Another day, another series of informational nuggets from the ongoing legal battle between Microsoft and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the former’s bid to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion USD.
Today’s an interesting one, with a number of documents submitted to courts by Sony having been poorly redacted – sensitive details seemingly blacked out with a sharpie which then didn’t hold up against the court’s scanner – and revealing some before-unseen insight into PlayStation’s inner workings, including just how important the Call of Duty franchise is to its bottom line.
According to said documents, which haee since been pulled from records but can still be seen in The Verge’s report here, the Call of Duty series is worth a hell of a lot to PlayStation, reportedly generating over $1.5 billion USD globally for the company through game sales alone. Factoring in the additional revenue it creates through hardware, accessory, subscription and digital content sales you’re looking at potentially (the redacted numbers in this part of the document are a little harder to read) over $13-15 billion USD in created value.
Microsoft’s CEO Wants To Get Rid Of Console Exclusives Entirely
That’s because, according to these same documents, it was revealed that PlayStation users spend a significant amount of time playing CoD. Last year alone, a reported six million players spent over 70% of their gaming time on PlayStation devices playing a Call of Duty title, and a staggering one million players played only Call of Duty on PlayStation in 2021.
The court documents also clarify that the last Call of Duty game to be released under Sony’s exclusive marketing deal with Activision will be released later this year.
Falling victim to the same redaction stumble, it was also revealed that Sony’s own big franchise releases like Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part II cost over $200 million USD each and five-plus years to develop, so it’s little wonder the company is so concerned with keeping such a ridiculous money-making IP like Call of Duty on its platform.
