Activision Blizzard’s fate has been one wild ride throughout the past 30 or so hours. More defense from Sony, who has also been saying things that are truly ridiculous when you think about it, and even Microsoft isn’t immune to the things going on, as they potentially face a lawsuit from the FTC. That said, let’s attempt to break it down.
So, Sony’s been quite defiantly fighting the Activision Blizzard acquisition ever since it was announced back in January. On today’s episode of “Sony says something related to the buyout”, a series of tweets from CharlieIntel on Twitter would reveal that Sony’s sent a full response through the UK CMA, which you can read below.
The UK CMA published Sony’s full response to Microsoft’s ABK deal;
the document states Call of Duty generates “billions” of dollars for PlayStation (some info redacted)
+ says each Call of Duty has a “over $300 million budget” https://t.co/afrQsIAYEd pic.twitter.com/0wmAgZRyVd
— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) November 23, 2022
Sony’s statements in the screenshot essentially equate to “Call of Duty is different, it’s too important”, and unlike other titles Microsoft noted (NBA 2K, to name one), it’s too big and its aggressive release cycle is far too important. If you remember, Activision ditched the yearly release schedule they’ve had throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, so that makes this even funnier.
All things considered, this statement continues to prove what lengths Sony will go to in an effort to halt the deal. Something of note is that Sony alleges that Battlefield is not good enough to go to bat against Call of Duty, with the former selling “only” eighty-nine million units, compared to Call of Duty’s 400 million (Which, for the record, thousands of video game series would love to be seen as much as Battlefield has been. The Legend of Heroes, please).
The document also states that Microsoft’s claim of Battlefield being an example of competitor to Call of Duty is wrong because Battlefield has “failed” to compete with CoD; says Call of Duty has sold over 400M copies; Battlefield only 89M pic.twitter.com/SF6UqsrdXS
— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) November 23, 2022
That doesn’t even get into what they’ve said to VGC about this deal going through, which, when you look at it, is insanely hypocritical. Paul Tassi (from Forbes) sums this up best, with the following comment (which, to be frank, is worth completely agreeing on):
Sony just raised regional PS5 prices and pushed for $70 games and they have the *balls* to say this to regulators lmao pic.twitter.com/zLJJd6d82j
— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) November 23, 2022
And what exactly has PlayStation done in relation to those issues? Raise console prices, increase its PlayStation Plus subscription prices through various means (and this is the second time, for that matter), and what’s come out of it? Not much outside of exclusives (at least, since the PlayStation 5 launched).
Meanwhile, outside of Sony and its crazy response, the FTC also looks to be joining the party. Amidst all of this drama and strange lengths that Sony will go to, other news outlets like Politico mention that the FTC is reportedly likely to file a lawsuit aimed at blocking the $69 billion purchase. It should be noted that this isn’t a note that means “it’s absolutely happening”, more so, it’s just that it’s likely to happen.
We’ll continue to update as more information related to the Activision Blizzard purchase is released.
