The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has found that most consumers in the UK are broadly in favor of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.
This is after the CMA asked consumers to volunteer their own feedback to the regulator in regards to the purchase. They received 2,100 responses and found that 3/4ths of the replies, around 75 %, were broadly in favor of the purchase, and 25 % were broadly against it.
None of the responses they received were incredibly positive or negative about it either way, so if Sony was hoping to stoke fears among gamers that Call of Duty would no longer appear on PlayStation consoles, they did not succeed at all.
Rather, the respondents have taken Microsoft’s side on the issue. As CMA summarized their respondents feedback,
“(c) It is unlikely that Microsoft would make Call of Duty exclusive due to its multiplayer nature. Making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox would only create a gap in the market that could be filled by a rival cross-platform shooter game;
(d) Call of Duty has competition from a number of other games including Battlefield (Electronic Arts), Grand Theft Auto (Take Two) and FIFA (Electronic Arts);”
The same consumers who play Call of Duty together seem to have pointed out that the franchise’s competition goes beyond Battlefield, a game in the same exact genre of military multiplayer shooter.
Rather, the competition is on against other multiplayer games. This is why Grand Theft Auto (more likely meaning the Grand Theft Auto Online side) and FIFA (soon to be renamed EA Sports FC) are being named here. When gamers in the UK play a game, their decision is based on more than the price on the tin. They are choosing what game they will be playing with their friends, which also means these games are competing for players’ time as well as money. These games each have their communities, and UK gamers likely have connections with more than one of them, but they choose which one they will invest in year after year, especially for the holidays.
Microsoft has essentially put forward the same argument that Call of Duty is not so big in the industry that their purchase would harm competition. And the CMA received feedback from at least one more entity in the industry, arguing that gamer sentiment for even the most popular brands can change when bad games come out for those franchises.
While it’s hardly time for Microsoft to celebrate, it seems more obvious now that the big argument that’s been leveled vs them with Call of Duty isn’t holding water at all within a lot of parties.
Source: Exputer
