Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, commented during a recent interview that the company has presented new arguments to the European Commission so that it gives the go-ahead for the purchase of Activision Blizzard, and said verbatim that in those arguments openly acknowledge that Playstation beats Xbox in a clear and forceful way. With this, Microsoft completely knocks down the arguments in which Sony was shown to be a weak party, and highlights that it is actually the opposite.
There is not the slightest doubt that Microsoft is willing to do anything to take over Activision Blizzard, a purchase operation that is complicated at times, although none of the obstacles that have emerged have made the Redmond giant decide to throw in the towel, quite the opposite, and the latest arguments that the American company has presented are a clear example of this, and that is that in the end no company likes to admit defeat.
According to data provided by Microsoft, Playstation beats Xbox in Europe with a market share of 80% for the first and 20% for the second. On a global level, things are improving a bit for Xbox, since according to the Redmond giant its proportional share would be 30%, but Sony is still far ahead with PlayStation, since it accounts for 70%. If we look at Japan, Sony’s victory is overwhelming, since it has a 96% market share and Xbox only reaches 4%.
It is curious, however, that Microsoft did not give numbers for the US market. We don’t know why, but it is a fact that Xbox has always worked better in that market, so it may be that the position of its consoles is better in this market and that is why it has preferred to omit that data. However, since we do not have official numbers, it is impossible to say anything with total certainty, so keep that in mind before drawing conclusions.
For Brad Smith things are very simple and has sent a rather harsh message to the European Commission. These have been his verbatim words:
“Do you want to strengthen Sony’s position or do you prefer to open the Call of Duty franchise to 150 million more people?
The executive has been open to an agreement with Sony that guarantees the long-term continuity of the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation, and just yesterday we learned that Microsoft has closed collaboration agreements with Nintendo and NVIDIA, the latter to carry their games and those of Activision Blizzard to GeForce Now, so it is clear that the Redmond giant is doing everything possible to show regulatory bodies that its goal is not to limit the availability of Call of Duty on other platformsbut rather the opposite.
Nothing has been decided yet, but the truth is that Microsoft is playing its cards very well and that, in this case, blocking the purchase of Activision Blizzard with all the concessions that Microsoft has made, and others that it is willing to make, would be a clear contribution to Sony’s dominance in the console market.
