Sony says that other creators would struggle to produce a brand that challenges Activision’s Call of Duty and that it stands out “as a gaming genre on its own.” Microsoft claims it isn’t as significant as its competitor claims. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. In these papers to CADE, Microsoft also stated that not distributing titles like Call of Duty at competitor console retailers “would simply not be viable” for the corporation.
Microsoft claims that a strategy of not distributing Activision Blizzard games on competing consoles would be profitable only if the games could attract a large number of players to the Xbox ecosystem, resulting in revenue to compensate for losses from not selling these titles on competing consoles.
