Microsoft Responds To CMA Questions, Gives Potential Remedies To Push Merge Through

Over the past sev­er­al weeks, Microsoft (along with a num­ber of oth­er par­ties) have filed doc­u­ments with the UK’s Com­pe­ti­tion and Mar­kets Author­i­ty regard­ing the rul­ing on the pro­posed Microsoft-Activi­sion Bliz­zard merg­er. On March 21st, Microsoft filed sup­ple­men­tal answers to the reg­u­la­tor’s many ques­tions, includ­ing poten­tial solu­tions regard­ing the Call of Duty series. The CMA was sup­posed to make its final deci­sion on April 25th, but has since been moved to May 22nd.

Microsoft began its doc­u­ment by reit­er­at­ing that it does not want to make Call of Duty exclu­sive to the Xbox plat­form. Microsoft also pro­posed two pos­si­ble solu­tions to the CMA’s con­cerns: a pub­lish­ing agree­ment between Sony and Microsoft that would keep the desired Call of Duty fran­chise on PlaySta­tion for 10 years, and a cloud gam­ing deal that would give world­wide licens­es to con­sumers and cloud gam­ing providers to stream Activi­sion PC games they own. The fil­ing did note Nvidia sup­ports this deal.

Many details of Microsoft and Sony’s pro­posed deals have been redact­ed from the pub­lic. How­ev­er, fil­ing does say that Microsoft would apply this rem­e­dy to the PS4, PS5 and any “suc­ces­sor con­soles.” Microsoft fur­ther explains it has “no incen­tive, or indeed abil­i­ty, to take Call of Duty exclu­sive.” This rem­e­dy will also give PlaySta­tion par­i­ty when it comes to Call of Duty, releas­ing the same “con­tent, fea­tures, upgrades, qual­i­ty, and playa­bil­i­ty,” on the PlaySta­tion platform.