Microsoft leans on Game Pass, Call of Duty promises to calm regulators - The Washington Post
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/01/microsoft-activision-game-pass-call-of-duty-playstation
Microsoft’s unprecedented $68.7 billion purchase of embattled video game giant Activision Blizzard has antitrust regulators sniffing the scene with eyebrows raised, prompting a response this week from the tech giant. Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty series, it said, will continue to launch on Sony’s PlayStation consoles as well as on Xbox, while Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service will bring franchises like Overwatch and Diablo to other devices, including phones, via streaming.
That latter point — repeatedly emphasized by Microsoft — glosses over an inconvenient fact: Game Pass is itself a platform, one that allows users to access a rotating selection of hundreds of games to download and play for a low monthly price. In spreading it far and wide, Microsoft is not performing some act of selfless magnanimity. Instead, it’s setting itself up to come out on top in the next video game console war, one in which apps and services win the day, not specific devices. (A U.K. regulator argued as much in a decision published Thursday, which amounted to the first real public challenge to Microsoft’s planned acquisition).
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