Sony says Microsoft could release buggy Call Of Duty games on PlayStation on purpose

Rival games companies Sony and Microsoft are bickering again over the planned acquisition of Activision, because apparently the console wars will never stop.

For months now, Sony has been very concerned about the possibility of Microsoft turning Call of Duty into an Xbox exclusive franchise, as the company would own the IP and would in theory be able to do so if the buyout of Activision goes ahead. It’s been repeatedly reiterated that this won’t be the case - in fact, it’s even been confirmed that the franchise will be coming to Nintendo consoles in the future, but that’s not stopped Sony from worrying.

Take a look at some gameplay footage from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II below.

As TheGamer reports, Sony is now concerned that if Call of Duty games do continue to release on PlayStation, they could be inferior versions of the game. In a new document released by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, Sony even implied that the PlayStation versions could be sabotaged.

"Even if Microsoft operated in good faith, it would be incentivised to support and prioritise development of the Xbox version of the game, such as by using its best engineers and more of its resources," Sony wrote. "There would be no practical way for the CMA (or Sony) to monitor how Microsoft chooses to allocate its resources and the quality/quantity of engineers it devotes to the PlayStation version of Call of Duty, to ensure that Sony would be treated fairly and equally."

The company continued: "For example, Microsoft might release a PlayStation version of Call of Duty where bugs and errors emerge only on the game's final level or after later updates. Even if such degradations could be swiftly detected, any remedy would likely come too late, by which time the gaming community would have lost confidence in PlayStation as a go-to venue to play Call of Duty."

Hopefully though, Sony has nothing to worry about. In a recent interview, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that the company wants to make "absolutely the best version of Call of Duty for any player on any of those platforms".

At the time of writing, we still don't know if Microsoft's acquisition of Activision will even go through - regulators are still in the process of deciding whether it'd give the company an unfair market advantage.