Microsoft defended its purchase of Activision Blizzard in a wide-ranging document sent to Brazil’s CADE, one of the market’s regulators, which is analyzing the operation, which could have wide-ranging effects on the video game industry.

You already know the case. Microsoft has announced a deal to buy Activision Blizzard and King for an astronomical amount close to $70,000 million. One of its major rivals, Sony, has expressed its concern that any of Activision Blizzard’s games became exclusive to the Xbox platformespecially Call of Duty, one of the biggest franchises in video game history.

Valid concerns? Although Microsoft denied that it was going to use the purchase (at least “in the short term”) to “drive out” rivals from major franchises, Sony took action and revealed its arguments to regulators that from the US FCC to this CADE in Brazil, passing through the British, must approve a controversial operation that leaves the Redmond firm in a privileged position.

Microsoft denies the biggest:

In response, Microsoft reiterated its intent to preserve future games of major franchises from Activision Blizzard, such as Call of Duty, Diablo or Overwatch on Sony’s PlayStation platform, on Nintendo and others. In addition, he assures that the opposite would be a bad deal to cash out the astronomical amount of the purchase.

Microsoft says to keep these games exclusive would not attract enough new customers for Xbox enough to make up for the loss of PlayStation version sales, which are millionaires. And as an example, he cites another of the big franchises it owns, Minecraft, which is available for PlayStation and Nintendo Switch and which Microsoft acknowledges is a “bigger” business than Xbox.

The Redmond company took advantage of this news call Sony a “hypocrite” for their own exclusives, citing deals with the developers of Deathloop, Ghostwire Tokyo, or the Final Fantasy VII remake to keep them off the Xbox platform. Admittedly, Sony was the “king” of exclusives and that they were the main reason why the PlayStation surpassed the Xbox in sales of the previous generation of consoles.

This is what Microsoft is referring to when it mentions the truth “fear” to Sony because, in his opinion, he put Call of Duty and Blizzard games on his services GamePass would represent a “inflection point”which would divert customers away from retail purchases of PlayStation consoles.

Simply put, Microsoft believes that Sony is worried that the subscription service, which represents a new business model, threatens its dominance in traditional console game distributionthough she answered recently to the Game Pass contest on restructure completely PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now in a tiered service.

Call of Duty, to discuss

The franchise is a big focus of Microsoft’s purchase of Activision. The series has enjoyed massive commercial success, selling tens of millions of copies of each title that hits the market and generating billions of dollars in revenue. His influence is colossal in today’s video game industry.

Last week, several video game companies led by Sony responded to an inquiry by Brazilian regulator CADE. In essence, they believe that a franchise like Call of Duty would be “irreplaceable” if Microsoft stopped developing PlayStation versions, as they understand that no other developer or publisher could release a game that would compete on the same level.

Sony didn’t say no other company could make a game like Call of Duty, they just can’t replicate the Call of Duty brand. It has been the best-selling premium shooter for several years, even though its biggest competitors today are free-to-play.

Sony and Microsoft’s comments to CADE raise a question how much competition does call of duty have. your way battle royale free, Warzone, has big rivals like Fortnite, Apex Legends and PUBG. The landscape changes completely when you compare your other multiplayer modes or solo campaigns. Battlefield should be the most obvious competitor, but its most recent installment, Battlefield 2042, was a flop, and its lukewarm reception from players and critics put Call of Duty (even more) back in value.

Microsoft ensures that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard it doesn’t give you a monopoly market share in any corner of the gaming industry. He claims the joint venture has no more than 10 percent of the game development pie. In addition, while Sony has 30 percent of the digital distribution market for console games, today it has more than 50 percent.

All this, if we remove Call of Duty from the equation, it is understandable, because it is a unique franchise whose importance is in the debate about this purchase operation. We’ll see what happens and if the monstrous buying operation will be allowed (or not) from an economic point of view and with a lot of influence in the industry. In my humble opinion, these kinds of great gatherings end up being negative for users and the industry. And we have a dozen earlier examples. Whether Sony has a “right” to complain and what motivation it has is another matter.