In a file filed with Brazil’s national competition authority, Microsoft claimed that Sony paid unnamed video game developers to prevent them from adding content to the Xbox game pass.
On August 9, Microsoft submitted a document to the Brazilian Economic Development Commission (Cade) in an attempt to obtain regulatory approval for its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a video game studio in California. This statement was found in the document.
In a translation released by verge, Microsoft said that its ability to continue expanding game pass was “hindered by Sony’s desire to curb such growth”. Microsoft went on to claim that “Sony paid the ‘blocking right’ to prevent developers from adding content to game PAS and other competitive subscription services.”
This is a bold statement, but Microsoft did not provide more information than in the document, and Sony did not comment. However, there are several interesting details.
Cade in Brazil is one of many competition regulators that Microsoft must pass to complete its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. However, unlike most international peers, Cade’s review process is open, and many relevant documents have been provided free of charge through its website.
Generally, large video game companies tend to keep their internal data as confidential as possible; Microsoft, in particular, has not released sales data of Xbox for many years. CapitaLand’s regulatory transparency is very similar to that of Apple vs The epic suite provides a rare opportunity to look behind the scenes. Therefore, since the end of July, a post on the game forum resetera has been mining Microsoft’s Cade files.
A key point emphasized in this post is Sony’s response to the Cade questionnaire. In short, Sony believes that Activision Blizzard’s flagship franchise “call of duty” is an essentially irreplaceable franchise and has no real competitors.
Although “call of duty” does have some competitors, the comprehensive effect of such factors as the game budget, the scale of Activision Blizzard and its current status in this category means that in Sony’s view, “call of duty” itself is a category.
Sony’s argument here is supported by the sales data of call of duty. Last year, the two best-selling games in 2021 were call of duty games, of which Black Ops sold far more than half: the digital sales on the first day of the cold war came from Sony’s PlayStation. You have to go back to 2006 to find that at least one call of duty game is not a best seller.
Microsoft has repeatedly said that it does not intend to keep the future call of duty games away from the competitors’ platforms; In fact, the next game in the series, Modern Warfare 2 this winter (not to be confused with Modern Warfare 2 in 2009), already has a page about steam. Even so, Sony does now find itself in a position where the most profitable third-party games on its platform may be owned by its biggest competitor and make money for it.
In addition, Sony claimed to Cade that game pass currently accounts for 60-70% of the market share of game subscription services. Although Sony recently joined the ranks, joining other major players such as apple arcade, NVIDIA’s geforce now and humble choice, it argued to Cade that it might take years for Xbox game pass to really compete in this field.
Although all this should be wishful thinking, it does outline an interesting picture of Sony’s changing priorities. When entering the current generation of console hardware, it seems that the company plans to take advantage of the momentum brought by Playstation 4 to carry out business as usual. Instead, Microsoft is moving to a more service-based model.
Now, Sony has acquired Bungie; It intends to shift its development focus to more profitable on-site service games; And transformed Playstation plus into a platform similar to game pass. In the past eight months or so, its plans and priorities have changed dramatically.
Sony is obviously repackaging itself here in an unexpected way. This may be due to multiple delays in the Playstation 5 release schedule.
An important factor favorable to Playstation, especially the PS4, is its exclusive product lineup, many of which have been pushed to 2023. Now Microsoft is talking about pulling the best-selling games of 2022 out of it. Sony must solve some problems here as soon as possible.
Overall, this does put Microsoft’s allegations in some useful context. In this case, if Sony uses its position to try to prevent some developers from entering Xbox games, it really makes sense. However, it seems that Sony finally feels the threat of Microsoft’s current game console plan is much greater than previously thought.