A report following the investigation for the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft has discovered the difference in sales between PlayStation and Xbox.
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Everything indicates that one of the great soap operas of recent times in the world of video games is close to coming to an end: the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. However, the whole process is leaving many curiosities and interesting facts in reference to the Xbox and PlayStation brands. At the moment, the purchase has been approved by 37 countries, but the CMA continues to insist on its intention to block it. Now, with all the active research, it has been discovered the difference in sales between PlayStation and Xbox in Europe.
The information comes from the European Competition Commission, the body that recently approved the purchase and in the argument for its decision, highlighted that the window that PlayStation has in the market compared to Xbox has been a determining factor in changing their minds regarding the initial reports. “One important finding was that the overall market share for Microsoft and Activision was generally low in Europe. Only when you look at specific segments like ‘shooters’ do you get to over 20%. And for consoles, Sony sells around 4 times as many PlayStations as Microsoft sells Xboxes”, argued Margrethe Vestager, head of the commission.
Therefore, we have a very important piece of information that allows us to see the big difference between PlayStation and Xbox in our territory, with a much higher market share for the Japanese brand in relation to the North American. For the moment, it remains to be seen if Microsoft will convince the CMA not to find any obstacles in the transaction.
Call of Duty will not be a problem to approve the purchase, according to the European Commission
Another of the burning issues in Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is the inclusion of one of the biggest franchises in video game history: Call of Duty. However, the European Commission considers that the Redmond company would not shoot itself in the foot by preventing it from reaching a market share as large as those of PlayStation and Nintendo.
“Within this context, we did not think that the merger would pose a vertical problem. I was told that Call of Duty is a very popular shooter franchise. But we found that Microsoft probably wouldn’t shoot itself in the foot if it stopped sales of Call of Duty games. to the much larger base of PlayStation players. Our CMA colleagues agreed with us and ultimately came to the same conclusion.”
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