Sony: How Nintendo and Nvidia may help blunt Sony’s opposition to Microsoft-Activision deal – Times of India

Microsoft recently made efforts to save its biggest deal in Brussels. During a closed door hearing, company president Brad Smith presented a number of arguments saying that its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is good for competition. In order to convince the EU regulators, the Xbox maker announced 10-year deals to bring Call of Duty games on Nintendo and Nvidia. A recent development suggests that for Microsoft these deals may hold more significance than Sony’s opposition.
The Verge’s Tom Warren tweeted two images. One shows how many exclusive games Sony has for its PlayStation, compared to Xbox and other shows “150 million.”

He claims that Microsoft was going to show the difference between the exclusives that Sony had compared to the exclusive games on Xbox. “But Microsoft swapped it [the slide] out to push its message” that it was serious about offering the Call of Duty games to competitors, such as Nvidia and Nintendo, and eventually to 150 million more people.
Smith targets Sony
Smith did target Sony but his arguments seemingly had more context and included subtle references to the deals. He said Sony is a “super dominant company” that is outselling Xbox consoles and questioned the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which raised concerns similar to Sony’s.
“Do you want to kill a deal and cement Sony’s position and its 80% share in the European Economic Area… or do you want to let the future go forward with behavioural guardrails and remedies and bring this title to 150 million more people. I think that’s the fundamental choice that most regulators are going to need to address,” asked Smith.
Sony claims that if the deal is allowed, Microsoft will have the ability to make the famous Call of Duty franchise an Xbox exclusive that would drain consumers away from PlayStation. Microsoft has denied this claim saying that it is ready to offer a 10-year deal to Sony for keeping the game on PlayStation consoles.
Smith even showed a copy of the contract at Brussels saying, “I walk around with an envelope that contains the definitive agreement that we sent the Sony two days before Christmas.”

Sony PlayStation has more exclusives than Microsoft Xbox
Smith did highlight that “Sony has 286 exclusive titles, and Microsoft only has 59 on Xbox” – something he said in December last year. The top executive also said that a judge will “have to decide whether going from 59 to 60 is such a danger to competition that he should stop this [acquisition] from moving forward.”
While targeting Sony for cross-platform availability, Smith noted, “Mostly what you see is a cross-platform strategy for Microsoft even before this deal. Now as we look to the future, we believe the future is even more cross-platform than it has been in the past.”
“Microsoft has 58 games already running on PlayStation, Sony only has 2 running on Xbox. We’ve said that if this acquisition goes through, we’re happy to make sure that there’s a #59 with Call of Duty and no doubt others,” he said.

In October, Microsoft pointed out that since Microsoft announced the Activision Blizzard deal, Sony acquired several game studios. These include Bungie, developer of the popular online game Destiny 2, Haven Studios, Lasengle and Savage Games – and a minority interest in From Software, the developer of the biggest game of 2022, Elden Ring (among other hit games)
Sony also has minority shareholding in Epic Games, publisher of Fortnite.