Based on this, Alaily asserted that Call of Duty was “too small to harm Sony’s competitiveness and too small to execute a limited strategy in favor of Xbox”.
Rima Alaily, vice president of Microsoft’s competition law team, told Axios that the Xbox company conducted a YouGov survey in January, finding that only 3% of all PlayStation gamers would switch to Xbox, if it makes mass exclusivity decisions for its platform. after entering into an agreement with Activision Blizzard.
She also echoed Microsoft’s repeated phrase: “As we’ve always said: removing Call of Duty from PlayStation makes no business sense.”
As noted by Axios, research conducted by DJS Research on behalf of the CMA in December 2022 stated that about 15% of “avid Call of Duty PlayStation players” (played at least ten hours or spent little). at least $100 for the series in the past year) will go to Xbox.
Microsoft’s own findings suggest a lower number of 10%, when surveying whether Call of Duty players who consider the franchise as one of their two favorites switch consoles for unique reasons. rights or not.
The CMA’s final report ruling on the deal with Activision Blizzard was on April 26, a day after the new EU deadline. The EU decision was expected ten days earlier. However, the EU’s competition regulator pushed back the deadline for the decision last week.
The move comes a day after EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager said global regulators shouldn’t be in a hurry to be the first to make big deals.
Last month, Microsoft announced that it had signed a legally binding 10-year agreement to bring Call of Duty to the Nintendo platform if the merger is approved. It also confirmed a 10-year partnership with Nvidia to bring its Xbox PC games to the GeForce Now cloud game service, including Call of Duty. Microsoft recently announced that it has also offered Sony a legally enforceable 10-year contract to make every new Call of Duty game available on PlayStation on the same day that the game is released on Xbox – with full content. and similar features.