Earlier in the year, Microsoft announced that they would buy Activision Blizzard, one of the biggest game developers and publishers of all time. In this process, this merger, which was subjected to antitrust investigations by many governments, was also subjected to constant criticism by Sony. Fearing that Call of Duty is exclusive to Xbox and repeatedly stating that this will prevent competition, the Japanese giant once again talked about this series.
Battlefield series can’t compete with Call of Duty
Speaking to PC Gamer about the UK’s Microsoft-Blizzard investigation, Sony talked about the success of the Call of Duty series. Sony stated that no competitor can match the success of Call of Duty, no matter how equipped it is, and Call of Duty cannot be copied. Stating that the best-selling game almost every year in the last ten years is in the CoD series, the company once again talked about the damage that the merger of Microsoft and Blizzard can cause to the game world.
Sony said, “Other publishers don’t have the resources or expertise to match the success of the series” and “To give a concrete example, Electronic Arts, one of the largest third-party developers after Activision, has struggled for years to rival Call of Duty with its Battlefield series” he continued. Later, the company talked about the difference in the success of the two series, even though EA has developed many successful AAA series and Battlefield is similar to Call of Duty in many ways. According to Sony’s statistics, as of August 2021, the Call of Duty series has reached 400 million sales, while the Battlefield series has reached only 88.7 million sales.
Sony doesn’t need to worry, according to Microsoft
Making logical explanations to alleviate Sony’s concerns, Xbox has repeatedly stated that the Call of Duty series will remain on Playstation. In fact, Xbox President Phil Spencer talked about plans to bring the series to other platforms. Allegedly, Xbox stated to Sony last week that it will bring Call of Duty to Playstation platforms for 10 years, but Sony still seems very worried about adding the series to the Game Pass system. Let’s see if the acquisition process of Activision will be blocked due to Sony’s arguments.
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