In the recent filings submitted to British regulators, Microsoft debated all aspects of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard . Sony had previously stated that " Call of Duty " is a very powerful franchise, and even the " Battlefield " series is not its opponent. Now Microsoft strikes back and says that the "Call of Duty" series and Activision do not have that much market influence.
Microsoft stated in its argument that among the top 20 console games in the UK in 2021, only two are Activision's games, one of which is Call of Duty. To prove that Call of Duty is not unique, Microsoft has put forward four key points.
· Call of Duty has always been at the forefront of user voting on PlayStation (for example, Sony's annual game vote has always rated games outside of Call of Duty as their game of the year or the most anticipated game).
· "Call of Duty" has always been at the top in Metacritic score (for example, "Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War" ranked 18th in 2020. "Call of Duty: Pioneer" ranked 73rd in 2021).
· In the industry comments of popular games (such as IGN, USA Today, Business Insider, Game Rant, etc.), Call of Duty has always ranked higher than other games.
· Call of Duty did not promote social media conversations. In 2021, there were more than 2.4 billion tweets about games, however, none of the Call of Duty games entered the top ten of the "most-watched video games" on Twitter last year.
