Making Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive “simply wouldn’t be profitable,” Microsoft said.
The lawsuit comes as part of a new war of words between Xbox and PlayStation as Microsoft looks to finalize its eye-opening $68.7 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard.
Specifically, it comes in response to Sony’s recent objections to the deal – which argued that Call of Duty couldn’t compete and that the franchise was vital to PlayStation because it influenced players’ console choices.
Eurogamer Newscast: Are Sony-Microsoft disputes over Call of Duty commonplace?
Microsoft previously said it had no immediate plans to make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive, and has now doubled down on that, adding that it doesn’t make business sense.
“The reality is that the strategy of keeping Activision’s games out of distribution on competing console stores simply will not be profitable for Microsoft,” the company wrote in a filing released by Brazilian authorities.
That doesn’t mean it can never be profitable, Microsoft continued – before adding that such a situation still seems unlikely due to the additional “costs” involved (the details of which remain redacted).
Taken together, those costs and “lost sales” from not releasing a game on other platforms — for example, pulling Call of Duty from the PlayStation — mean the whole thing won’t be worth it, Microsoft said.
“Such costs, in addition to the estimated lost sales … above, mean that Microsoft will not be able to offset the losses by earning more through the Xbox ecosystem as a result of implementing exclusivity,” he continued.
“This is especially true given (i) the ‘gamer-centric’ – rather ‘device-centric’ – strategy that Microsoft has implemented with Game Pass, and (ii) the fact that PlayStation has the most loyal users in its various generations, with all signs that the brand loyalty built up in previous rounds of the ‘console wars’ suggests that PlayStation will continue to have a strong market position.”
The bottom line here is that Microsoft is again trying to dismiss any claims by Sony that its $68.7 billion deal will unfairly affect PlayStation — while also trying to avoid any whiff of the deal being scuttled by antitrust laws.
The reason we can see this back and forth publicly is because of Brazilian regulations that require other companies potentially affected by corporate transactions to comment on said deals, the results of which are then published online (albeit with some redacted passages).
Other details brought to light include Microsoft’s egregious claim that Sony is paying developers for “blocking rights” to keep titles out of Xbox Game Pass. This claim forms another front in Microsoft’s rebuttal to Sony that the Activision Blizzard deal is anti-competitive – where Microsoft clearly suggests that Sony itself is engaged in similar tactical business practices.
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