In order to squeeze a higher revenue share for Call of Duty, Activision’s CEO threatened to stop bringing the shooter to Xbox.
In court, in the FTC v. Microsoft case, the first testimonies were taken by some executives from Xbox and Microsoft respectively. Xbox Vice President Sarah Bond was also among them.
At a hearing, Bond said there were tough negotiations between Activision and Microsoft over Call of Duty revenue sharing.
Activision was forced to negotiate a new revenue-sharing deal after Bobby Kotick threatened to stop releasing Call of Duty on Xbox.
In the end, there was no choice but to accept the new division.
Additionally, in a marketing agreement between Activision and PlayStation, there were very clear limits on how Call of Duty could be marketed on Xbox’s channels and social platforms.
Bond said: “When we wanted to show Call of Duty Vanguard coming to Xbox a year ago, we were told we couldn’t show it on YouTube or any other place that had customers that weren’t our own customers , could see it, and we had to hold it back for a period of time.”
In addition to Call of Duty, Bond named Hogwarts Legacy, which had similar restrictions.
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