European Commission staff member under fire for saying Call of Duty will remain on "my...

midian182

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Facepalm: In another example of why people in the public eye should be careful when posting to social media, a European Commission staff member is facing claims of bias following a tweet about Call of Duty staying on the PlayStation.

Ricardo Cardoso, the Deputy Head of Unit Interinstitutional & Outreach at the European Commission, last week tweeted that the agency is "working to ensure that you will still be able to play Call of Duty on other consoles (including my Playstation [sic])."

The Commission has long emphasized that the main focus of its investigation into Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is to ensure the Redmond firm doesn't make games such as Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox and PC, a move it says will lead to competition concerns within the video games industry.

But while Cardoso was simply reaffirming that goal, using the word "my" PlayStation was ill-advised and has led to accusations of bias—a UK watchdog faced similar accusations last month when Microsoft said the regulator was relying "on self-serving statements by Sony."

The tweet resulted in the European Commission clarifying that Cardoso is not involved in the process of examining the acquisition. "Mr Cardoso works in the Director General for the Internal Market and not in the Directorate General for Competition," it said in a statement to Tweaktown. "Mr Cardoso is not involved in the assessment of this transaction. Furthermore, as indicated clearly in his Twitter profile, he tweets in a personal capacity."

Cardoso, in another tweet, confirmed that he did not work in the department that deals with mergers. "To clarify: I am not involved in the assessment of the merger and don't even work in the department dealing with mergers. As is clear from my profile my comments are personal and not a Commission position, whose decision will be taken on the basis of the facts and the law," he wrote over the weekend.

It's strange that Cardoso felt the need to post the tweet in the first place. Microsoft initially said it planned to keep CoD on PlayStation for several more years beyond Sony's current deal with Activision, which covers the series' subsequent two releases following the recently launched Modern Warfare II. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan said this was "inadequate," but Xbox head Phil Spencer now says the series will be on Sony's machines "as long as there's a PlayStation out there."

Microsoft is making progress toward completing the deal. Regulators in Saudi Arabia and Brazil have approved it, and the FTC is expected to give a ruling this month. The biggest hurdle at the moment could be the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, which has given March 1 as the deadline for its final decision. Microsoft also needs approval from regulators in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea.

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At this point, I'd like to point out that MS has been lagging behind the PS ever since Don Mattrick's botched Xbox One launch, 9 years ago. The PS4 sold TWICE as many, and the PS5 sold 1.5x as many as the Xbox counterpart.

As for Nintendo, they sold TWICE as many of the Switch in HALF the time than the Xbox One and Series COMBINED.

So it's a really backwards POV to be afraid of Microsoft abusing their monopoly position - there is none. They're a distant third.

It's also very cute from Sony to be this concerned - apparently they really like exclusives, except when it's not them making them.

If anything, it is Sony abusing their position. How about putting cloud backups behind a paywall? (free on Xbox) How about removing USB support for saves backup? How about fighting and blocking crossplay whenever possible? How about trying to ditch backwards compatibility on the PS5, even though it is the very same friggin' architecture as the PS4? In this case the backlash was so big that suddenly they "realized" they can actually do it anyway - within a week or so. And now in an unprecedented move they even increase the price of their console - 2 years after launch.

Sony is doing everything in their power to screw over their own customers, and they are perfectly aware the ONLY thing that keeps them on their platform is the exclusives. I bought the PS3 for an exclusive. And the PS4. And the PS5. There's literally no other reason to pick a side. And now that they see that two can play at that game, they're scared sh*tless. Cry me a river...
 
At this point, I'd like to point out that MS has been lagging behind the PS ever since Don Mattrick's botched Xbox One launch, 9 years ago. The PS4 sold TWICE as many, and the PS5 sold 1.5x as many as the Xbox counterpart.

As for Nintendo, they sold TWICE as many of the Switch in HALF the time than the Xbox One and Series COMBINED.

So it's a really backwards POV to be afraid of Microsoft abusing their monopoly position - there is none. They're a distant third.

It's also very cute from Sony to be this concerned - apparently they really like exclusives, except when it's not them making them.

If anything, it is Sony abusing their position. How about putting cloud backups behind a paywall? (free on Xbox) How about removing USB support for saves backup? How about fighting and blocking crossplay whenever possible? How about trying to ditch backwards compatibility on the PS5, even though it is the very same friggin' architecture as the PS4? In this case the backlash was so big that suddenly they "realized" they can actually do it anyway - within a week or so. And now in an unprecedented move they even increase the price of their console - 2 years after launch.

Sony is doing everything in their power to screw over their own customers, and they are perfectly aware the ONLY thing that keeps them on their platform is the exclusives. I bought the PS3 for an exclusive. And the PS4. And the PS5. There's literally no other reason to pick a side. And now that they see that two can play at that game, they're scared sh*tless. Cry me a river...

There's a lot of truth here. However, paying studios for exclusives versus walling off entire studios by OWNING them are two different things. As for market domination, let me know when Windows has built-in Playstation integration.
 
I don't care what department any of them work in. If non of them work for Microsoft or Activision Blizzard then they have no say how either of the companies are run. Well unless they want to invest billions of Dollars into the companies and get that 51% stake in the companies. Then they can say what's what. I say bugger off and let the companies do their thing and stop wasting tax money on this crap.
 
Politicians over here will be found with large, undeclared amounts of money into their bank accounts (illegally obtained ofc), yet they won't resign even for THAT (and no authority will prosecute - they'll actually protect them).

These people will counter-attack the researching journalists instead. Fun fact: this is an EU country.
 
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