Without Call of Duty, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West, and Marvel's Spider-Man would not have existed, at least as we know them, as we do now. That's the conclusion from Sony's internal complaint with antitrust authorities in support of their opposition to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
According to the document, if Microsoft purchases Activision Blizzard, Sony will have a limited ability to invest in game development because to the fact that Call of Duty players make up a large portion of all spending on Playstation hardware, peripherals, subscriptions, and other services.
The loss of all or even a substantial portion of these users would result in a loss of revenue and earnings, which would reduce Sony's chances of investing in future hardware and software innovations.
This logic may be extended to any third-party game, although not all of them sell as much as Call of Duty, which has a different impact on the average games released every year. Therefore, Sony's logic is clear: by losing such a substantial income stream for the PlayStation platform (they say about $ 1 billion in revenue), the entire platform will pay for it, which will reflect in future games from internal studios, which will have less resources.
