult to monitor and police.”
When it says “myriad ways,” Sony is referring to the various small tweaks Microsoft-owned Activision can virtually make to COD to make it worse on non-Xbox platforms. , as mentioned earlier, could be something like a bug that is detected too late or a performance issue. Or it could mean “reducing Call of Duty to ignore PlayStation-specific features (such as improved controller haptics).” Anyway, we’re already doing non-Sony games for PS5.
In all fairness to Sony, these issues could have arisen “without an active decision on Microsoft’s part to lower the PlayStation’s Call of Duty” and instead “with Microsoft’s post-deal incentives. This may occur due to differences in Independent Activision”. That in itself isn’t quite absurd: if the developers of ActiBlizz games are familiar with the Xbox internals thanks to their close collaboration with Microsoft, bugs in that platform could be quelled faster as an unintended consequence. There is a possibility
But that’s not all. Sony follows this section of the filing with a historical tour of all the times Microsoft got into legal trouble for not following its promises and public statements. A scenario in which Sony has hinted that if the acquisition of Activision is allowed, Microsoft could start subverting his COD on rival platforms in a clever and deliberate way.
A multi-billion dollar company should never be allowed to do bad things, but Microsoft is making deliberately degraded versions of COD for non-Xbox platforms, putting its bottom line in jeopardy. It’s hard to imagine exposing and nearly guaranteeing public outcry when the news is announced. Inevitably there was movement. Nonetheless, the CMA may be convinced: UK regulators have been fairly skeptical of the deal so far, even suggesting a split for Activision. (opens in new tab) Before Microsoft bought it (which, predictably, was unenthusiastic).
Sony sounds increasingly desperate in its attempt to forestall the Activision acquisition. Some even accuse Microsoft of “obvious harassment” for requesting access to executive performance reviews.give a green light to a trade (opens in new tab) Sony is more on edge than ever.