Call of Duty’s effect applies to one of PlayStation Studios’ (or Sony Interactive Entertainment’s) critical IPs.

Since the PlayStation 4, Sony has pushed to have several first-party, in-house developed IPs, which have been successful. Examples include Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn (which has since received a cross-gen sequel and a PlayStation VR2-exclusive spinoff), but also God of War, which was released in April 2018 for PlayStation 4 and a few years later for PC, which saw Kratos wander into the world of the Norse gods, and got a son, Atreus.

The UK’s markets and competition watchdog, the CMA, has also requested documents from Sony, which is vehemently opposed to Microsoft’s move (it doesn’t want to spend $68.7 billion to get its hands on Activision’s Blizzard King). On Twitter, Derek Strickland highlighted what he found. Sony says Call of Duty players spend approximately $1 billion on PlayStation hardware, accessories, subscriptions, games, and other services. If these players were to abandon the PlayStation 5 for the Xbox Series, the company would be less able to invest in future hardware and games.

It would “reduce the potential return on producing innovative first-party games, thereby diminishing SIE’s ability and incentive to invest in new games.” Thus, God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, and other significant PlayStation brands would have less chance of existence without Call of Duty. Or perhaps we could say Death Stranding, in which Sony did have a role, and a sequel is in the works.

A survey has already confirmed that gamers chose PlayStation 5 because of Call of Duty rather than the in-house developed, exclusive games (which makes the Live from PS5 TV ad campaign a bit of a joke because it mainly talks about first-party games).

Source: PSL