Call of Duty will remain available on PlayStation and Sony is using arguments in bad faith for the sole purpose of manipulating antitrust: this is the accusation made by journalist Jez Corden during a long and detailed editorial.
A few hours after the news of the Call of Duty Next event, which reaffirmed the centrality of the famous shooter within the videogame market, Corden thought about the strategy of the Japanese house aimed at blocking the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
“Sony’s tactic has long revolved around the idea of eliminating Xbox, but in recent years the company has pushed further in this direction, putting in place more or less underhanded strategies in order to obfuscate the Microsoft platform and raise doubts about its. operated, “wrote Corden.
“Games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake were cataloged as temporal exclusives at the time of the announcement, but their arrival on Xbox is still blocked, to the detriment of users who have been waiting for it so far.”
“Other games, such as the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy, will boast exclusive PlayStation content and we all remember the well-known Destiny situation, which had entire missions excluded from the Xbox version, decreasing their value.”
“Sony also monopolized the entire fighting game genre with Street Fighter V exclusivity deals, while limiting cross-play for titles it did not have exclusive rights to. How these practices are good for the industry? Exactly?”
“Sure, it’s business and even Microsoft has done something similar in the past, especially during the Xbox 360 era. The media outcry over the Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity deal has been vehement and it’s not Microsoft that has since almost completely sidelined these kinds of operations to the advantage of PlayStation. But this is where the truth about Sony’s fears in relation to Call of Duty emerges. ”
“Sony is not afraid of losing Call of Duty, nor of running out of some game content. What they fear is that users will perceive the value of Xbox Game Pass, they are afraid of losing the ability to dictate the game market. ”
So Corden gave the example of cross-play. “Nintendo does not block cross-play, nor do Steam or Xbox: only Sony blocks this functionality, and it does so in order to make it more difficult for users to choose any platform that is not the most popular. And in effect limit the choice. of consumers is what antitrust should prevent. ”
“The hard truth is the acquisition of Activision Blizzard is not something that is only positive for Xbox, rather it is the opposite of what Sony claims: the deal will benefit all users and the industry as a whole.”