In a questionnaire submitted by the Brazilian competition authority, Sony reveals its fears of seeing Call of Duty becoming an Xbox and PC exclusive. If for the moment Microsoft is still subject to its contractual obligations on the license, the Japanese firm believes that in the long term, the disappearance of the saga from its catalog could lower PS5 sales in favor of the competition.
As the world barely recovers from Microsoft’s historic takeover of Activision-Blizzard, Sony is preparing for the worst internally. In any case, this is what a recent document from the firm reveals, which answers questions from the Brazilian competition regulatory authority, which is closely examining this transaction in the same way as several other countries. In its answers, Sony could not be clearer: at present, no game comes close to Call of Duty.
Indeed, the aura of the license goes far beyond the video game sphere. Sony recalls that Call of Duty is the only IP from video games to have climbed into the top 10 of users’ favorite entertainment brands, alongside behemoths like Star Wars and Harry Potter, despite the strong loss of license speed in recent years. In addition, the manufacturer explains that more than 2700 people in total work on Call of Duty, which is much more than in most development studios.
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PS5 sales will drop if console loses Call of Duty, Sony says
And it doesn’t stop there: Sony also notes that Call of Cudy has 24 million subscribers on Facebook and 12 million on Instagram. Fact, “Call of Duty is so popular that it influences users’ choice of console, and its community of loyal users is strong enough that even if a competitor had the budget to develop a similar product, they couldn’t compete with him”says the company.
For the latter, it is very unlikely that players will agree to switch to a license, because they “Would lose that familiarity, those skills, and even the friends they made while playing Call of Duty games. » If it is not impossible that Call of Duty will become an Xbox and PC exclusive in the future, Sony has not failed to remind Microsoft that its contract which binds it to Activision stipulates that the next three opuses will have to be cross-platform. . For its part, the Redmond firm plays appeasement by saying that it does not plan to withdraw the saga from the PlayStation catalog.