The UK CMA has raised questions on one of Microsoft’s great promises in their jockeying to get their deal with Activision approved.
Last month, Microsoft president Brad Smith revealed that they had signed a ten year contract for Call of Duty to come to Nintendo platforms. The language they used in this announcement promised full feature and content parity.
Today, the CMA revealed their thoughts on this commitment in their 3rd provisional findings report.
As reported by GamesRadar, this is what the CMA had to say:
“We have also seen evidence that large shooter games do not run as well on Nintendo’s consoles due to its technical differentiation. One third party submitted that graphically intensive shooters may often be targeted originally at PlayStation and Xbox due to the specific characteristics of their console performance and that porting to the Nintendo Switch may require financial investment and compromises on graphical quality or the use of cloud-gaming solutions.”
The CMA also had something to say about the Switch’s potential as a cloud streaming device, when it came to the possibility that Call of Duty games would be streamed on the Switch instead of being fully ported:
“We consider that there are currently significant differences between cloud gaming and gaming on consoles (e.g., the need for an internet connection to stream games from cloud gaming services). Also, the ability of the Switch to connect to a third-party cloud gaming service provider would not make it a closer competitor to Xbox and PlayStation in the console gaming market.”
Among other things, this line of thinking from the CMA supports Microsoft’s and Activision’s assertion that these regulators still don’t fully completely understand the video game industry, after all the research they have put into the market.
On a technical hardware level, no one will dispute that Switch is not powerful enough to run AAA, CG graphical games made for Xbox Series X|S or PlayStation 5. On a market level, the diminutive console dominates the other two, and is already in the race to be one of the best-selling consoles of all time.
Continuing to dismiss the Nintendo Switch as not being part of the same market as Xbox and PlayStation amplifies the idea that Microsoft and Sony are the most relevant players in the market. And this suggests the CMA also does not fully understand other aspects of the market.
To make a case the CMA is unlikely to read themselves, Rockstar Games has revealed that one could maintain a community for a single online game across three generations of video game hardware, even with the friction that could come in between each transition. That game, of course, is Grand Theft Auto Online, one of the most financially successful console games to this day.
The Nintendo Switch has also already seen an online game where their players enjoy feature and content parity with other platforms. That would, of course, be Fortnite, but then Overwatch and Overwatch 2 would be a close second to approximating the same experience for Nintendo Switch players.
These games were designed in such a way that playing with a Nintendo Switch in this way would be possible. That would be the kind of work Activision would have to put in to meet the commitment Microsoft has placed on them to Nintendo.
Ultimately, the CMA’s decision, as well as the EU’s and the FTC’s, boils down to whether a theory of harm can be proven for the Microsoft – Activision deal. Seeing them take missteps in the investigation like this is a bad sign, which they will make choices that could themselves harm the industry and the competition they’re supposed to protect. But given all the moving parts of the case, maybe they will eventually find their way to making the right decision nonetheless.
