Sony is convinced that Microsoft will sabotage games on Playstation

Journalist Tom Warren tweeted some of Sony’s suggestions to the CMA, Britain’s competition authority, about the Activision-Blizzard takeover. The manufacturer is particularly concerned that Microsoft will launch buggy versions of Call of Duty on Playstation to damage its image…

Umpteenth twist in the hot file of the takeover of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. As you may know, the deal valued at over $69 billion is still under scrutiny by various competition regulators, namely the European Commission, the FTC in the USA, the SAMR in China and finally the CMA in the United Kingdom.

Although we recently learned that the takeover is on the right track to obtain the green light from the European Union, the CMA is still expressing fears and for the moment the game is still far from over.

The CMA is still not inclined to validate the takeover of Activision-Blizzard

In its provisional conclusions published in February 2022, the CMA considered that the operation could well lead to a substantial reduction in competition for UK players, in the sense that they might be forced to go to Xbox to play Call of Duty.

In the process, the institution proposed other alternatives and suggested in particular that Microsoft part with the Call of Duty license, without forgetting pure and simple blocking of redemption.

For now, the CMA has received Sony’s suggestions on the subject, the main refractor to the takeover of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft. If we already knew that the Japanese firm was worried about losing the Call of Duty license on Playstation, we were far from imagining such deep fears.

Also to read : The next Call of Duty will be released on Nintendo consoles for 10 years, it’s official

Sony is convinced that Microsoft will sabotage Call of Duty on Playstation

Indeed, as revealed by journalist Tom Warren on Twitter, Sony is suggesting that the CMA require Microsoft the assurance of providing an identical Playstation version technically and graphically. According to the manufacturer, Microsoft could be tempted to offer on Playstation “a version of Call of Duty where bugs and errors appear only at the last level of the game or after later updates”.

Sony continues: “Even if such degradations can be quickly detected, any fix would likely come too late, by which time the gaming community would have lost faith in Playstation as the go-to place to play Call of Duty.

The manufacturer sums up its point as follows: if it is common knowledge that the performance of Call of Duty games is worse on Playstation than on Xbox, license players could decide to switch to Xbox.