Sony wants to stop the billion-dollar deal from Microsoft and Activision – because of Call of Duty

Microsoft is about to acquire Activision Blizzard at a cost of $68.7 billion. Sony is now telling the cartel office that Call of Duty is making the purchase impossible.

REDMOND, SEATTLE – The $68.7 billion mega deal is still the talk of the town. Microsoft is actually on the verge of acquiring Activision Blizzard. Apple, Google and Amazon have no objection. But Sony is now trying to prevent everything. Call of Duty is too important and as THE shooter it shouldn’t fall into the hands of a gentleman. The cartel office is now investigating.

Microsoft is about to hit the mega deal: nearly $70 billion for Activision Blizzard

This is the biggest gaming deal:

• At the beginning of 2022, Microsoft was really in a shopping mood: The tech giant announced the purchase of the largest game studio Activision-Blizzard.
• The purchase price for Activision Blizzard is said to be more than 68 billion US dollars. In numbers it looks like this: 68,000,000,000 dollars.
• The shareholders approved the record deal. Shares of the companies involved have skyrocketed (despite the Blizzard and Activision scandals)
• But the last hurdle was that the cartel office had to give the okay for such a mega deal. And this is exactly when competitor Sony steps in.

That’s why the cartel office is now investigating: The antitrust agency (FTC in the US) regulates whether competition in the market is fair. In Germany, for example, breweries have been fined over 100 million euros for illegal price fixing. There are institutes like this all over the world.

In the case of the Microsoft Activision takeover, numerous antitrust authorities have to give their approval and certify that the purchase will not harm the market or that a monopoly position will arise without counterattack. Because the nearly $70 billion deal is so large, competition investigations are ongoing. The investigations by the Brazilian authorities (CADE) are now publicly available and are revealing amazing things.

Sony is afraid of losing Call of Duty – the cartel office should now intervene

Here’s how the investigation into the deal is going: The cartel office does not decide such a big case between breakfast and lunchtime. Leading (tech) companies were asked for their opinion. So you want to know if there are any objections to Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. These companies were surveyed:

• Apple
• Meta (Facebook’s parent company)
• epic
• riot
• Amazon
• Google
• Warner Bros
• Bandai Namco
• Sony

Such questions must be answered by the companies (Source: SEI):

In your opinion, does Activision Blizzard release games that can be considered essential for a gaming hardware vendor to function? Does your company think it’s likely that Microsoft will no longer offer Activision Blizzard’s games on competing digital stores, even though this practice could result in lost revenue from selling those titles in other channels? How does your company view the positives/negatives of this merger in relation to the online advertising market?

This is what Apple, Amazon and Co say: According to the minutes, the world’s best-known tech giants have nothing against a takeover. There were hardly any answers to many questions, and there were few concerns. Google stated that players had alternative options even in the Microsoft-exclusive case. Instead of CoD you can play Battlefield, it says there.

“Call of Duty is without competition,” says Sony – synonymous with first-person shooters

This is why Sony is against: Of the companies surveyed, only Sony is strictly opposed to the billion-euro deal. The reason they call Call of Duty – CoD for short. The first-person shooter is being developed by Activision (and numerous studios at once). According to Sony, there is no other game that is on a par with CoD.

If Microsoft now had sole power over Call of Duty, they would harm all gamers in the world. So far, the “Call of Duty” games have been released for all platforms and systems. Immediately after the first takeover talks, however, the anxious voices of the players, who feared that CoD could soon become Microsoft-exclusive, became louder. And Sony probably thinks the same way.

Sony estimates that there is no studio or developer in the world that can compete in size with the “Call of Duty” developers. A bit unfair, because more than four studios are working on Call of Duty at the same time. That equates to thousands of employees. Other big players like Rockstar with GTA, EA with FIFA or Riot with LoL would be one step below Activision with CoD, Sony says.

Sony and CoD: Sony is also leading the concerns because they’ve been the market leader in Call of Duty so far, numerous readers on the internet say. For each new season there have been PlayStation/Sony-exclusive offers such as additional costumes or earlier maps. Sony has paid a lot of money over the years for players to link CoD and PlayStation in their heads.

But journalist Paul Tassi also wrote on Forbes about the Activision Blizzard deal in spring 2022: “Not sure if everyone understands how radical [der Deal] changed the whole concept of the gaming industry.”

How do you see the situation? Feel free to vote in our poll here and let us know if Sony is right or if the deal should go through for nearly $70 billion.

The deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard should have consequences for Game Pass. Once the acquisition is complete, the vast majority of all games from the publisher will be available on Game Pass, both on console and PC. At the same time, Microsoft announced that it had reached over 25 million Game Pass subscribers.

Sony only launched its declaration of war on the Game Pass, the new PS Plus subscription, in the summer of 2022. But that hasn’t been well received by the players so far. It may still be a while before the authorities of the world take over