Here’s the background:

What happened now? According to “gamesindustry.biz”, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has found the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard to be anti-competitive in an initial review phase. According to the report:

[Der Kauf] Is likely to result in a significant lessening of competition in a market or markets in the UK.

Two arguments lead the competition regulators to their conclusion:

• The deal could result in Microsoft “withholding or weakening” Activision Blizzard’s content from other consoles or subscription services
• Microsoft could use its broader ecosystem along with Activision’s catalog to “erect barriers to entry and shut out competitors in cloud gaming services”

A second phase will now examine further steps and Microsoft will get a chance to address the agency’s concerns.

We also talked about the deal on the MeinMMO podcast:

How does Microsoft react? In a statement from Xbox boss Phil Spencer, the manager makes it clear that they are not planning any protectionist measures. On the contrary. One wants to give more gamers access to the players.

This is not limited to Xbox. They want to allow gamers to choose how they play and where they play. Whether on mobile, on PC, on console – developers would benefit from these possibilities and that is exactly the goal: more innovation through greater availability.

That’s supposed to happen in two ways:

• The subscription option through Game Pass
• Making more games available on mobile, such as through cloud services.

Then Spencer says exactly what Sony has been so afraid of in recent months:

Game Pass empowers developers to deliver more games to more players, not fewer. We intend to make Activision Blizzard’s popular game library – including Overwatch, Diablo and Call of Duty – available on Game Pass and expand those gaming communities. By bringing even more value to gamers, we hope to further expand Game Pass and broaden its appeal to mobile and all connected devices.

Further, Spencer promises that Call of Duty will continue to appear on the PlayStation. He even says that CoD will be released on the same day as on all other platforms.

He cites Minecraft, whose developer Mojang was acquired by Microsoft in 2014, as an example. They had good experiences with opening the game further for all platforms instead of closing themselves off. That’s exactly what they want to do with Activision Blizzard’s titles in the future.

Spencer expects that a thorough review will show that the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard enriches the industry and benefits gamers.

So CoD Day-1 in Game Pass? How the current announcements will ausiwkren on the release of CoD in Game Pass, remains to be seen. Currently, there are no indications that the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will end up in Game Pass at release.

However, the old games, the CoDs of the last few years could quickly end up in the Pass. Of these, some are still actively played, especially the predecessor to the latest CoD – Modern Warfare from 2019.

For now, it remains to be seen how this will play out. Whether the deal will go through at all. But the announcement is likely to make a nightmare come true for Sony, which they want to prevent at all costs. Also with a view to the games from Blizzard:

Will we never have to buy Blizzard games again? Diablo and Overwatch 2 come to the Xbox Game Pass – What about WoW?