Because of a mishap with Sony’s documents, we know now just how deep Call of Duty players’ loyalties go to their console gaming platform.
As reported by The Verge, this data was supposed to be marked out in documents that Sony made public. As you can probably tell, these documents were disclosed as part of the Microsoft – FTC federal case proceedings. However, the redaction failed, as media were able to easily read through the marked out sections and get the full information.
So, as confirmed by multiple outlets, this is what Sony’s document says:
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“In 2021, over 14 million users (by device) spent 30 percent or more of their time playing Call of Duty, over 6 million users spent more than 70% of their time on Call of Duty, and about 1 million users spent 100% of their gaming time on Call of Duty.
In 2021, Call of Duty players spent an average of 116 hours per year playing Call of Duty. Call of Duty players spending more than 70 percent of their time on Call of Duty spent an average of 296 hours on the franchise.”
Now, Sony has received a lot of criticism for not taking care of their information when sharing these documents. Sony has actually commented on this matter, pointing out that they were not responsible for preparing them and explaining that they instructed the courts not to reveal the information.
So at no fault of their own, Sony accidentally revealed the extent to which Call of Duty has been successful on their platform. It’s certainly a lot of money for a single franchise, and that makes it easier to understand why Sony wouldn’t want to see Call of Duty be sold to Microsoft.
However, as we already know, even this astronomical success does not prove the console gaming theory of harm. Even the CMA who rejected the deal, also rejected the console theory of harm, and used cloud gaming as the justification itself.
That’s because for how much money Call of Duty makes for Sony, they are not so dominant in the market that they would end Sony’s opportunities to compete. Sony is producing many of their own titles competing in the same space, such as the upcoming Marathon, and can also depend on other third party games in the same and different genres.
On the flip side, of course, Microsoft can’t afford to lose that much money for Call of Duty either. It is transparently also in their best interest to keep bringing Call of Duty to PlayStation after they buy it.
On the periphery, other PlayStation third party publishers were definitely paying attention to all of this data. If there’s anyone who benefits the most from this information, it would actually be them. Don’t be surprised if Sony gets shopped around for new pitches for Call of Duty ‘killers’ in the future.
