The bigger problem, however,
is still Game Pass – and the reality that Microsoft is studiously avoiding throughout this entire process is that it barely matters if Call of Duty and other major Activision titles are released on PlayStation, and Nintendo consoles, and GeForce Now, if those titles are full-price on those platforms but available for free on Game Pass, with zero chance of them ever appearing on any other subscription service.
"Everyone else's users will pay $80 for these, our users will get them for free" is a much less convincing pitch for multi-platform parity than the one Microsoft is making this week, but it's far closer to the truth
.
It's paying that money for an enormous competitive advantage in what it believes will be the dominant business paradigm for the entire games industry in years to come – game subscriptions – and the concessions it has made in putting paid-for versions of some of Activision Blizzard's games on Nintendo and Nvidia platforms do not even touch upon that core objective, or on the core concerns held by Sony and by at least some of the regulators examining the deal.