The war for Call of Duty between Microsoft and Sony recently took a new turn with the active involvement of Activision Blizzard. The latter is the publisher of the action franchise. It looks like the company is willing to put all the effort into sealing the deal with the Xbox maker. To make sure it happens eventually, it has presented a new argument in the public eye.
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While responding to the US agency FTC (Federal Trade Commission), which is the biggest roadblock for the $68.7 billion merger, Activision recently revealed several key points. It emphasized on the fact that even without Call of Duty, Sony will succeed with the PlayStation, no matter what.
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Activision says Call of Duty is not necessary for PlayStation to thrive since it has got other big IPs too!
Earlier this year, in January 2022, Microsoft shocked everyone in the industry by announcing its mammoth partnership with Activision. The proposed acquisition, however, has faced endless obstacles so far. While some agencies have approved the deal without any issues, others haven’t been so kind, to say the least. And the U.S. FTC is among the latter ones.
The federal commission has been against the merger of Microsoft and the Call of Duty publisher ever since it got involved in the situation. Thanks to the growing concerns of Sony, the agency has shown a strict stance towards the $68.7 billion deal, citing various reasons.
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However, Activision believes that FTC’s points to block their deal with the Xbox maker are not strong enough. In its recent response to the agency (given to CNBC), the publisher mentioned that Sony is not a small gaming company. And that it has all the strength in the world to keep dominating the market even if Call of Duty ends up not being on the PlayStation.
“If Xbox were to remove Call of Duty from PlayStation, Sony has more than enough weapons in its arsenal to continue to compete effectively,” read the statement given from Activision in its response to the US Federal Trade Commission.
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Considering the bigger picture, it’s not an incorrect argument by any means. Sony has got first-party IPs like God of War, Spider-Man, The Last of Us, Ratchet and Clank, and upcoming titles like Final Fantasy XVI, and Death Stranding 2. They are all capable of generating huge profit worldwide. So hypothetically, even if CoD is not there on the PlayStation consoles, Sony won’t get affected whatsoever.
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