Microsoft announced that after the finalization of the purchase of Activision Blizzard, the price of Game Pass subscription service will not increase.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently announced that, according to the results of one of its investigations, subscription prices for game services can be easily changed, and Microsoft may have an incentive to do so when it acquires popular content from Activision, such as Call of Duty. Have this job. Further, in response to this new CMA statement, Microsoft announced that the subscription price of Game Pass will not increase as a result of the merger of Xbox and Activision Blizzard.
In its response, Microsoft said: “The price of subscriptions to the Game Pass service will not increase as a result of this merger, and certainly will not increase to the extent that it will compensate for the significant results of Activision’s first day releases on Game Pass.” To help explain this, Microsoft noted that games published by Bethesda, such as Fallout, Doom, Dishonored, and The Elder Scrolls, did not increase Game Pass prices.
The company further explained the impact of this purchase on the distribution of Activision Blizzard games and improving the output of the games offered on the Game Pass service: “The integration of Activision and Microsoft will lead to the removal of marginal items; Because Microsoft can buy these games at a reasonable cost and have incentives to distribute them more widely and improve Gamepass output. Finally, to increase the output, we have to offer gamepass with better quality and lower price.
This is exactly what Microsoft has done in the past by adding new content to Game Pass; For example, the acquisition of the ZeniMax collection, which led to the introduction of new content, did not increase the subscription price of the service. Considering that Game Pass users are sensitive to the subscription price and the increase in the price of this service affects all users, including those who are not interested in the Kalaf Duty series, this issue is very important.
Game Pass subscribers can cancel their subscription at any time after one month. Since Call of Duty games only come out once a year, any impact from them will be short-lived. Because players who lose their enthusiasm for the new version of Call of Duty within a few months, may cancel the subscription if the price of the service increases. As such, any price increase would be detrimental. Because it increases the drop rate of subscribers. “This is in stark contrast to Microsoft’s assessment of its intentions to integrate with Activision Blizzard.”
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