Sony has officially penned a 10-year deal with Microsoft for the latter to keep the Call of Duty franchise on the former’s PlayStation platform. The deal also ends the bitter battle that both companies had been waging, both in the private and public forums, for the past year, ever since the Xbox owner announced its decision to bring the studio Activision Blizzard into its fold last year.
As you well know, that acquisition has more or less gone through in the US, ever since a US District Judge presiding over the case ruled against the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for an injunction against the deal, saying that it would give Microsoft an unfair advantage against its rival. Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, describes the deal as a “binding agreement” to keep Activision’s most popular franchise on the Sony console.
We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) July 16, 2023
To be more precise, the presiding judge also rejected the FTC claim that the Microsoft’s decision to make the highly anticipated Starfield and not-so-wanted Redfall Xbox exclusives would pave the way for it to make the Call of Duty franchise an exclusive, saying that Microsoft had long been “making deals with video game companies you’ve never heard of. “Before the merger, there is no access to Activision’s content on cloud-streaming services,” the ruling states. “After the merger, several of Microsoft’s cloud-streaming competitors will—for the first time—have access to this content. The merger will enhance, not lessen, competition in the cloud-streaming market.”
When this whole legal battle began more than a year ago, Microsoft originally offered Sony a deal that included keeping “all existing Activision console titles on Sony, including future versions in the Call of Duty franchise or any other current Activision franchise on Sony through 31 December 2027.”
From Day One of this acquisition, we’ve been committed to addressing the concerns of regulators, platform and game developers, and consumers. Even after we cross the finish line for this deal’s approval, we will remain focused on ensuring that Call of Duty remains available on… https://t.co/hMWjC58wRi
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) July 16, 2023
Obviously, the terms of the deal have changed quite significantly since then, and in case it wasn’t clear, the 10-year deal with Sony is now limited to just Call of Duty. It also doesn’t help that a messy communications breakdown occurred that led to a war of words between Spencer and Jim Ryan, the PlayStation chief. Microsoft’s lawyers say that Ryan initially didn’t have concerns about the deal but when Spencer decided to make their negotiations public, Ryan reciprocated the move. Saying that the offer was not adequate and that it “failed to take account of the impact on our gamers.”
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