The Microsoft, Sony Fight Over The Activision Purchase Is Getting Ugly

This took a bit longer than I expected, but the dirty tactics are starting to come out between Microsoft and Sony over the former’s desire to purchase Activision Blizzard. While we’ve been talking about the $69 billion mega-deal for some time, the conversation more recently has focused on three regulatory bodies that have expressed varying levels of concern about the deal: the FTC in the States, the CMA in the UK, and EU regulators. The last of those has begun signaling that the proposed and/or signed deals Microsoft has struck with other platforms to keep Activision games on those systems is likely to win them over. The FTC and CMA have yet to come off of their previously stated positions publicly.

Which is why this is not just a regulatory and business battle, but a PR battle as well. Lulu Cheng Meservey, Activision’s EVP of Corporate Affairs, has decided to chime in by airing out some private business laundry for the public.

Opening the door to allegedly reveal what was said in a closed door meeting between businesses and a regulator is certainly a choice. Predictably, fans of Microsoft are cheering her on, claiming this shows that Sony is acting entirely in bad faith. Fans of Sony are doing the opposite, chiding her for airing this dirty laundry and wondering aloud whether this portrayal of Sony’s words is accurate. For what it’s worth, Sony has yet to confirm or deny the accuracy of the claim as of the time of this writing.

Which is mostly besides the point. This fight is getting ugly. And not just on the Microsoft side, either. Over at the CMA side of things, Sony has been worrying aloud about all kinds of things that Microsoft could do, inadvertently or not, that sound more like conspiracy-mongering rather than having anything concrete to be upset about. 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 favourite game at a second-class or less competitive venue.

That could happen, I suppose. But it would immediately land Microsoft into boiling antitrust waters if there was even a hint that the company sabotaged competitors versions of the game intentionally. And it would really piss off the public generally if that was the view from them as well, doing damage to the CoD franchise as a result. On top of all of that, the deal Microsoft inked with Nintendo, as well as the one proposed to Sony, stipulates that the games would be equal as a product on all systems.

So now we wait for the FTC and CMA to make their decisions. Somehow, though, I expect that this is going to get even uglier before it’s over.