The EU has determined that Microsoft and Activision combined will capture 30 to 40 % of the shooter market worldwide.
They discussed this in page 55 of their decision approving the Microsoft Activision deal. On paragraphs 233 to 234, they stated this:
“Microsoft’s main games with shooter elements are Halo, Gears of War, and Doom. Activision Blizzard’s main games with these elements are Call of Duty and Overwatch.
In the worldwide market for development and publishing of AAA shooter console video games, the combined entity’s market share exceeds 20% by revenue in 2022 worldwide ([30-40]%). Therefore, the Commission has assessed whether the Transaction gives rise to competition concerns with regard to horizontal non-coordinated effects in the worldwide market for the distribution of AAA shooter console video games.”
Ultimately, the EU’s final decision did end up focusing on cloud gaming, and not just for shooter games, but for everything in Activision Blizzard King’s library.
The EU also made some judgements that qualified just how much they were concerned about the shooter market. For example, Microsoft’s and Activision’s shooters combined don’t reach 20 % market share in the EU itself.
Most interestingly, the EU shared this claim from Microsoft (the Notifying Party) on the following page, in paragraph 241:
“Second, the Notifying Party submits that the Parties are constrained by a long tail of successful smaller publishers such as Krafton (PUBG), Facepunch Studios (Rust), Focus Home Interactive (Insurgency: Sandstorm), Digital Extremes (Warframe), 1047 Games (Splitgate) and Team17 (Hell Let Loose).”
So, it is true that Microsoft’s shooters, which in this case also includes Zenimax’s shooters, combined with Activision’s shooters, would have a dominant position in the market.
That would include franchises like Halo, Gears of War, Doom, Overwatch, and of course, Call of Duty. Regardless of how successful any one of these particular franchises are at one time, their combined influence and net worth does accumulate.
However, as Microsoft counterargues, the shooter market is so substantial that even smaller companies can make their own impact with their shooters. Krafton’s PUBG does come up as a great example, but even AA and A scale shooters like Rust and Splitgate, can have enough impact to split market share for the genre even better.
Microsoft could, of course, have also cited any number of competing AAAs that they don’t own. Games like The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto, and Splatoon show that not only is it possible to find success in the genre, but that the shooter genre itself is malleable to many different kinds of video games.
