Is Call of Duty or Other Activision Blizzard Games Relevant to PlayStation Success? Microsoft disagrees, stating that the publisher only accounts for a small percentage of game sales on Sony consoles.
Microsoft has been attempting to purchase Activision Blizzard for over a year. First, regulators must be certain that the transaction will not result in a significant change in the market that would affect competition and consumers.
During the discussion, Sony and Microsoft argued quite differently. While Sony supports the PS5's "Call of Duty" brand in general, Microsoft is attempting to minimize its relevance.
Is Activision Blizzard no longer a Sony game?
The Xbox manufacturer even claims that Activision Blizzard and its games on PlayStation consoles only play a minor role in their submission to the UK CMA. Only a small percentage of games sold on PlayStation consoles are from this publisher.
PlayStation players purchase games from a variety of publishers to play on their consoles, according to Figure 6. Ubisoft and Take-Two are the most popular providers of games for the PlayStation.
Figure 6, with the source reference removed, is shown below and shows which publishers Microsoft claims to deliver games to each platform. First, it is striking that Microsoft seems to assume that significantly fewer games will be sold globally on the Xbox consoles than on Sony and Nintendo's competing platforms.
The percentage of self-published Xbox games is also shown to be very low. According to the graph, the own contribution is almost negligible, which is likely to be an effect of the Xbox Game Pass, which makes first-party game purchases virtually useless.
Despite the massive success of the PlayStation Call of Duty series, it is no less interesting to assume that Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Sony, and other smaller publishers combined sell more games on the PS4 and PS5 than Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft has made some exceptions. The artwork was inspired by estimates of global game sales in 2021 and is "approximately to scale." The chart also excludes "no free-to-play games like Fortnite".
"Call of Duty Vanguard" was released in 2021. The game was deemed a flop and failed to live up to expectations. Only one Meta score was given for the PS5 version.
"Activision is only the fifth largest game publisher," according to Microsoft. Activision is smaller than a few other publishers, such as EA and Take Two, and smaller than Sony's own publishing division in terms of revenue. In recent years, Activision has been either the third or, in 2020, the fourth largest publisher (behind Sony), closely followed by Take-Two and Ubisoft."
Microsoft plus Activision Blizzard vor Sony
Newzoo gave up a survey last year showing the most successful game publishers out, whereby the income was decisive. Only then do Electronic Arts and Take-Two follow.
If the acquisition of Sony had already been completed at the time, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard would have been placed ahead of Sony in 2021, according to another graph.
More information on Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and Sony.
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