Limiting Call of Duty to Battle.net, it was a miserable failure according to Microsoft

Makes Call of duty Exclusive to Battle.net on PC was ” resounding failure In Microsoft’s own words spotted in a document filed during the company’s lawsuit against the FTC, the US competition watchdog. In 2018, Activision announced that the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 It won’t be available on Steam, but will launch exclusively on Blizzard’s Battle.net service.

The legal battle behind Call of Duty

Despite fans’ frustration, the publisher stood by its decision for nearly five years. But, in the past year the company has slipped by supply Call of Duty Modern Warfare II on Steam. According to court documents, this decision was motivated by the failure of Activision’s efforts to develop Battle.net through the franchise Call of duty.

These documents reveal interesting details that speak in favor of Microsoft. The Class Counsel used this example to prove that the platform (consoles, online stores, and game streaming services) doesn’t need it Call of duty To achieve success and access to the popular FPS series does not guarantee success.

The strategy behind the decision to limit FPS distribution to a single service was to attract users to Battle.net, thus inflating the size of the home gaming platform’s community. This strategy did not bear fruit, as Battle.net’s monthly active users remained Relatively stable during the period when he had exclusive access [à Call of Duty] Meanwhile, the number of monthly active Steam users has increased exponentially, from 67 million users in 2017 to 132 million users in 2021.

Microsoft lawyers wanted to prove that exclusive access to Call of duty It is not necessary or sufficient to make the platform successful, and even if it is available on the platform, it does not mean that it will see a significant increase in its customers. So, even if Microsoft makes a Call of duty An Xbox exclusive, that doesn’t matter since there are platforms that have already managed without the game. They also cite the Nintendo Switch as an example of success, despite the lack of Call of duty.

The court document notes that if Activision content becomes an Xbox exclusive, Sony, the maker of PlayStation, can respond in a number of ways, including by cutting prices or buying out other third-party studios and publishers. However, it should be noted that even when CoD was exclusive to Battle.net, the game was still available to anyone who owned a PC. This wouldn’t be the case for PlayStation owners then Call of duty It became an Xbox exclusive.