In their latest response to UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Sony say CMA siding with Microsoft regarding the Activision Blizzard deal is "unprecedented, surprising and irrational."
Sony and Microsoft have both officially responded to CMA's recent findings on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard . In their response, Sony have stated that CMA's change of position on this deal is "surprising, irrational and unprecedented".
CMA's initial report suggested that the UK regulator could block the deal or ask for structural remedies but their latest report states that the deal will not hurt the competition in the consoles space, which is obviously what made Sony issue such aggressive comments.
"The CMA's reversal of its position on its consoles theory of harm is surprising, unprecedented, and irrational," Sony said in their response . "The Provisional Findings assessed a significant body of evidence in the round to support its finding that Microsoft would have the ability and incentive to withhold Activision content, and that this would substantially lessen competition by foreclosing PlayStation."
Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan also responded to CMA and his comments are no less dramatic. Ryan made it clear that PlayStation would be doomed if Microsoft created only a slightly worse version of Call of Duty on PlayStation than the Xbox version.
"As SIE's CEO, Jim Ryan, explained to the CMA at the Remedies Hearing, if PlayStation received a degraded version of Call of Duty, it would "seriously damage our reputation. Our gamers would desert our platform in droves and network effects would exacerbate the problem. Our business would never recover."
Activision
Overreacting? Of course but there is the fact that Call of Duty does bring in a lot of money for Sony. Call of Duty certainly is one of the most important games for PlayStation as the revenue it generates thanks to in-game purchases comes in handy for Sony in developing their major exclusive titles like God of War or Marvel's Spider-Man.
Sony fear that Microsoft could even make the game exclusive to Xbox but Phil Spencer was pretty adamant that Microsoft's goal is to make Call of Duty available to more players, not less. It's safe to say that Sony still not giving up on their goal to block the merger, which is expected to close in the coming months, according to Microsoft.
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