Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, March 9 (Xinhua) Sony has been expressing its concerns in front of European and British regulators since Microsoft announced a $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in January last year.

In its latest filing with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Sony said it was concerned that Microsoft might increase the pricing of call of Duty, limit its use on Microsoft's own Xbox Game Pass subscription service, and may even strategically undermine the quality and performance of the PlayStation version of call of Duty.

Microsoft may stumble in the PlayStation version of call of Duty so that vulnerabilities and errors will only occur at the final level of the game or subsequent updates. Even if we can detect such problems quickly, it may be too late to take any remedial action. At that point, gamers will lose confidence in using PlayStation as the platform of choice for call of Duty. As Modern Warfare II attests, call of Duty usually gets the most purchases in the first few weeks of its release. If people know that the game is not performing as well as Xbox on PlayStation, call of Duty players may decide to switch to Xbox because they are worried about playing their favorite game in a second-rate or poor experience.

Of course, Sony was smart to say that it was not clear whether Microsoft was deliberately cracking down on PS games, or whether Activision had the ability to bring a better gaming experience to Xbox after the acquisition.

But in any case, Sony made it clear that Microsoft might attack itself strategically, such as ignoring PS-specific features or "limiting, belittling or not focusing on PlayStation's multiplayer experience", or focusing on Xbox fixes after discovering Bug.

In the documents disclosed by CMA, Microsoft said it had licensed Activision Blizzard's call of Duty IP to Sony for 10 years, promising to "provide Sony with the same treatment as the Xbox platform in terms of release date, content, features, upgrades, quality and playability", only to allay concerns about Microsoft's acquisition of the game maker, but the PlayStation maker did not agree to sign it.

CTOnews.com has reported that Microsoft signed a similar agreement with Nvidia's GeForce Now gaming platform last month and a 10-year deal with Nintendo, but the final outcome still depends on Microsoft's approval of the controversial Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, has previously said he hopes competitors who are strongly opposed to the acquisition will consider a similar deal. If Sony is willing to sit down and talk, they can always offer a similar 10-year agreement.

In addition, Sony is worried that Microsoft will keep call of Duty in Xbox Game Pass and will not allow Sony to offer the game on its PlayStation Plus service.

In this document, Microsoft also said, "any CoD game in Microsoft game subscription is eligible to be included in Sony's game subscription service at the same time and within the same period."

But here comes the problem, and Sony is clearly not satisfied with its license terms or pricing. Sony said the terms "will commercially undermine Sony Interactive Entertainment's multi-game subscription business model."

Just hours before Microsoft held a key meeting with EU regulators last month, the company revealed that it had signed a binding 10-year agreement with Nintendo and introduced call of Duty to the Nintendo platform. A few hours later, Microsoft again announced a similar agreement with Nvidia, trying to force Sony to agree to similar terms, but they refused to sign it.

"Microsoft has not shown any real commitment to the outcome of the negotiations," Sony said in a document disclosed by CMA. Sony may be referring to details of Microsoft's proposed deal disclosed last year, while Jim Ryan called the deal "inadequate on many levels" and declined to comment because he did not like Phil Spencer putting it on a public media platform rather than quietly talking to SIE.

In addition, Activision Blizzard executive Lulu Cheng Meservey also posted a post today explaining why Sony did not accept Microsoft's "call of Duty" 10-year new agreement. "I don't want a new call of Duty agreement, I just want to stop the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard," Jim Ryan is said to have said at a closed-door hearing held by European Commission regulators on February 21.

It is worth mentioning that CMA said in February that the deal could weaken competition between Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation and curb competition in cloud games. The regulator suggested that structural remedies might be needed to allay its concerns, including divesting businesses related to the call of Duty game.

In response to the Competition and Market Authority's findings, Microsoft said the package of remedies it would provide protected all call of Duty gamers in the UK and provided substantial benefits to consumers and developers.

"Microsoft is proposing a package of authorized remedies, first, to ensure equality between the PlayStation and Xbox platforms in call of Duty, and second, to ensure the widespread use of call of Duty and other animated games in cloud gaming services," Microsoft said in a document released.

Microsoft added that it believed that the remedies proposed by the company had met the criteria for behavioural remedies considered by the Competition and Market Authority in the UK.

Sony rejected Microsoft's proposal in a filing with the UK Competition and Market Authority, saying that the only way to maintain competition in console and cloud games was to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard or to make Microsoft accept structural remedies, such as Microsoft's sale of the call of Duty game.

In addition to UK regulators, regulators in the US, Europe and other places are trying to block the deal. But there were previous reports that the EU was ready to give the green light for a merger after news that Microsoft would bring call of Duty and other games to Nintendo and GeForce Now platforms.

Of course, everything exposed now may be a smoke bomb that disturbs the situation. after all, the UK Competition and Market Authority will rule on the deal on April 22, and we are afraid that only then will we see whether Microsoft can successfully acquire Activision Blizzard.

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