Sony Claims Microsoft Could Release Call of Duty on PlayStation With Bugs - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 March 2023 / 5,532 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment's response to Microsoft's remedies over its Activision Blizzard acquisition sent to the UK regulators, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), was published earlier today and the company says behavioral remedies are insufficient to address concerns by the regulators.
Sony claims Microsoft has multiple ways it "could withhold or degrade access [which] would be extremely difficult to monitor and police."
If Microsoft were to fail to comply with behavioral remedies Sony states Microsoft would only risk paying a fine.
"If Microsoft failed to comply with its commitment, it would likely only risk paying a fine (possibly many years later)," said Sony. "But rivals' access to Call of Duty would be immediately foreclosed, irreparably damaging their ability to compete and ultimately harming consumers."
Sony claims one way Microsoft could circumvent its obligations to release Call of Duty on PlayStation is to make the Call of Duty games buggy on PlayStation consoles.
"Swiftly detecting any diversions from, and ensuring compliance with, a commitment as to technical or graphical quality would be challenging," said Sony. "For example, Microsoft might release a PlayStation version of Call of Duty where bugs and errors emerge only on the game's final level or after later updates.
"Even if such degradations could be swiftly detected, any remedy would likely come too late, by which time the gaming community would have lost confidence in PlayStation as a go-to venue to play Call of Duty.
“Indeed, as Modern Warfare II attests, Call of Duty is most often purchased in just the first few weeks of release. If it became known that the game's performance on PlayStation was worse than on Xbox, Call of Duty gamers could decide to switch to Xbox, for fear of playing their favorite game at a second-class or less competitive venue."
Sony added that Microsoft would be incentivized to prioritize the Xbox version of Call of Duty games.
"Even if Microsoft operated in good faith, it would be incentivized to support and prioritize development of the Xbox version of the game, such as by using its best engineers and more of its resources," said Sony.
"There would be no practical way for the CMA (or SIE) to monitor how Microsoft chooses to allocate its resources and the quality/quantity of engineers it devotes to the PlayStation version of Call of Duty, to ensure that SIE would be treated fairly and equally."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This whole thing is getting way beyond embarrassing at this point...
There's cringe and then there's whatever the hell this is lol
Their list of excuses has dwindled down to absolute nonsense now I see. The deal Xbox offered Sony includes marketing, features, content, performance, and even subscription service parity. Bugs would fall under the performance parity aspect of that deal, therefore Xbox would be committing to releasing CoD in roughly the same state on both platforms in terms of bugginess on release. Obviously exact performance parity is impossible to hit, as one platform or the other can develop a platform specific bug that isn't discovered in playtesting, or a patch can break something unintended that has to be fixed in a subsequent patch, but there are reasonable limits to what would be considered performance parity and what wouldn't, Xbox obviously wouldn't be allowed to release the game with a Fallout New Vegas level of bugs on PS and remarkably less bugs on Xbox for instance, that would violate their agreement.
Sony themselves have obtained marketing rights on 3rd party games that got them better performance and less bugs on release than the same game on Xbox, as those devs were treating PS as their lead platform as a result of the marketing deal. This entire argument feels hypocritical of Sony at best.
MS already said they will hire a 3rd party auditor to make sure they keep up their end of the deals. This has also never been an issue with any game MS has released on PS and other competing services.
These arguments get more desperate every week.
The more likely this deal is going to pass, the more desperate and childishly pathetic Sony's lies get.
Sony is discrediting and humiliating themselves.
No way I'm spending as much money on them anymore. Might have to buy many of their 1st party games as 2nd hand purchases. No way such disgusting immorality should go unpunished.
Lol
Sony is getting desperate now. Trying anything they can to sabotage this deal. The regulators are taking notice now. They dont need Sony to be okay with things in order to pass the deal. all they asked was for MS to offer up some concessions... and they have. MS will own ABK with or without Sony being on board. Sony fans can thank Jim Ryan for being stubborn because now its going to cost them any sort of deal that was on the table.
I'd bet Kaz would have taken the deal while at the same time just tasked his internal teams to work on their own CoD killer franchise. Then they would have both to offer fans whereas after all of this... they get nothing. Thanks jimbo.
sony is so full of it. You accuse others of doing what you yourself are doing..
if they had that intention im sure it would already been done on the Microsoft products Sony uses, which is countless microsoft software
I haven't heard any complaints from PS gamers playing FO76, ESO, Minecraft/Minecraft Dungeons, Deathloop, Ghostwire: Tokyo since those acquisitions closed, or even the PS+ streaming service since Sony uses Microsoft Azure for streaming. Minecraft Legends will be another test to show that MS keeps parity with their multiplat releases.
Not to mention, CoD is already a bug ridden mess every year xD
This argument went far... Could it be that Sony's hypothesis is what it practices with Microsoft? Does Sony pay third party studios to slightly lower the quality of multiplayer games?
"Accuse them of what you do..."
Lol, doesn't Activision already do that!
How has MineCraft been doing on PlayStation?
That would be just like ABK then =p
Did they make this claim about Bethesda games ?
Long after Microsoft bought Bethesda, ID released a free (not $10, free) PS5 update to Doom Eternal that got rave reviews. This conspiracy theory is just embarrassing Sony.
and I've got a 12 inch dick.
wow... like, just wow lmao...
They act like their system has never once had bugs or games with issues, and I'm just... flabbergasted.
Does Jim have any examples of them doing this in the past?
Also his literally taken content off other versions of CoD in the past so PS has a superior version... wtf is wrong with this guy.
They never had to do it in the past, since microsoft never owned the brand.
I am referring to previous games when they brought out other companies.
Specifically as to the quality claim, Microsoft hasn't done that in the past with Minecraft, Doom Eternal, Fallout 76, Elder Scrolls Online, etc. So this claim is spurious.
Those games aren't as important as cod though
True. But Sony's argument flies in the face of past practice all the same. So it makes it less likely to be true.
Lost in this discussion is that Microsoft, as a multiplatform developer, has a reputation to protect. Ditto the CoD teams at Activision, who presumably have pride of purpose in their jobs.
Call of Duty games always launch full of bugs and crashes and other issues. Wtf is this bullshit? Obviously it will launch with bugs on all platforms.
This is a pathetic response by Sony, but at the same time, it's not like it's that much of a stretch. Though, I doubt Microsoft would purposely do it. If they did release it as a buggy mess, it will be a buggy mess for all Consoles and not just Sony. Halo is a perfect example...
Well, the reality will always be, that Call of Duty will be released on Xbox (and everywhere else) with bugs, regardless of MS is buying Acti or not.
There is an old saying that goes "Every accusation is a confession".
Wouldn't Microsoft want to immediately make good on their expenditure? A buggy game would go against that...
Hahaha this is laughable but plausible
Lets google : Microsoft Says Bethesda Games Will Be 'First or Better or Best' on Xbox
Then lets google tood howard saying that he putting more work in games like skyrim on xbox , a game that bethesda had a deal with microsoft and was a turd on pstation.
They know the game on ps if deal goes will never had the same treatment, do everyone think that for example there is a massive bug in a future cod game they will fix it at the same time and release patches at the same time in every console? No way , they will fix it first on xbox and if they have time they might thihink about it if does no cost much money xD
And yet, Doom Eternal got an amazing (and free... it would likely have cost $10 had it been a Sony franchise) update for PS5. IIRC, it even supported Sony's fancy adaptive triggers, making it arguably the better version over Xbox if so. And I don't hear anyone asserting that Minecraft is better on Xbox. So what we're seeing in fact is opposite to this claim.
