Sony has expressed concerns about Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the possible implications for the future of Call of Duty games on PlayStation consoles.
According to Sony’s comments on the UK’s Competition Markets Authority remedies notice in February, which have been made public recently, the company is worried that Microsoft may “degrade the quality and performance of Call of Duty on PlayStation compared to Xbox.”
Sony has listed several ways that this could happen, such as bugs and glitches, less use of PS5 features, and a lack of investment in multiplayer on PlayStation.
The company has even suggested that Microsoft might deliberately release a PlayStation version of Call of Duty with bugs and errors that emerge only on the game’s final level or after later updates.
While it seems unlikely that Microsoft would deliberately make Call of Duty worse on other platforms, Sony argues that problems could arise even if Microsoft operated in good faith.
Sony believes that Microsoft would be incentivized to prioritize the development of the Xbox version of the game, using its best engineers and more of its resources. This, according to Sony, would make it practically impossible for a regulatory body to monitor for any potential infringement.
The backlash from players would be quick and severe if Microsoft were to deliberately degrade the quality of Call of Duty on PlayStation.
Moreover, Microsoft already runs Minecraft as a multiplatform game without any issues, and that one is arguably much bigger than Call of Duty. Nevertheless, Sony remains concerned about the possibility of any negative impact on PlayStation’s competitiveness, even without an active decision on the part of Microsoft to degrade the game on PlayStation.