A Family Travelling Across the Universe

Microsoft has responded to a listing of concerns regarding its ongoing $68bn attempt to buy Activision Blizzard, as raised past the Britain’s Competition and Markets Dominance (CMA), and come up up with an interesting statistic.

In response to connected questions over whether Microsoft owning Call of Duty would unfairly hobble PlayStation, Microsoft claimed that every COD player on PlayStation could move over to Xbox, and Sony’s playerbase would nonetheless remain “significantly larger” than its ain.

Microsoft does not go into particular on its mental arithmetic here, merely does notation elswhere in its comments that PlayStation currently has a console install base of operations of 150 million, compared to Xbox’s install base of 63.7 meg.

That merits is function of a range of comments given to Eurogamer sis site GamesIndustry.biz in response to the CMA’s latest report, which otherwise more often than not repeats many of the same concerns raised by the Britain regulator – and others effectually the world – already.

For those following the case, the CMA’s latest intervention volition not come as a surprise – it is the next pace on the regulator’s recent roadmap for how and when it volition weigh in with its final ruling. This calendar month, nosotros were due the CMA’south October “problems statement” – and information technology seems that this is the document to which Microsoft has now publicly responded.

The usual topics are covered – surrounding the potential for the deal to harm competitors should Microsoft gain too much of an advantage owning Activision Blizzard franchises (mainly, Telephone call of Duty) and therefore being able to leverage their brand power to get a dominant market leader in the console market and cloud streaming.

Specifically, the CMA sees potential for the bargain to harm Sony only besides other streaming services such as Google (perhaps a moot betoken at present), Amazon and Nvidia.

“Having full control over this powerful catalogue, especially in lite of Microsoft’southward already strong position in gaming consoles, operating systems, and cloud infrastructure, could result in Microsoft harming consumers past impairing Sony’s – Microsoft’s closest gaming rival – ability to compete,” the CMA wrote, “as well as that of other existing rivals and potential new entrants who could otherwise bring healthy competition through innovative multi-game subscriptions and cloud gaming services.”

In response, Microsoft said such “unsupported theories of harm” were not enough to even warrant the CMA’south current Phase 2 investigation – which was triggered on 1st September.

“The suggestion that the incumbent market leader, with articulate and enduring market power, could be foreclosed past the third largest provider as a result of losing access to ane title is non credible,” Microsoft told GamesIndustry.biz.

“While Sony may non welcome increased competition, it has the ability to adapt and compete. Gamers will ultimately do good from this increased competition and pick.

“Should any consumers determine to switch from a gaming platform that does non give them a choice as to how to pay for new games (PlayStation) to one that does (Xbox), then that is the sort of consumer switching behavior that the CMA should consider welfare enhancing and indeed encourage. It is not something that the CMA should be trying to prevent.”

The CMA is due to notify Microsoft of its conditional findings in January 2023, at which point it can seek possible remedies to whatever sticking points raised. The regulator’s terminal report – and overall ruling – will and then be published no later than 1st March next year.

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