The UK's Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) has released its provisional report on the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft-168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Activision merger and found that it "may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition in gaming consoles and cloud gaming services in the UK." Although the CMA provisionally found that the merger would be 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:harmful to gamers more broadly, it specifically found that the merger would be harmful to PlayStation as Microsoft would very likely make 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty an exclusive property.
This assessment came after 3 million business documents, several 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:consultations with the public, interviews with major players in the games industry, and public surveys. In those surveys, the CMA found th🍰at almost a quarter of Call of Duty players would switch to Xbox if Microsoft made it an exclusive ga🎉me franchise.
"The large maj🥀ority of our survey respondents (ie, CoD gamers as described above) indicated that the content available on a console is important to their choice oꦅf console," wrote the CMA, "and around 24% of them said they would divert away from PlayStation if CoD were no longer available on that platform."
The CMA found that Microsoft's previous acquisitions typically resulted in exclusive game franchises and that Microsoft would be highly incentivized to make Call of Duty exclusive. This comes in direct opposition to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft's own statements saying that it wouldn't make financial sense to rem🎶ove Call of Duty from PlayStation's larger user base.
The CMA also considered how making such a massive franchise exclusive would be hugely damaging to💙 Microsoft's reputation, but found "this would not be enough to make these strategies commercially disadvantageous in the 🌊long run."
Other harms found in the CMAs provisional report on the Microsoft-Activision merger impacted the nascent cloud gaming market, where Microsoft holds a substantial lead over PlayStation. You can read more about that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:in our previous coverage. The CMA gave all parties🐓 until March𝐆 1 to provide their responses to this provisional report, with a final decision expected later this summer.