Microsoft‘s full response to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)’s provisional findings report from last month has finally been published. The tech and gaming giant has proposed a number of behavioral remedies to address the CMA’s concerns about the deal’s anticompetitive potential. Notably, the heavily-redacted response document explicitly confirms and reiterates that Microsoft has offered to let Sony offer Call of Duty games on its PlayStation Plus subscription service “at the same time and for the same duration” as on the former’s Xbox Game Pass service.

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The CMA outlined two substantial lessening of competition (SLC) scenarios in the console and cloud gaming markets in the provisional findings from its inquiry into the Microsoft-Activision deal, and proposed structural remedies that involved divesting the Call of Duty business altogether. However, it remained open to behavioral remedies that guaranteed access to Call of Duty for rival console manufacturers and services.

Having already signed such deals with Nintendo (for the Switch) and Nvidia (for GeForce Now), Microsoft has revealed that it has also offered to let Sony put any Call of Duty games that come to Xbox Game Pass on its PlayStation Plus service as well. This confirms the report from last December that first revealed the existence of this offer, but the new response document (dated February 22) also reveals full access parity by explicitly stating that the offer would see Call of Duty games provided through both services “at the same time and for the same duration.”

Microsoft’s new proposals may well put the final nail into the coffin of Sony’s opposition to the deal in front of the CMA, whose Phase 2 inquiry into Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is fast approaching its statutory deadline of April 26, 2023. Stay tuned here at MP1st for all upcoming developments in the situation.

Source: CMA