Sony may be losing the PR side of their console cold war with Microsoft over the Activision deal, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make some points themselves.
In Sony’s own response to the CMA provisional findings, they point something out that supporters of the deal may not want to admit.
As they state in page 2 of their response:
“The CMA also carefully considers alternatives to Call of Duty, including alternative shooter games Fortnite, Battlefield, and Apex Legends.
Based on the evidence, the CMA finds that “the extent of differentiation … of Call of Duty’s closest alternatives means that any foreclosure strategy will significantly impact PlayStation’s ability to offer more … games by contributing to a worse range and less consumer choice,” and that Call of Duty is “one of a small number of large and consistently successful game franchises available to gamers for many years.”
It’s very easy to dismiss the CMA as ignorant of the games industry, and it truly did seem that way in the first reports about their investigation. But as Sony points out, the regulator did put the work in to study what the shooter market is.
So we can’t accuse them of complete ignorance here. They know Battlefield looks the most like Call of Duty, but is not their only relevant competition. They know free-to-play live service shooters like Fortnite and Apex Legends are also part of that pie, and they probably already know that both games make significantly more income, and across different platforms.
It is convenient for Sony to not mention a few other significant shooters here. For example, Rainbow Six Siege has transformed as a major esports shooter. Grand Theft Auto V, while not strictly a shooter, definitely fits the equation as an alternative game to Call of Duty. Finally, there is the matter of the shooter Sony very recently just picked up, thanks to acquiring Bungie, Destiny 2.
Sony also takes the time to talk up how important Call of Duty is to the PlayStation. I’ll just summarize their points here and you can scrutinize them yourselves. Note that they have been partly redacted so I don’t have the exact figures, but this should give you an idea of what they are saying.
- Call of Duty is PlayStation’s top selling game for nine of the past ten years
- Between 2017 to 2022, Call of Duty was highly ranked in PlayStation’s MAUs (monthly active users)
- In 2021 Call of Duty players spent a certain billion of amount of dollars on PlayStation
- Also in 2021, Call of Duty was rated highly on positive gameplay, over other games like Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, and FIFA
- Lastly, Sony claims Call of Duty is a significant driver of PlayStation console sales
It should also be noted that Sony is citing the CMA when they say that the CMA has correctly assessed the case in their provisional findings, for the case to reject the Microsoft Activision deal.
While Sony speaks as if they are confident the deal will be completely rejected, they can’t speak with absolute certainty that this will be the final outcome, any more than Microsoft can really predict that they will get the deal as they want it.
It’s most likely that the CMA will want some more concessions from Microsoft than they are currently offering. Those concessions won’t be entirely what Microsoft wants, but if they agree to it, then they will get the deal to go through.
