Microsoft made a key argument to the EU that possibly made the difference in getting their deal approved.
Basically, they explained that no single Activision Blizzard game, not even Call of Duty, is truly must have for any single console.
We will summarize Microsoft’s arguments, found in paragraph 324, on pages 71 to 72, of the EU decision to approve the Microsoft Activision deal below. Microsoft did make six distinct arguments to make this case, and we’ll go through them one by one.
The first argument is that Activision Blizzard King is only one of many game publishing companies with popular content, and it is not even the largest one. The biggest publisher, for those curious, would be EA.
Microsoft argues further that the other two console companies, Sony and Nintendo, are also major video game publishers in their own right. Nintendo does stand tall as the largest single publisher. Their games sell so well on their platforms that they struggle to get third parties to publish their games on them. Ironically, this has created a cycle for Nintendo where they are the dominant publisher on their consoles, and every five years or so then becomes dominant in the entire industry.
As of this writing, Sony is the fourth largest publisher. That actually makes them comparable to Activision Blizzard in terms of market share itself. While Microsoft will be bigger with Activision Blizzard under them, Sony is hardly an underdog.
Microsoft’s second argument is that gamers don’t choose to get a PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo console based on a single franchise being on those platforms. I believe Nintendo fans would eagerly dispute this claim from Microsoft, but Microsoft submitted evidence of this to the EU that wasn’t made available to the public.
Microsoft’s third argument is that Call of Duty players don’t play that much more of the franchise compared to other games. In their own words, “data demonstrates that Call of Duty gamers play, spend and choose their games in a similar manner as gamers of other major franchises.” While you and I may have friends who profess they are dedicated to a single game, or know of esports players who do have to do the same thing, consumer behavior apparently claims otherwise. Gamers apparently do have a varied palate, and do get tired of playing one game and move around a few types of games.
Microsoft’s fourth argument is quite a curious one. Again, in their own words, Microsoft claims that Call of Duty is not “widely regarded as one of or even the most successful franchise in the video gaming industry.” Wikipedia lists Call of Duty as the fourth biggest video game franchise, with 425 million units sold.
Again, Microsoft shares data to the EU that has not been made available to the public. But what is important to us is that they use this argument to claim that Activision Blizzard’s games are not actually “must-haves” for Sony.
Whatever Sony fans may want to claim, we do know that that is true. While their plum Call of Duty deal has given them a plum warchest of income, Sony is clearly more than capable of developing and making their own hit games, as well as making other multimillion dollar deals for other third party franchises. Even if Sony fans missed Call of Duty, PlayStation would move on just fine without their games.
Related to this, Microsoft’s fifth argument is that there are so many other franchises with other popular games. Microsoft doesn’t even name any single competitor here. Instead, they point to Call of Duty: Vanguard’s varying fortunes as proof that popularity of games changes over time. Gamers are fickle, and switch to different games they want to play all the time.
Lastly, Microsoft uses the Steam Deck as proof that platforms don’t need Call of Duty. While it is true that Valve has called the Steam Deck a success, it’s not really easy to quantify that enough to make a judgement if it is true or false. Valve did have issues distributing the Steam Deck, and spent the better part of a year just catching up to pre-orders and initial orders. We can’t really know if Steam Deck would have done much better if Valve was better prepared and had Call of Duty, simply because we don’t have enough frame of reference.
That’s so many words to argue that Call of Duty isn’t so important to the industry that every platform needs to have it. Nintendo perhaps better proves that Call of Duty isn’t need to make a successful console, than the Steam Deck could. With all that said, it is interesting that Microsoft laid out all these arguments that they made, which we assume reflect what they themselves really do believe about the state of the industry with or without Call of Duty.
