Sony fears Microsoft will give it an inferior version of Call of Duty for its Playstation port

Put on your tinfoil hats and enter the conspiracy space with Sony. Despite Microsoft's recent deals with Nvidia and Nintendo to offer access to Call of Duty on their respective platforms, Sony doesn't believe that Microsoft is being honest in its approach. Instead, the publisher fears that the Activision buyout will allow Microsoft to give Sony a deliberately worse and sabotaged version of Call of Duty. As crazy as that sounds, would it be possible?

A potential version of Call of Duty bad on Playstation

Microsoft is on the verge of buying out Activision Blizzard King, completing the biggest buyout in video game history. As the owner of the entire Call of Duty production, which has a huge market share, the Redmond firm could decide to give Sony an inferior version of COD for its console, in order to make players want to switch to the competing console. Obviously, this sounds big. Yet there is a complicated boundary to define that supports Sony's argument.

In practical terms, what would stop Microsoft from putting less budget, less effort or less good developers on the PS5 version of the game compared to other platforms? And, even if that were the case, and some people realized it and decided to speak out about it, the line between deliberate sabotage and natural time constraints or financial crisis could make the truth very difficult to prove.

The cult of silence about this kind of problem in the industry would not help to set the record straight either. In any case, it's a big problem for the video game market right now!

On the other hand, I think that if Microsoft gave a sabotaged version of Call of Duty to Sony, the industry wouldn't necessarily react... unless gamers got involved.

The players are not that stupid

The video game industry has a lot of flaws (like any industry that makes a lot of money and without sufficient regulation of its practices). Therefore, if Microsoft sabotaged the Playstation version of COD, I think it would take years to prove and make the regulators react. This would be a huge loss for Sony. However, if the public gets involved, that's another story.

Microsoft cares about its brand image. With the Xbox Game Pass, it has become a very generous and interesting player for gamers, in addition to its own video game productions. On the other hand, if the PS5 version was inferior to the other ports, gamers would be the first to notice. This would lead to a tsunami of memes on Reddit and virulent Tweets that could damage Microsoft's image.

If the public got involved, things would potentially hurt Microsoft as much as Sony and would push the Redmond firm to rework its Playstation version of Call of Duty. Besides, gamers are more than aware of the Microsoft/Activision saga and the regulatory issues of this buyout since the deal has been making the headlines in video game news since it was announced on January 18, 2022.

No matter what you think, it's never good for a player as big as Microsoft to take on even more power through takeovers. We need diversity and competition for each company to do its best.

In parallel, Activision is focusing on the release of Warzone mobile, which could take place on May 15 depending on the date of the stores. The publisher believes that Warzone mobile will gradually kill Call of Duty mobile, but that it is part of its plans. So everything is under control.