Sony believes that the quality of playing “Call of Duty” on the PlayStation platform in the future may deteriorate
After Microsoft announced a 10-year agreement with Nintendo and NVIDIA to provide games without limitation, it appears that Sony still has concerns about Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
According to Sony’s perspective, although Microsoft may provide games like “Call of Duty” fairly to the PlayStation platform, there may be discrepancies in game updates or bug fixes on different platforms.
Sony emphasizes that regulatory authorities currently cannot determine whether Microsoft is fairly distributing engineers to ensure that the quality of games on the PlayStation platform is consistent with the Xbox platform version. Therefore, Sony is concerned that Microsoft may intentionally or unintentionally lower the quality of games released on the PlayStation platform, causing players to lean towards playing games on the Xbox platform.
However, market views believe that Microsoft is unlikely to take this approach, as it would lead regulatory authorities to believe that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard would affect competition in the game market.
In Microsoft’s latest statement to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK, they state that they will maintain consistency in the release date, content, features, subsequent updates, and even quality and playability between the Xbox and PlayStation platforms.
Microsoft further emphasizes that if Sony is willing to sign a 10-year cooperation agreement, a third-party organization can evaluate and regulate the equality of game content performance on both platforms. Additionally, Microsoft reiterates that if games like “Call of Duty” are not provided on the PlayStation platform, there will not be sufficient sales revenue to balance game development costs.