PlayStation has a 70% share of the global console market versus Xbox’s 30%, Microsoft claims

Microsoft has offered analysis suggesting that Sony’s PlayStation has a 70% share of the international console industry versus Xbox’s 30%.

Corporation president Brad Smith produced the claim throughout a press meeting on Tuesday immediately after Microsoft offered arguments for why its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard ought to be authorized at a European Fee hearing.

“Think about the current market in Europe. It is a market in which Sony has an 80% share,” he said (via GamesIndustry.biz). “Globally, it is about 70/30. In Japan, it is 96/4.

“These numbers have been remarkably regular for two a long time. Even final 12 months, when there ended up difficulties with Sony’s provide chain, they came back again powerful.”

Smith, who stated PlayStation outsold Xbox by 69/31 to the close of 2022, seemingly did not provide figures for Microsoft’s largest sector, the United States.

Tuesday’s hearing permitted Microsoft to tackle the assertion of objections it just lately received from the EU warning about the possible anti-aggressive effects of the $69 billion offer to purchase Activision Blizzard.

Coinciding with the listening to, Microsoft introduced that it experienced signed a “binding 10-12 months legal agreement” to carry Call of Responsibility to Nintendo platforms.

The enterprise also announced a 10-yr partnership with Nvidia to bring its Xbox Laptop online games to cloud activity streaming services GeForce Now.

The offer will include things like Activision Blizzard games like Simply call of Responsibility ought to Microsoft’s bid to acquire the Planet of Warcraft publisher be accredited by regulators.

Microsoft lately said it had also offered Sony a 10-yr, legally enforceable agreement to make each individual new Get in touch with of Responsibility sport offered on PlayStation the similar working day it will come to Xbox.

“We haven’t agreed a deal with Sony, but I hope we will,” Smith explained to push on Tuesday.

“[Sony] can shell out all of its vitality striving to block this deal… or it can sit down with us and hammer out an agreement that addresses what it claims it is concerned about, predominantly the access to Get in touch with of Responsibility in the long run,” he claimed, in accordance to Verge reporter Tom Warren.

Previously this month, the British isles Competitiveness and Marketplaces Authority mentioned it experienced provisionally observed that the Activision Blizzard acquisition could lower level of competition and “result in larger rates, less choices, or less innovation for United kingdom gamers”.

The regulator outlined many possible structural cures that could assist obvious a route to it approving the deal, including a “partial divestiture of Activision Blizzard” that could see it promoting off the aspect of the enterprise that specials with Call of Obligation, or even the complete Activision small business unit.

“We really don’t imagine it is possible or practical to imagine that a single video game or 1 slice of this enterprise can be carved out and divided from the rest,” Smith told reporters on Tuesday, in accordance to Bloomberg.