UK CMA No Longer Thinks Microsoft Will Make COD Console Exclusive
The Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the United Kingdom has stated that based on a “significant amount of new evidence” during its investigation that Microsoft acquiring Activision will not result in a “substancial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK”.
What this means is that the CMA no longer thinks that Microsoft wants to make Call of Duty exclusive for the Xbox console. The regulatory company has removed the item from the list of concerns they previously had.
At the beginning of the investigation, the CMA was wary that Microsoft would monopolize one of the most successful franchises in video game history, Call of Duty. They believed that making the game exclusive would hurt competition severely, at least in the United Kingdom, which is within their scope of work.
Based on new data, the CMA now thinks that an exclusivity deal will be ‘significantly loss-making under any plausible scenario.” They say that “the updated analysis now shows that it would not be commercially beneficial to Microsoft to make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox following the deal, but that Microsoft will instead still have the incentive to continue to make the game available on PlayStation."
What this means is that Microsoft would be shooting themselves in the foot (no pun intended) if they decide to go exclusive with Call of Duty. They would be sacrificing sales on a console that has sold 7.1 million units. The game is also released on ‘last-gen’ hardware; the PS4 has sold 117.2 million units.
A very important thing to mention is that the analysis shows a financial incentive to keep the game on both consoles. This is very different from having solid evidence suggesting that Microsoft will not decide to make Call of Duty exclusive for the Xbox later on. There is a big difference between should and would.
Microsoft also announced that if the merger happens, they would bring the franchise back to Nintendo, which is another huge market. Despite the Nintendo Switch lacking the hardware to play the game with high graphical settings, Microsoft sees Nintendo as a good partner. Perhaps the next Nintendo will be a powerful console capable of running Call of Duty, or maybe they will find a cloud-based solution.
The CMA said that the findings relate to console competition, and does not consider cloud gaming. This is entirely different that digital gaming. Console gaming not only considers physical copies, but digital copies found on digital platforms like the Microsoft Store, and PS Store. Cloud gaming would be something like Google Stadia (RIP).
Source: GOV.UK
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