In its continued effort to get its Activision acquisition approved, Xbox has claimed via a new survey that Call of Duty isn’t as big a deciding factor for players as UK regulators think.
Following the CMA’s recent proposal that Xbox would have an easier time getting its Activision buyout approved should Call of Duty be taken off the table, Microsoft has hit back by significantly diminishing the franchise’s supposed importance to players.
So says a YouGov survey seen by Axios and commissioned by Microsoft itself back in January, which found that just 3% of players on PlayStation would switch to Xbox should Call of Duty become an exclusive franchise. Rima Alaily, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Competition Law Group, used this figure to reinforce the tech giant’s belief that “it makes zero business sense” to remove Call of Duty from PlayStation platforms.
She went on to say that the figure is “too small” for PlayStation’s user base or industry foothold to be affected should Call of Duty become exclusive, presumably sometime after the 10-year commitment it’s made to the contrary – with platforms like Nintendo, Steam and of course PlayStation – lapses. It’s a sound argument to try and appease the CMA, but its forced Microsoft into a position of downplaying its own market potential. Alaily continued to double down on this stance, claiming that 3% figure is “too small to make a withholding strategy profitable for Xbox”.
By comparison, the CMA’s own findings (as conducted by DJS Research ) from back in December estimated that 15% of “avid Call of Duty PlayStation players” would make the switch to Xbox if ever they were cut off access to Call of Duty. Avid in this case referring to players that have either played at least 10 hours or spent at least $100 on the series within the last year.
It’s obviously in PlayStation’s best interest that Xbox’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard not go through, to the extent that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick recently accused Sony of “sabotage” during the process. The CMA’s final ruling on the matter is expected to come on deadline day this April 26, 2023. The day after European regulators also make their final decision.
Call of booty
As someone who is vehemently opposed to market consolidation, it’s incredibly funny to see Microsoft continue to shoot itself in the foot by playing down the importance of Call of Duty to both itself and Sony. If the gains Xbox would make from Call of Duty are “too small”, as Alaily suggests, then why on Earth is the company so adamant on keeping it within the deal? It’s the best-selling AAA franchise on consoles for a reason, and it’s good to see that the CMA aren’t so easily fooled.
That said, Microsoft’s Activision buyout has already been approved by regulators abroad elsewhere. So there’s every assumption that, despite ongoing friction with UK and European authorities, the deal will still be approved eventually.
It seems that nothing Call of Duty-related will change in the immediate future though, due to Xbox’s commitment to a decade of multiplatform support. In which case I have to imagine will be enough time for PlayStation to cook up a competing FPS series.
