Both Sony and Microsoft have responded to the CMA’s revised provisional findings, in which the UK regulator made a U-turn regarding its stance on the planned merger between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard.
In its published revised findings last month, the UK regulator stated that the merger wouldn’t harm the competition as Microsoft isn’t likely to keep Call of Duty away from PlayStation. “We have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action”, the CMA said.
The CMA has now published the responses of both parties today, and as expected, Microsoft more than welcomes the CMA’s revised findings. Sony, on the other hand, finds that the regulator’s U-turn is unjustified and contains various errors. The responses from Microsoft and Sony are worth the read for those interested. Some already predicted as much, but in its defense, Sony has now mentioned IGN’s interview with Redfall game director Harvey Smith, in which Smith basically said that the PS5 version of the game was canceled after Microsoft acquired Zenimax.
According to Sony, this is in line with Microsoft’s strategy about making games exclusive to Xbox.
“And just last week, two days before the Addendum was published, on March 22, the
video game trade publication IGN published fresh evidence in the form of an interview
with Redfall’s creative director, Harvey Smith, that provides additional insight into
Microsoft’s strategy”, Sony writes in its response to the CMA revised findings. “Like Call of Duty, Redfall is a first-person shooter game that features both single-player and cooperative multiplayer modes. In his interview with IGN, Mr. Smith explained that Redfall was originally planned to be released on all platforms, including PlayStation, but once Microsoft acquired Bethesda, there was a
“huge change”. “‘No PlayStation 5. Now we’re gonna [sic] do Game Pass, Xbox, and PC. He also explained that ZeniMax “was working on a PlayStation 5 version of the game” until Microsoft bought ZeniMax. After the acquisition, Microsoft “then canned the [PlayStation 5] port.” Even though the studio had already put in the work to make a PlayStation version of the game, Microsoft decided to terminate this work and make the game exclusive to Xbox.
It was expected that Sony would be mentioning this interview, and it will be interesting to see how the CMA will deal with this matter going forward. Will it again make a U-turn or will it remain steadfast this time around?
